Best Config For Two Disks

Question

Best Config For Two Disks

Buxton69-502449

SSCrazy

Points: 2026
More actions
November 14, 2007 at 7:55 am

#71000

I have a server, the way it's set up at the moment everything is on the F drive and the C drive has the OS, it runs like a snail and I know a lot of it is to do with the disks.
I can get one new drive, the G drive, what would be the best configuration to make the best of it?
Drive F is Raid 1+0, drive G is just a drive.
My idea was to move tempdb to C, have all the databases on F and put the log files and the backups on G (I only take a small amount of log backups during the day, the main backups are at night when there are no users).
What would anyone else do?

Viewing 8 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply

pamarant Old Hand Points: 324 More actions · Answer 1

I would do the same, my biggest disappointment has been with SATA drives and databases, writes are extremely slow, even allocating db space is painful.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 734449 More actions · Answer 2

If F is R1+0, I'm not sure that adding one drive and moving logs there helps that much. How much log activity do you see? How many drives are on F?

I'd investigate what is slow? are certain queries? All queries? How do you know they are "slow". Have you reindexed? Have you rebuilt statistics?

There's lots more to check before looking at one new drive.

Buxton69-502449 SSCrazy Points: 2026 More actions · Answer 3

I know it's the drives, there are a lot of badly written queries but that's nothing compared with the drive, if you copy a file the whole thing slows down, if you back anything up, if you do anything that involves disk activity it slows down.

RichB SSCrazy Eights Points: 9651 More actions · Answer 4

Have you checked for file fragmentation? Sounds obvious, but the number of times I've had to have an argument with someone about whether to defrag a raid drive or not :@

Check it - and I would recommend one of the third party tools (eg disk keeper) to defrag it live.

As a rule of thumb fit seperate physical disks for data, logs and tempdb to get the first good performance boost.

However, putting logs onto a single point of failure drive is hazardous. But then putting tempdb on it will also probably mean a restart if the disk goes.

Surely that 1 spare disk is your hotspare tho... right?

Buxton69-502449 SSCrazy Points: 2026 More actions · Answer 5

I checked the fragmentation using the contig microsoft tool, it wasn't that badly fragmented.

Hotspare, you must be pulling my leg 😀

Jeff Gray SSChampion Points: 10667 More actions · Answer 6

Have you checked the IO performance of your disks? There's a tool called IOMeter that is very handy for seeing if your drives are slow.

Sometimes a slow drive is caused by improper settings in your BIOS, Disk controller, or disk drivers.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 734449 More actions · Answer 7

Do not put your logs on a single disk. Keep it as a hot spare, let performance suffer and someone will eventually spring for disks.

Hardware is cheap. You've probably blown 10x the cost of 5 or 10 new drives mucking with this. Your time, users, complaints, try that argument with your boss.