help me fit my new WD 800JB into my system

[Adcadet]

hey all -
so it looks like I filled up my HDs. Yes, all of them. And no, not with porn. As the new webmaster for the University of Minnesota Medical School Class of 2007 (linkhttp://www.student.med.umn.edu/class2007, I now have access to all the available lectures online, which includes >90% of all lectures for the first two years. That's 64 biochem/molecular biology lectures alone, which comprise about 1/6 of my first year courseload. Unfortunately, they're in Real format, but that's another story.

So I went out and bough a WD 800JB - I demand a 3-year warranty, I the cost over the regular drives was minimal, and the 80GB drive seemed to be at the sweat spot. So I installed it an all after the requisite few stupid mistakes (forgetting to plug the power connector into the drive then wondering why the darn thing wasn't detected), it seems to work nicely. I transfered my lectures, MP3s, and music videos over the the new drive from my 75GXP, and I'm impressed so far. But the question is, how exactly should I be using this drive. Should I throw my entire swap file on it? Split the swap between drives? Store "my documents" on it (mostly word files, few power points, some excel spreadsheets)? Pictures (~500K/picture average)? Videos (10-40GB)? Lectures (90-200MB)? Installed programs? Here's my system in a nutshell:
<help, I'm trapped in a nut shell and I can't get out>
(sorry, couldn't resist)
Dual AMD MP 1.2GHz, 512MB DDR
1*9GB Cheetah 18XL, currently with OS (WinXP Pro), programs, and half my virtual memory (500MB for all drives). 7.7GB used, 770MB free
1*9GB Cheetah 18XL, currently with the other half of my page file, and "My Documents" - 2GB free
1*9GB Atlas V - currently contains videos, backed up data - 200 MB free
1*40GB IBM 75GXP - currently holds MP3s - 22GB free
1*10GB WD Caviar AC310200R - currently holds backed up data
1*80GB WD800JB - currently holds my lectures - 40 GB free, probably l~20GB after I grab the spring lectures online

My two Cheetahs are on different SCSI channels - the non-OS Cheetah shares with my Atlas. 75GXP is master on IDE1 with the 10GB Caviar as slave. My DVD player is the master on IDE2 and the 800JB is the slave - hard to switch this due to cabling length issues.

Oh, is there any way to efficiently compress Real videos? Is it worth it?

Feel free to give me any suggestions you may have for increasing reliability and speed.

Thanks,
Adcadet

 

[Mercutio]

That's funny. I normally don't like keeping my drives in a sweat spot. Normally after a while they start to stink...

2. Spread your pagefiles over the fastest drives you have. You have lots of drives in one machine, so it's a good thing to have lots of options for storage.

3. Real may look/sound like crap but there simply isn't a better format for its level of compression. In short, by changing from Real to something else, you're going to make larger files that look and sound WORSE than what you currently have. If you want something better, you're best off re-recording the source.

 

[blakerwry]

That's funny. I normally don't like keeping my drives in a sweat spot. Normally after a while they start to stink...

2. Spread your pagefiles over the fastest drives you have. You have lots of drives in one machine, so it's a good thing to have lots of options for storage.

3. Real may look/sound like crap but there simply isn't a better format for its level of compression. In short, by changing from Real to something else, you're going to make larger files that look and sound WORSE than what you currently have. If you want something better, you're best off re-recording the source.

agreed

 

[Adcadet]

Ok, so which of my drives is fastest for pagefile use? This is my guess:
Cheetah 18XL > Atlas V > 800JB > 75GXP > old Caviar.

This is what I could find from SR:
Cheetah 18XL: Access time = 8.9 ms, 4 MB cache
Atlas V: seek time = 6.3 ms, 4 MB cache
75GXP: 8.2 ms seek, 12.4 ms access time, 2 MB cache
800JB (times taken from 800BB): 13.3 ms access time, 9.1 ms seek, 8MB

I put the 800JB before the 75GXP based on the 8 MB cache.

So, should I split the pagefile between the two Cheetah, or should I include more drives. What happens if/when one of the drives with a pagefile up and dies on me?

 

[blakerwry]

Ok, so which of my drives is fastest for pagefile use? This is my guess:
Cheetah 18XL > Atlas V > 800JB > 75GXP > old Caviar.

This is what I could find from SR:
Cheetah 18XL: Access time = 8.9 ms, 4 MB cache
Atlas V: seek time = 6.3 ms, 4 MB cache
75GXP: 8.2 ms seek, 12.4 ms access time, 2 MB cache
800JB (times taken from 800BB): 13.3 ms access time, 9.1 ms seek, 8MB

I put the 800JB before the 75GXP based on the 8 MB cache.

So, should I split the pagefile between the two Cheetah, or should I include more drives. What happens if/when one of the drives with a pagefile up and dies on me?

I'd jsut putthe page on the two cheetahs, 1GB fixed page file is plenty for most people. If you disconnect a drive that should normally hold the page file windows will either 1) if a normal page file exists on a current drive it will use that... otherwise 2) if no page file exists and paging is not disabled it will create a temp page file on the system drive.