off topic question - hard drives and os

[Scot L. Harris]

On Thu, 2004-07-15 at 11:33, ronnie escobedo wrote:
> I need some expert feedback.
> 
> I edit large multiimedia files and I'd like to get the best performance out 
> of my system. Currently I store my mutimedia files on a scsi drive and run 
> the os on a seperate ide drive. would this be the correct way of doing it or 
> should the os be on the scsi and files on the ide.
> 

There is no one correct way to setup this up.  I don't know that you
would perceive any real difference during normal operations swapping the
drives around.  Where you may see a difference is if the scsi drive is
significantly faster is when you are copying the file to another
location on the disk.  But without something to measure the difference I
don't think you would be able to tell.

You probably need to define what type of performance you are trying to
tweak on the system to get a better answer.

> In a different situation such as an ftp server over the internet does it 
> matter or will I get better performance if I store the files on the scsi 
> drive and fedora on an ide drive.

In this case the network is going to be the major bottle neck.  It will
all depend on what type of connection you have all the way to the ftp
server.  The disk drive in most cases will be much faster (ide or scsi)
than any network connection you have unless you have access to a pure
fiber network with huge access pipes, and then the interface on your
computer to the network would be the bottle neck.  

So in this case I don't really think it would matter which drive you
store the files on.

For multimedia applications I would say the biggest performance hits are
processor and amount of memory you have available.  Most modern
harddrives should be able to stream the data fast enough that you will
not notice much difference between different drives.

-- 
Scot L. Harris
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