Windows 7 extremely slow on startup!!!!

The Raid level being that there is four of those will definitely play a role there. In fact I just came across the latest report by the U.S. National Library of Medicine you would be interested in on this. "Is the Bang Worth the Buck?: A RAID Performance Study"

Abstract

Expecting a high data delivery rate as well as data protection, the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications procured a RAID system to house image files for image delivery applications. A study was undertaken to determine the configuration of the RAID system that would provide for the fastest retrieval of image files. Average retrieval times with single and with concurrent users were measured for several stripe widths and several numbers of disks for RAID levels 0, 0+1 and 5. These are compared to each other and to average retrieval times for non-RAID configurations of the same hardware. Although the study in ongoing, a few conclusions have emerged regarding the tradeoffs among the different configurations with respect to file retrieval speed and cost.

Rationale and goals

The Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications, a research and development division of the National Library of Medicine, procured a Sun SPARCstorage Array (SSA), model 101, to house image files for prototype image delivery applications. The SSA model 101 is configured with eighteen Seagate ST31200W 1.05 GB disks connected to six internal fast wide SCSI busses. The SSA is connected to a Sun SPARCstation 20 via a Fiber Channel port. SPARCstorage Volume Manager software supports use of the SSA as independent volumes or as:

RAID 0: Data is split into equal sized blocks, or stripes, and distributed among the disks in the RAID volume.
RAID 1: All data in a volume are duplicated on the mirror volume.
RAID 0+1: Both the original volume and the mirror volume are striped.
RAID 5: In Addition to data blocks, RAID Level 5 includes parity blocks, which are distributed among the disks in the RAID volume [1,2].

The specifications of the Seagate disks[3] in the SSA cite a data transfer rate of 3.3 to 5.9 MB/sec. The fast wide SCSI interface has a data transfer rate of 20 MB/sec, and the Fiber Channel connector has a data transfer rate of 25 to 50 MB/sec. Those specifications the following statements from a technical white paper led us to expect very high data retrieval rates in addition to the data security available from RAID.

• "Each of the disks in a stripe are generally assumed to be on their own independent data channel, allowing the transfer rate of a RAID 0 implementation to approach the sum of the transfer rates of each of the drives." [4]
• "Both SPARCstorage Array models ... are capable of over 2000 two-KB input-output operations per second, and sustained transfer rates exceeding 15 MB/second."[4]

The rest of that is seen at Is the Bang Worth the Buck?: A RAID Performance Study being in regards to Seagate drives there.

The problem looked at here lately however wasn't speed alone for the main drive but capacity as well. 300gb? How about seeing 500gb drives fill up too fast? Before taking the leap into WD RE Enterprise drives I went with a 1tb WD Black Edition model being the top in the Caviar line there.

I set my cores to 4 and windows failed to load ? Did anyone else have this issue ? I had to re-set it back in safe mode .. But Now in msconfig , I can only select 2 cores ? I do have a quad core q9550 processor .

More space to traverse or more platters in the drive? Larger capacity generally means more platters along with larger capcity platters. When deciding on any drive you have to know what type of system the drive will go in as well. Larger capacity drives doesn't mean wider disk platters.

Actually the new WD GPower 2tb drive is seeing faster read and write times tne 1tb GP model. A set of comparison charts on that can be seen at Access Time And I/O Performance - Review Tom's Hardware : New Desktop Hard Drives: Speed Or Capacity?

When you say 36gb Raptors those would be pointless here since in one week's time the new host drive already see well over 100gb on it. Perhaps a look at one thing that goes onto it will explain itself and where drive space becomes a commidity depending again on what type of system you run and the programs/files you have on it. Try not to break out in hysterics!

The OS goes on before anything else as a rule. Drive indexing enabled or disabled will have an effect on access times. As far as the type of drive that again depends on the type of system you run. But even that is only one part of how fast Windows starts up.

Actually SCSI was at one time the optimal choice but now lingers on for server storage and not applicable for desktops at this point with hard drives having come a long ways over the last several years. For high end builds were performance is critical not only for starting Windows up but while running programs mainly on gaming builds the higher prices for Raptors is accepted in order to see premium performance overall.

Speaking of prices it will be something when the 2tb drives come down in price to where the 1tb presently are seen. The pair of 1tb drives used for storage here each see over 500gb used up with one 3/4s full. This is from backing things up from smaller OS drives lacking work space for various projects here where drive space becomes a premium.

On the other hand for those running few programs and not requiring large capacity on the OS drive like you have indicated they can take advantage of the smaller higher speeds even with SSDs for the price of course.