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Pastimes : Dream Machine ( Build your own PC )

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To: Spots who wrote (7271)4/26/1999 10:08:00 PM
From: Zeuspaul  Read Replies (2) of 14778
 
Speaking of paging files..can we add RAID 0 to the mix?

I am setting up a new NT work machine (with help) and want to try NT software RAID 0. The machine has three 10,000 RPM SCSI 9 gig drives. (and three 9 gig SCSI drives sharing a removable slot..two ROMOs and one Win95/KOT boot drive for specialized apps)

NT 4.0 is installed in a 2 gig partition on the first hard drive.

My question is should I stripe across two or three drives? My plan is to have NT and applications installed on the C drive. Then stripe the first gig on each of two additional drives. Can I get better performance if I add a one gig piece of the first drive to the stripe? Or is it better to leave the first drive to NT basics and the striped second two for file access?

My thought is to configure the page file on the RAID 0 setup...also the work files for faster saves and callups and perhaps a couple of applications. The storage review article says to stay away from the boot drive with software RAID but limits? the comment to IDE drives? Would a second partition on the boot drive (to be used in the RAID 0 stripe) be considered the boot drive?

The setup is supported with some significant processor power..dual XEON processors and a gig of RAM...SCSI III bus(LVD).

Zeuspaul

Some general NT RAID 0 info

consensys.com

A StripePartition is a RAID 0 partition that stripes data across two or more disk. This RAID scheme achieves the maximum in parallelism and the best performance, but provides no data redundancy.

A StripePartition is typically used to hold data that must be accessed as quickly as possible, but does not require fault tolerance. Some examples include disk caches, video capture data, data warehouse applications, and temporary file storage.


And from Storage Review's view of NT Software Striping

storagereview.com
9 aug 98 review

Windows NT Workstation 4.0 features a built-in function that allows spans of spaces on two different drives to be used in a striped configuration. Though NT's Disk Administrator is actually pretty flexible in allowing the user to create a striped pair in a variety of setups, the ideal configuration is the complete striping of all space between two identical drives.....

When running a setup in real-word usage, however, the user should take care to minimize access of the boot drive- all applications should be installed to the striped pair as should NT's swapfile. Of course, all this headache could be avoided in several ways. An all SCSI setup (SCSI boot drive and two identical SCSI units in the striped pair) wouldn't be subject to the same limitation. You could add more ATA channels also, though if you're going to go out of your way to buy a controller and give up system resources for it, you may as well just use a FastTrak.


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