Suggestions on RAID, scratch disks, OS disks, etc

Howdy,

Here's my setup:

(2) Western Digital 750GB 7200RPM Caviar Black HDDs <--RAID 0
(1) Seagate 1TB 7200RPM HDD
(1) Western Digital 750GB 7200RPM "Green Power" HDD
(2) External Western Digital USB HDDs

I'm going to run RAID 0 on the 2 Western Digital Caviar Blacks. Yes, I know RAID 0 provides no data protection, that's what the external drives are for. I'm after speed.

So, in order to get the best performance from my system, how should I split everything up? Windows 7 + Programs on the RAID array? What should I use as a scratch disk? Will my photos load faster if they're kept on the RAID array (they would be backed up before even being touched)?

I've been trying to research this all day and can't really come up with a clear answer.

RAID 1 your OS for failure recovery (Or RAID 0 if you want full on speed ). RAID 0 your scratch disks and RAID 5 your data drives. That is what I am looking to do.

Have you identified disk as a bottleneck? What do you want to be fast? Booting windows? Processing images? Personally I don't care if windows take 30sec or 3m to load, I only restart once a week. I also don't care how long programs take to start. I care about responsiveness and batch processing performance.

What CPU/RAM do you have?

Personally I don't see a need for RAID for my work, disk isn't the bottleneck yet (Q6600 processor). If it was i'd get a solid state disk.

tim wrote in post #8455043
If it was i'd get a solid state disk.

That's my plan - stick a 128GB SSD in as my boot disk. It'll have Win7 OS, Program Files, Lightroom Catalog, PS Cache and the set of images I'm currently working on.

tim wrote in post #8455043
What CPU/RAM do you have?

I've got a Q6600 and 8GB of RAM.

I won't be able to set up 3 different RAID arrays like rammy suggested. I guess my most looming question is this:

When I have the 2 750GB drives in a RAID 0 array, what should I have on the drive besides the OS and programs? Should I create a seperate partition for a scratch disk?

On DWF a guy had access to a stupid number of SSDs. He found putting images on the SSDs made the most difference, more than putting the catalog on it, especially if you have plenty of ram for cache. But if you get a SSD just play and see what works best for what you do most.

Speaking of a stupid number of SSDs...

shocksyde wrote in post #8458141
I've got a Q6600 and 8GB of RAM.

I won't be able to set up 3 different RAID arrays like rammy suggested. I guess my most looming question is this:

When I have the 2 750GB drives in a RAID 0 array, what should I have on the drive besides the OS and programs? Should I create a seperate partition for a scratch disk?

The only two advantages I see for partition are to keep the MFT small, for speed and to use short stroking, for speed. Which may save you a few milliseconds.

I'm all about shaving off those milliseconds!!

shocksyde wrote in post #8459170
I'm all about shaving off those milliseconds!!

What is more important to you; sustained data movement or burst? Is SCSI, Fiber Channel or drives like WD Velociraptor's out of your price range? Or dedicated controllers (RAID) for that matter? Or are you just interested in working with what you already have?