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Hard Drive Performance

Question asked by Doug Calli on Aug 3, 2008
Latest reply on Aug 4, 2008 by Doug Calli

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Hi all,

I'm buying a new workstation and trying to decide on wether to spend the money on a raid array of 2 to 4 disks or go with 2 non raid drives, one for the OS and SW and the other for data.

A normal design for me...
Parts with many features and less than 1,000 parts in an assembly. I do a lot of motion rendering (video for client) and cosmos simulation on my final designs.

Any help deciding this is greatly appreciated.

Thanks, DC

Doug Calli Aug 4, 2008 3:16 PM

Correct Answer

The system I'm getting supports up to 32G, from what I've read on the forum 8G should be a good fit for my designs, so I'm opting to save some money there and now that I can go with a normal HD setup I can save a bit more and increase my cpu speed. Being an owner operator every penny helps.

Thanks again

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Gary Garrison Aug 4, 2008 2:30 PM

Generally for performance "bang for the buck" normal non raid SATAII drives are the way to go, or so the consensus seems to be.

For rendering and COSMOS work yo will benefit from better/faster processor(s) not hard drive speed. Having the two drives with one for OS and Programs, and the other for working data and file storage seems to be the way to go. Also I have been told that placing the pagefile on the data drive as the first partition or on its own seperate drive may help the speed some.

My typical arrangement:

c: = OS and Programs

d: = DVD
e: = DVD burner

(f:+g: are the same physical drive)
f: = 16 GB partition
g: = data/storage

or

f: = 40GB SATAII drive for pagefile
g: = data /storage

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Doug Calli @ Gary Garrison on Aug 4, 2008 2:46 PM

Thanks Gary, this helps alot, today is the order day!

Now I'm leaning towards your suggestion of a separate drive for the page file.
I'll have 8G of ram and I read somewhere that the page file should be 300% of ram or in my case 24G. Does that sound right?

Thanks again, DC

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Gary Garrison @ Doug Calli on Aug 4, 2008 2:57 PM

The think is the hardware may not support 32GB. Many motherboards support 16GB. Some only 8GB. Don't waste money on more ram than you can use. Spend as much as you can on SPEED. SPEED is king in renders and analysis.

The new E85xx series from Intel (the Wolfdale core) are the current champs. For $250+/- no less. The Quad core are nearly $1000+/- (us) retail or were when I last looked them up.

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Doug Calli @ Gary Garrison on Aug 4, 2008 3:16 PM

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4 Replies

Gary Garrison Aug 4, 2008 2:30 PM
Mark Correct
Correct Answer
Generally for performance "bang for the buck" normal non raid SATAII drives are the way to go, or so the consensus seems to be.

For rendering and COSMOS work yo will benefit from better/faster processor(s) not hard drive speed. Having the two drives with one for OS and Programs, and the other for working data and file storage seems to be the way to go. Also I have been told that placing the pagefile on the data drive as the first partition or on its own seperate drive may help the speed some.

My typical arrangement:

c: = OS and Programs

d: = DVD
e: = DVD burner

(f:+g: are the same physical drive)
f: = 16 GB partition
g: = data/storage

or

f: = 40GB SATAII drive for pagefile
g: = data /storage
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- Doug Calli @ Gary Garrison on Aug 4, 2008 2:46 PM
  Mark Correct
  Correct Answer
  Thanks Gary, this helps alot, today is the order day!
  
  Now I'm leaning towards your suggestion of a separate drive for the page file.
  I'll have 8G of ram and I read somewhere that the page file should be 300% of ram or in my case 24G. Does that sound right?
  
  Thanks again, DC
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  - Gary Garrison @ Doug Calli on Aug 4, 2008 2:57 PM
    Mark Correct
    Correct Answer
    The think is the hardware may not support 32GB. Many motherboards support 16GB. Some only 8GB. Don't waste money on more ram than you can use. Spend as much as you can on SPEED. SPEED is king in renders and analysis.
    
    The new E85xx series from Intel (the Wolfdale core) are the current champs. For $250+/- no less. The Quad core are nearly $1000+/- (us) retail or were when I last looked them up.
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    - Doug Calli @ Gary Garrison on Aug 4, 2008 3:16 PM
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      Correct Answer
      The system I'm getting supports up to 32G, from what I've read on the forum 8G should be a good fit for my designs, so I'm opting to save some money there and now that I can go with a normal HD setup I can save a bit more and increase my cpu speed. Being an owner operator every penny helps.
      
      Thanks again
      
      Ooops! I seem to have marked my post as the answer, how can I change that?
      Like • Show 0 Likes0
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