Installing programs on separate drive for speed

[DBsantos77]

Hello,

Would installing programs on a separate drive other than the main OS drive improve performance?

I'm currently on a Seagate 500GB Sata II 7200 rpm drive, I have another exact 500GB drive laying around, so I am considering separating my programs from the OS.

Just a couple of questions though..

If I go this route and separate my programs from my OS, would it be faster than if I would go with RAID0?

Would it be better if I buy a fast drive maybe a velociraptor, put the OS on the raptor, and all my programs on the current 500GB drive?

Thanks for the help

 

[valtonray]

the raid set up would be ideal for program installation. while it's true that the more data on a hdd the more it bogs down the system what you suggest would only be beneficial if you stored programs and the OS on one drive and data(movies, music, photos, doc's etc) on the other drive.

 

[DBsantos77]

Thanks for the reply Valton,

I'm leaning more towards Raid0, but it seems very complicated, I'm not sure if the work is worth the payoff..

I could also wait it out and buy an SSD when they are at acceptable prices.

I just feel like my current HD works hard for little speed. But according to diagnostics and temps, it's doing fine..

 

[valtonray]

you may want to try moving all data file to the 2nd drive, then using ccleaner and a through defrag on the primary. also many programs have portable versions that could free up some more space. really a 7200 rpm drive is pretty standard and should perform just fine, but you could look into a 10k rpm drive and i believe they also have a few 15k models now. in my personal opinion the current cost just doesn't justify the speed increase of an ssd, especially when you consider the slow write speed.

 

[Pedro de la Riv]

I'm having my riad0 running for 8 months now and am very satisfied. Maybe it's not the topic here, but I wonder if it makes sense to setup multiple users for different configurations. What I mean is suppose I only want to work in PS and do some Video editing etc. (need no internet and a bunch of other utilities) to only install these under lets name it User 'Design' and e.g my office etc under User 'Office' and games under User 'Games' etc. Hope you all know what I mean. Can this speed up performance or am I thinking wrong. Maybe someone has a better idea?

 

[MilesAhead]

Generally all drives being equal, you can optimize by simultaneous operations and reducing thrashing. An old rule of thumb in minicomputers was, one HD for executables(including os,) one HD for swap, and one HD for data.

Last time I googled about this I noticed some mention of PC hard drives with heads that move independently instead of all seeking in unison. That may give better performance while not being as expensive as solid state. I don't know if they are actually out in the market yet. Seems like something that would have been implemented a long time ago. Perhaps it was on big iron. One of these days I'll have to read more about it.

 

[valtonray]

I'm having my riad0 running for 8 months now and am very satisfied. Maybe it's not the topic here, but I wonder if it makes sense to setup multiple users for different configurations. What I mean is suppose I only want to work in PS and do some Video editing etc. (need no internet and a bunch of other utilities) to only install these under lets name it User 'Design' and e.g my office etc under User 'Office' and games under User 'Games' etc. Hope you all know what I mean. Can this speed up performance or am I thinking wrong. Maybe someone has a better idea?

actually i used to do this with my computers before i had different machines for different tasks. and yes it can potentially have a great impact on some tasks. say for instance you want a gaming profile, you can strip out all of the components that aren't used for that(i even killed explorer.exe replacing it with a much faster alternative shell)

 

[Pedro de la Riv]

Well actually TuneUp Utillities warned me I had to many programs installed, although they only run on command. The register tends to grow bigger and bigger. I thank you for your support and quick reply. Subscribed only a couple of days ago and very impressed by this forum. On last remark (I am gone find out soon) probably making multiple users will also have a beneficial effect on the size of each separate register (I asume?). Besides all that all looks more orderly.

With kind regards
Pedro de la Rivera
Amsterdam - Holland