Hard Disk Planning

[dizzynoodle]

how many of you guys follow the belief " for more speed put your OS on one hard disk and your applications on another" and does it really make much difference ? I need to now urgently as i am juggling gigs and gigs on 3 HDDs my OS in quite unstable - i need to re-install and i need to know which way to go with the partitioning !

thnx

[wkulecz]

Partitioning does nothing good for performance. If you only have one drive, use it all as a single drive letter. Inevitabley you'll guess wrong and run out of space on one partition while there is plenty left on the other(s).

System and apps on one drive. Data on the other has been my rule for years. This way drive C: has nothing that you can't re-install from the original CDs other than your customized settings (which I admit is a major PITA to lose). This way you only have to worry about backing up the data drive(s).

As for installing apps into anything but their default directories on system drive, I've given up on even trying long ago -- way too many broken installers and uninstallers for me to waste my time with it.

For video, two drives is pretty much essential. System, apps, and preview files on C: and video data on D: has worked for me.
With three drives and NLE as a major application, I'd put the system and apps on one drive, and keep captured video data on the largest, and preview files & rendered final output on the third drive.

--wally.


[This message has been edited by wkulecz (edited 29 January 2001).]

[dizzynoodle]

thanx wally, i need a lil more help here, the following r my drives, can u suggest what best use i can make of the scsi one ?!

HDD1 IBM 9gb scsi UW2 [LVD]
HDD2 IBM 16gb IDE 5400 [2 partitions 6+10gb]
HDD3 Maxtor 32 Gb IDE i think 5400 ! single partition for mass storage [about 25 gigs full]

what do u suggest i use the scsi for ? OS or video? I will be running win98se

thnx

[dizzynoodle]

wally , i would really a ppreciate ur help on this one, i up late trying to fix the problem with my system, and reformating seems the only option, so the query in my last post would allow me to proceed !

thnx

[Marijn]

I think that it's best to have the SCSI drive as the C-drive for the OS. Because of the size and the fast accestime. You're PC feels fast if the drive with fast accestime is used. Of course rotationspeed and arial density of the disk counts as well, but faster continuous transferrates and large capacity is something you want for video (I think).

Well thats my 2 cents...

[This message has been edited by Marijn (edited 29 January 2001).]

[Frankie G]

Well if you have the luxury of THREE drives, then I would suggest
putting the TEMP directory and Windows swap file on the
third drive (e.g. put system and apps on the SCSI,
temp and swap on the smaller IDE, and video cap on the
larger IDE). Keep the IDE's on separate channels.
At work, I salvaged a 1G WD drive from a 486 with a smoked motherboard
put it in the trusty P6-200 that I crank out code on, and
do notice a significant speed increase.

[Frankie G]

Well if you have the luxury of THREE drives, then I would suggest
putting the TEMP directory and Windows swap file on the
third drive (e.g. put system and apps on the SCSI,
temp and swap on the smaller IDE, and video cap on the
larger IDE). Keep the IDE's on separate channels.
At work, I salvaged a 1G WD drive from a 486 with a smoked motherboard
put it in the trusty P6-200 that I crank out code on, and
do notice a significant speed increase.

[wkulecz]

With win9x and W2K I really don't think moving the swap file is a good idea. That was a win3.1 optimization which hung on because RAM got expensive again after win95 came out. If it helps, you probably would have been better off spending $40-80 for an extra 64-128MB of RAM

If you can boot from the SCSI, I think the LVD ultra SCSI would be great for the system and 9G should be fine for system files and a reasonable number of applications.

For the other two IDE drives, put them as masters on the primary and secondary channels. I'd use the 32G for capture and the 16G I'd consolidate into a single partition and use it for preview files and final renderings (if they fit). I wouldn't worry about which was primary and which was secondary.

Doing all this with data on the drives will be a good trick. Ghost or Partition Magic might be a big help, but I've never used them.

--wally.

