fast boot setup?

[ng12345]

what's the best hard disk setup possible to get the fastsest boot times and application load times?

should i have a 36gb 10k sata drive devoted to windows and all apps (i think 18gb or less could suffice)? and then a dedicated drive for data (400gb 7.2k sata)

all suggestions welcome

i noticed someone doing a ram drive setup which got them into windows in 4 seconds ... but i dont think i see a ram drive thing anytime in my rig's future

recommendations for hardware also welcome

 

[ribbon13]

The very fastest is an M-Systems FFD.
You can get a 4 gigabyte one for $1500
Access times are <.04ms and burst read reach over 100MB/s

Next fastest is a 15krpm SCSI u320


http://www.axentmicro.com/huzrb/partdetails~af~gle~mp~ST336754LW.htm
http://www.wdlsystems.com/modperl/view_...r=detail&prod_num=1MFUA96&aisle_id=284

 

[Wild1]

The 36G RAptors are not as fast as the 74G version. Even if you don't need the size now, I would get the 74G version if you are considering this 10K drive.

 

[bob4432]

why are you newbs so concerned about boot times? who cares, what matters is when the computer is on. hell, most people only turn their computers on once a day if that....... for ultimate speed for launching apps and windows usage would be the newest generation 15k rpm scsi drives, hands down but they cost serious $$$$$$ (~$300 for a 36GB setup), but when the machine goes through the scsi bios it will slow down your precious boot times......

 

[tallman45]

Save some $$ and just get a 250-300Gb 16mb cache drive and make a 8-10gb partition on the outer edge which will give you fantastic performance.

 

[ribbon13]

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=diamondmax10&page=1

If you want to lose 300GB of data go ahead and get a Maxtor. I'd wait for Seagate 7200.9s or just go with a Raptor 74 for boot/system/applications and a Seagate 7200.8 for mass storage.

 

[tallman45]

Ghost OS/Apps partition and back up user data often, makes recovery from the inevitable HDD failure painless.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=diamondmax10&page=1

If you want to lose 300GB of data go ahead and get a Maxtor. I'd wait for Seagate 7200.9s or just go with a Raptor 74 for boot/system/applications and a Seagate 7200.8 for mass storage.

are you saying that maxtor drive have a higher failure rate over the other brands? personally i have had hardware failure from drives form all the major manf, if you are into computers long enough and use enough of the different items, you are bound to have failure problems.

ribbon, just out of curiosity, i looked up your rig and what do you use all that computing power for? i know it says your rendering rig, is it for video? 3d stuff? just curious because it is quite impressive

 

[ribbon13]

Maxtor ATAs have had a long history of failing more than any other brand. All drives can fail, Maxtor is just more adapet at it. Thier SCSI stuff gets me :thumbsup: though.

Oh yeah, I need to update that. I just got 4 sticks of CM72SD1024RLP-3200. Goodbye 2T command rate! Its for 3D modeling, rendering, special effects, and technical drawings. I'm jobless at the moment, I quit the game industry. Missed every major holiday for 4 years, and once went 107 days without going home. Goodbye inhuman deadlines and dumbfvck boss! I would show people some stuff I've done but almost every thing good I've done has NDAs, and I'm really sure people wouldn't be impressed with the 170kpoly rendering of a toliet I just did for Kohler.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
Maxtor ATAs have had a long history of failing more than any other brand. All drives can fail, Maxtor is just more adapet at it. Thier SCSI stuff gets me :thumbsup: though.

Oh yeah, I need to update that. I just got 4 sticks of CM72SD1024RLP-3200. Goodbye 2T command rate! Its for 3D modeling, rendering, special effects, and technical drawings. I'm jobless at the moment, I quit the game industry. Missed every major holiday for 4 years, and once went 107 days without going home. Goodbye inhuman deadlines and dumbfvck boss! I would show people some stuff I've done but almost every thing good I've done has NDAs, and I'm really sure people wouldn't be impressed with the 170kpoly rendering of a toliet I just did for Kohler.

serious hardware... that work schedule is ridiculous, seems like a lot of different industries have those damn bosses, i wonder how they make $$$ sometimes... those damn ndas.... pain in the ass if you ask me....

