[rollei_list] Re: Retro: Back to the Past!

  • From: Don Williams <dwilli10@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 09:48:30 -0700

At 04:05 AM 8/11/2005, Bob Shell wrote (in part):

I agree on the RAM. Two HDs is a good idea, or one big one with two partitions, which is what I did.

My take on trying to get speed by putting two partitions on one drive is that it is actually not an effective way to get speed. You are dealing with one drive head assembly and putting in two partitions simply makes the head have to jump back and forth between two completely different physical areas on that one drive.


The only way to get speed, if you are doing multiple things at once, is to set up multiple drives, and especially with a multiple set of interfaces. My work system (which I use for UNIX consulting) and of course for Windows email and digital movies, etc., has 8 physical drives, and the interfaces include EIDE/ATA, SCSI II, Firewire, USB, and SATA (Serial ATA). I run 1 GB of ram which is the limit on my old 2.4 Ghz Intel board.

I still have unlimited SCSI ports I could use and one open SATA port.

I came to this conclusion as a result of my support work on a major medical data base system. The files are on one physical drive and the indices are on a different physical drive. While one drive head is reading (and positioned for reading) the indices, the other drive head is positioned over it's data area.

Finally, Windows has a swap-file. I don't let windows "manage" that. I have an entirely separate drive with the swap (virtual memory) file on it and I control it to have a fixed size. That way it stays in one piece and doesn't get fragmented, which also slows down the system (In windows, not necessarily in UNIX)

Just my take on it.

DAW


Don Williams La Jolla, CA

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