Arch Linux

Xi0N

Member

From: Bilbao - Spain

Registered: 2007-11-29

Posts: 832

Website

Question about Hard disk

My current computer's setup (for Hard disk) is as follows:

IDE0: A 80Gb HD with the root partition (including /temp and so), another partition for swap and another one for /boot
SATA0: A 2Tb HD for /home

I use my computer for watching HD movies via HDMI and for surfing the internet mainly... the machine is rather new (i recently upgraded the video card and the ram memory), but i notice some slowlyness sometimes (while hearding heavy hard disk activity) and i think, this might be because of that IDE HD i still have, the one i use for the system itself.

My question is:
Given the fact that a 250 Gb SATA2 HD is around 30€, is it worth it to purchase one and replace the IDE one i currently use for the system partitions?
Would that considerably increase the performance of the whole machine?
Even the movies are in the SATA HD (way faster than the IDE one) the swap and the temp folder are still in the IDE disk...

What do you guys think?

Last edited by Xi0N (2010-10-26 09:51:06)

ChoK

Member

From: France

Registered: 2008-10-01

Posts: 346

Re: Question about Hard disk

Even if your stuff is in the SATA drive, it will work in IDE compatibility mode instead of AHCI. (this is an option in the BIOS)

AHCI is especially useful for laptop because of power management features, the performance will be a tad better overall but not by much. http://expertester.wordpress.com/2008/0 … advantage/. It also depends of your disk's RPM (Anyway if you want mindblowing performance, buy an SSD and put your root partition on it)

The slowness sometimes may be because of, not enough RAM leading to swapping, a cron job (man-db for example) or because of too much /tmp or ~/.cache or ~/.thumbnails activity. It may be worthwhile to mount those directories in tmpfs to limit disk activities.

---

Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.
Picasso
Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.
Saint Exupéry

Xi0N

Member

From: Bilbao - Spain

Registered: 2007-11-29

Posts: 832

Website

Re: Question about Hard disk

SO, you think changing these partitions to a SATA disk would not really increase performance?
Maybe the most interesting part here would be to learn a bit more about tmpfs, and start using it for the directories you mentioned...
Thanks for the advice!