 

[ribbon13]

Not to hijack this thread but..

I got a Enlight EN-8950B00 for it now. You can see what an Enlight EN-8950-B0X4P4 looks like, only difference is the B00 comes w/o a psu because I'm getting a PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 850 ETX. It houses the godliest motherboard in existance nicely. The specs on the M-Systems FFDs are unearthly. <40µs access :shocked: The Seagate 15k.4s are also really nice. All in all it was $18332.22 well spent.

 

[bob4432]

damn, serious hardware...

 

[veggz]

Originally posted by: bob4432
damn, serious hardware...

No kidding.. sh!t ribbon you probably have the fastest personal use rig in the world what exactly do you do with it?

 

[Perplx]

Bitmicro is Faster then M-System.

M-Sytem
Performance
Burst Read/Write: 100.0 MBytes/sec
Sustained Read: 45.0 MBytes/sec
Sustained Write: 40.0 MBytes/sec
Access time: <0.04 ms

Bitmicro
Burst Read/Write: 400 MB/sec Duplex Burst R/W Rate
Sustained Read/Write: 68 to 160 MB/sec Sustained R/W Rate
Access time: 42 to 35 usec Access Time

Of course im comparing IDE to Fibre Channel but why limit yourself to IDE when spending that much money. Bitmico has greater operating performance too.

 

[ribbon13]

RAMSAN is faster than that.... I have two 4gig FFD's in RAID0 and all its for is the OS and programs. Where can I buy a Bitmicro exactly?

 

[LED]

All SATA and RAID configs take extra time for the Mobo's BIOS to read them so figure that in the Boot up time

 

[sharkeeper]

IF you build a good system boot time is mundane as you will hardly EVER reboot it!

For example

 

[dunkster]

It's not all about hardware.

A lot of people are running systems with startup and auto-run processes that can be disabled or set to manual-run for not only quicker boot but also snappier performance post-boot.

You can definitely sense the performance difference between one running 30 processes and another running 20 processes.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

Originally posted by: bob4432
why are you newbs so concerned about boot times? who cares, what matters is when the computer is on. hell, most people only turn their computers on once a day if that....... for ultimate speed for launching apps and windows usage would be the newest generation 15k rpm scsi drives, hands down but they cost serious $$$$$$ (~$300 for a 36GB setup), but when the machine goes through the scsi bios it will slow down your precious boot times......

well said, i have a 80Gig Samsung spinpoint sata drive. ive seen tests the show its either middle of the pack or dead last with load times, but guess what the difference between my drive and a 74Gb raptor was just a few seconds....farcry takes a while to load anyway so im sure im not gonna mind the extra few seconds

also, i turn my rig on in the mornin, and by the time ive got my chair at my desk with a bowl of cereal my rig is waiting for me to log in. whats more these baby's are silent

 

[ng12345]

ok didn't mean to create so much discussion

reason boot time matters ... this will be for an htpc ... so it will be a turn on turn off gig ... i may decide to use hibernate ... but even then it takes about 30 seconds to go into hibernate
i'm looking for the fastest boot setup given a moderate budget... i've already bought a 400gb drive for my data (hitachi deskstar) ... and yes i know they are supposedly noisy... but i've had no trouble with it yet

someone said something about just partitioning the outer edge of the drive for the os and apps... compared to buying a dedicated 10k drive ... what is better cost v. performance

i dont want to spend more than $100 for the second faster hd (for dedicated os and what not)

thanks

also my mobo supports ide and sata, i do not want to buy a scsi controller

 

[bob4432]

probably drive on a pata with optical as slave. disable sata and other controllers. you have to remember that if the machine is going to go through all these different bioses looking for drives that will add significantly to your load times.

don't use sata but i thought the you went through the initial bios and then the sata bios, which means more time. with pata just tell the bios which drives are there and don't have it search each time select the drive in the bios and not auto detect it. set 1 bootup to hdd0