Hard Drive Setup For Gaming - Your Opinion and Experience

LifeOnMars · Feb 19, 2009

I have 2 x 250gb identical WD drives. My question is, I'm doing a fresh install of vista 32 home premium. How should I set it up for maximum performance for gaming. I want to know your thoughts on where the page file should go, partitions, raid etc as I really don't have a clue:shadedshu What has your experiences been with different setups and which did you find the best to aid stutter free gaming

ntdouglas · Feb 20, 2009

I would just put them in raid 0 and forget about the page file. 32k or 64k stripe is best for me.

CrAsHnBuRnXp · Feb 20, 2009

ntdouglas said:
I would just put them in raid 0 and forget about the page file. 32k or 64k stripe is best for me.

I second that. Though, I would have a seperate hard drive just to install the OS and apps on. Leave the OS off the RAID drive.

ntdouglas · Feb 20, 2009

CrAsHnBuRnXp said:
I second that. Though, I would have a seperate hard drive just to install the OS and apps on. Leave the OS off the RAID drive.

Why, in case you lose your array?

CrAsHnBuRnXp · Feb 20, 2009

ntdouglas said:
Why, in case you lose your array?

Yes. You cant rebuild a raid 0 array so youll lose everything.

I made a Guide on RAID arrays about a year ago.

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=43572&highlight=RAID+arrays+explained

Kursah · Feb 21, 2009

I'm currently using 2x WD400 40GB SATAII drives in Raid 0 as an OS drive, and my WD6400AAKS as a data/games drive. My approach is set up so that if I lose my windows install, I have my games, drivers, shortcuts, rocketdock, steam and other stuff on my 640GB so I'm good to go! I'm planning to get a couple WD6400AAKS for raid 0 for OS/Games and using my current 6400AAKS as a backup drive. That will be in the future though.

Really for a gaming rig, it truly isn't horribly important to run a raid setup, those two wd400's are only just barely as fast as my 6400AAKS thought hey are quite a bit older. I do have to say the 6400AAKS drives rock for sure, especially for the amount of space, speed and price!

:toast:

REVHEAD · Feb 21, 2009

Stripe sizes all depend on your contoller aswell, for instance 64k for day to day gaming rig on Nvidia give better results, and 128k for day to day gaming on a Intel raid setup give better results ect, as for the swap file, dont mess with it, get mor ram instead.

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Hard Drive Setup For Gaming - Your Opinion and Experience

LifeOnMars

ntdouglas

CrAsHnBuRnXp

ntdouglas

CrAsHnBuRnXp

Kursah

Super Moderator

REVHEAD

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