Multiple Hard drives in one Box. Performance question.

[Keleth]

In my desktop I have two hard drives. A 250G IDE and a 160GB Sata drive.

I was curious as to how I'd get the best bang for my bandwidth buck regarding hard drive seek and transfer time.

Should I a) install just the OS on the sata drive, so there's less seeking the hard drive has to do. And install everything else on the IDE drive?
b) do the vice versa and have the OS and media files on the 250GB IDE, while using the sata for more demanding programs like video games and high pagefile software like photoshop?

c) Some variant I'm not aware of
d) Screw it and get a SSD to put the OS on?

Questions, theories, suggestions, discussion go!

P.S: Feedback is appreciated. Thank you.

[VAE]

Me would think install the OS , and most used/consuming programs on the SATA , then use the other drive for storage of film, music, PDF's documents and whatever you fancy.
The disks are big enough , it should fit well methinks

[Drayco84]

Me would think install the OS , and most used/consuming programs on the SATA , then use the other drive for storage of film, music, PDF's, documents, pr0n, and whatever you fancy.
The disks are big enough , it should fit well methinks

Oh come on! It needed to be said! (Well, not really... But I couldn't resist.)

Seriously though, I'd second this opinion. Plus, I'd mark the SATA as having your Swap file. (Uh, some setting in Windows, can't remember where offhand...)

[Reese Tora]

I would say, it depends on how much RAM you are going to have and what OS.

If you are going to have a lot of RAM, put the OS and commonly used programs on the SATA and use the other for storage

If you are going to be using something that is going to be hitting the swap file a lot (say, some games, or most programs if you have a low amount of RAM) then you might want to put the OS and programs on the IDE drive and put storage and most of the swap file on the SATA... programs will load slower, but they should be faster once they are in memory than if you put everything on the SATA.

Swap file access can be one of the largest bottlenecks for some programs that are too large to entirely fit in memory, while some programs load all their components at the get go and are very light on file access.  Also, programs that manipulate a lot of data(like video editing) will be transfering stuff in and out of the swap file and the files they are manipulating all day long, and those should be on the fastest drive. (Ideally, on a fast computer, you would want a source drive for files that you are going to modify, a destination drive for the edited files to output to, and a third drive for the OS, programs, and swap file to hang out on, but that's assuming a lot of intensive processing on a machine that's fast enough for the drive access speeds to be the bottleneck.)

You're talking about using two specific drives, so I am guessing you are looking to save money on the build you are doing and probably already have all your parts.  Better advice could probably be given if you can let us in on the specs of your computer. (well, aside from the going out to get an SSD comment, that suggests you are willing to go out and buy more stuff if need be)

Anyway, the majority of your swap file should be on the SATA, no question.

[Gabi]

I'd say put your OS on your primary master, documents/data files on the other disk. Executable files can go anywhere, they'll load a bit faster if they're in your primary disk but not terribly faster, and once they're loaded into the RAM there won't be any difference.

If you're going to swap a lot, then put the swap partition in your primary disk. But if you're swapping a lot, then maybe you should buy more RAM instead.

[ShadesFox]

I'm largely with Gabi.  The main difference is that I would put the swap on the secondary IDE disk.  I don't see the multi media files taking up swap space, and if they are taking up swap space then the differences between the SATA disk and the IDE disk won't be enough to prevent stuttering.  So, OS and games on the primary SATA disk and multimedia, bulk files, and the Windows pagefile on the IDE disk.

[Keleth]

Thanks for all the awesome input guys.

Who's awesome? You're awesome.

Also, wooo, speed. Forgot how much I missed the SATA drive in this machine X3