reformatting HD - what is best process?

[imported_TheDragon]

I have 2 HD
and raid built into MB
(IDE)

so what is best?
xp pro on main drive?
striped across both?
where goes swapfile?
then where do I load bf2?

never tried raid before - so use little words please

serioulsy - I am computer literate
and can afford mistakes, as this is a spare system
just trying to learn best way to optimize for the game
512 ram now - getting more
probably up to 2gb

[Gunny Highway]

Re: reformatting HD - what is best process?

RAID

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks

Just use one drive for Windows and Games, and use other HDDs for storage. If both HDDs are identical it won't matter where BF2 is installed.

IMO don't use RAID 0, on the system HDDs (where windows is) if one crashes you have lost all data on both drives. And no need to use RAID 0 on storage volumes at all, that is just stupid. RAID 0 is a performance setup, used when you wan't to get faster read access from a drive. There is no redundancy or security in RAID 0.

If you really wan't to use RAID, then use RAID 1 on the Windows drive. RAID 1 is where you use one HDD to mirror another HDD. So if one crashes you always have a mirror that is ready to take over. Space available if you e.g. have two 200 GB drives is 200 GB, because it is a mirror.

If you want to use RAID for security on your storage HDDs, then use RAID 5.

RAID 5 uses one drive to compute data, and in case of one HDD crashes then your data is still avalable. E.g. if you have 3x200 GB HDDs then you have 2x200 = 400 GB. 100 GB is used for keeping checksum so you can always read the date if one fails. RAID 5 is way better than RAID 1 for storage HDDs because you have more space as, e.g. with 5x200 GB drives you have (5x200 GB)-200 GB = 800 GB. In RAID 5 you always you only use the space of 1 HDD no matter how many HDDs the RAID 5 volume has, in RAID 1 you have one 2 drives and loose half you HDD space for security.

If you don't want to buy extra drives to get the extra data redundancy, then don't, stick with normal drive configurations. For normal users this is best.



Page file.

For best result put the page file on the same drive as Windows, and one page file on a seperate drive with a small partition just for the pagefile. This partition need not be huge but only used for pagefile, and thus formatted in FAT32.

For all other partitions, that are bigger, e.g. the partition with Windows on it, use NTFS. The use of FAT32 on the page file drive (the small drive just for the page file) is a special circumstance, almost all other drivers are always NTFS.

Look here, at option B: http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks5.htm

B. Keep the page file that is on the same partition that the OS is on and put a second page file on a separate partition at the beginning of a separate disk from the OS (preferably on a different chain from that disk also). I have mine set to: Page file on OS drive = memory x 1.5. Page file on separate partition/separate drive = memory x 1.5. I also format the page file using FAT32 rather than NTFS because on this small volume FAT32 is faster (on smaller volumes). Which Is Faster - FAT16, FAT32, or NTFS?

Most ppl will say that you should only put the page file on a seperate drive, and not on Windows but as you can see here, best pratice (from the experts and Microsoft) say to have one on both the OS partition and on a seperate drive/partition.