[This_Idiot]

Well I'd never suggest that anyone use a SCSI device as a boot drive. All very well while Windows (name your flavour) is behaving itself. But when disaster strikes (and it always does, I feel lucky if I can survive a year without some kind of major upset), trying to install D drivers is bad enough without finding compatible SCSI drivers from the year before last.

So my advice is to use a standard IDE drive as a boot device, sort out some device drivers for CD and SCSI access and dump them onto your emergency boot floppy. And don't forget to test it occasionally

[wkulecz]

Starting with win98 the "emergency disk" includes DOS mode SCSI drivers for many common controllers so that CDROM support is there on boot. Its not hard to add what you need for the hard drive while how to is still fresh in your mind from the initial install, but any decent controller that will boot SCSI should have an option to install SCSI drives as BIOS drives.

This should give usable but slow access on a bare dos bootup if disaster strikes.

Other than my incredibly time wasting foray back into win98 for video editing, I've been using NT and now W2K for so long that re-installing the OS to "fix" something is a thing I just don't worry about having to do. I've never had to re-install Linux to fix it either.

Death to win9x!!!

--wally.

[dizzynoodle]

the onlt death i see is that of the win2k drivers from matrox for the marvel series !

I would love to go back to win2k, except my Marvel G200 was quite unhappy there.. and i couldn't get video out - quite a common problem with tons of users ! SO I AM FORCED TO DEAL WITH 98SE ! what card r u using ? Oh, and my new DSL connection USB modem doesn't run on 2k either

But seriously, do i gain much system performance [forget capturing lfor a minute]if i have my OS + apps on the scsi drive ?

[wkulecz]

I honestly can't say how much "better" having your system and apps on drive C: would be with SCSI vs. IDE. Win9x makes little use of the advanced features of SCSI. It should be "better" meaning apps should load faster and swaps should happen quicker since your LVD UW2 SCSI drive should be faster than either IDE drive you have. 9GB isn't really big enough for NLE so I suggested it be drive C because it was the smallest, not because it was SCSI.

NT and Linux are noticably better in my experience when the system drive is SCSI, but I've not tried SCSI hard drives on W2K. The performance/cost ratio just isn't high enough with SCSI for NLE.

USB DSL modem !*#$! yuk! How are you gonna run a firewall/sharing-gateway? Your win9x box will be naked to the net when turned on, I wouldn't be surprised if this interferes with video editing assuming you don't get hacked!

My G200 Marvel is the only thing not working on W2K but then I've refused to buy anything that didn't have NT4 drivers since NT4 was at beta2. I got fooled by the NT betas for the Marvel :-( Once burned, twice shy, now its working drivers or nosale! (or a return if the drivers suck!)

When I got DSL I told them I was using it on NT and wouldn't accept the lame PPPoE. I set up a junker PC with Win95 for their "technician" to do the checkout since NT was "unsupported". Haven't regretted it (actually I ran it thru Linux as a firewall until Linksys came out with their CableMode/DSL router/firewall boxes).

--wally.

[dizzynoodle]

ok ok ok, here you have opened an extremely important topic, that has been concrning me for a while ! the security of my system, with a open DSL connection, i tried using some software firewalls ZoneALarm and the likes , just got in the way of surfing - and every other net related activity !!!

I am thinking of going bck to Intruder Alert which noifies you if someone is trying to hack through any of your exposed ports & records their IP...etc ! Or do you recommend NOrton Personal Firewall 2001 or any oher. I have not considered hardware solutions because they have not come my way ! watcha think ?

[wkulecz]

IMHO, dedicated hardware to "firewall" your broadband internet connection is a must for systems that do NLE. Unfortunately, various PPPoE schemes cause problems for some of these boxes, but often firmware revisions can solve most of them. I'm not sure if there is a version yet to talk to USB DSL or cable "modems". Try to exchange yours for one that uses ethernet instead.

You're other alternative is a seperate boot profile for NLE without networking. Personally I like being able to surf and read this message board while MSP is busy rendering.

--wally.

[dizzynoodle]

sorry this may sound niave, but why do say it is critical to firewall a NLE system ? it is the first time i hear of that ?