Installing a VM to a seperate HD or Raid 0 OR Both??

[$immond$]

I am looking for the most performance I can get with my VM machines. Now I have 2 500 GB Western Digital Blacks I was thinking of running raid 0, will this allow my VM's to run faster? or should I install my VM on a separate HD while running RAID 0?

I have an extra 500GB seagate that I could use to install seperate VM to but it would mean taking out of my linux/server machine. For my main OS I might use Vista or Windows 7.

 

[Disparia]

Unless you're running a lot of VM's, you'll probably do fine with just with the RAID-0.

Can always add that third drive later, if performance does become an issue.

 

[$immond$]

I installed Virtual box in my RAID 0 i7 setup under Windows 7. The VM load up really fast but when using the VM it runs slower than on my Core 2 duo setup on an 80Gb 5400 RPM disk. It might be because I am using Virtual box 3.0 in Windows, so I am going to try VMware Workstation 7.0 and see if there is any improvement. As from benches it would seem VMware may be faster. For my VM I installed Ubuntu 9.10 and I enabled all performance features. Ubuntu is using 512mb of ram and 2 cores.

 

[Disparia]

Haven't tried VirtualBox before, so I can't offer any tips there. But my Ubuntu/CentOS/Fedora experience has always been good with VMware products.

 

[$immond$]

yea I installed VM Workstation 7.0, huge performance gain over Virtual Box in Windows. It seems though Virtual Box runs better in Linux and runs choppier in Windows. I have no issues using VMs in my RAID 0 setup, though I should probably back my data up once and a while. Thanks for your input!