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Ben:
I use a RAID-0 span on two disks for my OS.
I have my desktop set up the same way (albeit with a slightly different OS). Dual 74GB Raptors (which were the fastest drives when I got them three years ago) makes the OS fast. Nothing important goes on those drives, only redundant stuff like OS, software and scratch areas. Data is stored on a separate drive, which in turn is synced to a NAS daily.Why? Are you doing significant read/write to/from your OS?
I can see RAID 0 for data/photo files, but not for an OS. I set up RAID 1 (mirrored) for my OS -- the redundancy allows me to start from either drive, and RAID 0 (striped) for the application data (photos and video) directories -- speed for reading and writing.
There's no absolute answer to that question. Conventional wisdom says OS virtual memory swap file and scratch should be on separate physical drives for best performance, however with a 64-bit OS and cheap RAM the need for using virtual memory swap diminishes. Running Vista 64-bit I have enough RAM not to need to use swap.Is it not better to have scratch on a HD not being used for other stuff like the OS?
A reason to have a separate scratch partition is to avoid fragmentation of the scratch file(s) and the accompanying performance decrease but that shouldn't be a problem with an SSD since seek time is almost zero. I would just use the system partition for scratch if I were you.The question I have what about when using SSD drives. This week my new MPB comes in and all of you wondering what my selloff was for this is it a 15 inch 2.93 /6gb of Ram and two SSD drives running Raid O internally and ripping out the optical bay. Now since there is no spinning drives. Do I really need a scratch drive. My thoughts are no but I could partition a 20gb scratch off the SSD but see no point since. I will try a scratch just for giggles on a external 7200 drive on Firewire 800 to see if pushing a LARGE file would benefit from it or I could even pull a 10k out of the desktop and try that. In the end I am actually thinking of selling my desktop. If I can get close to the same processing times i may just do that. I have to see how this all plays out
My thoughts are no but I could partition a 20gb scratch off the SSD but see no point.