G50v and a Vista/XP/Linux triple boot question

Hello,

I have a couple questions about WinXP and the hdd's in the G50v in general.

First off, how would Win XP work on this computer with its dual hdd's and 4gigs of ram. I have XP professional, but i dont think its the 64bit version, would this cause any loss in performance if its just the 32bit version?

The setup I'm planning on this computer is a 250gb partition for Vista, around 150-200gb for XP solely to play games, and the remaining 50-100gb for 2 distro's of Linux.

About the partitions, how would they work in a Raid-0 setup with 2 hard drives?

Lastly, what do you guys think about this setup? When i want to play games i want to keep the system dedicated solely for games and not have anything else to worry about, that is why I'm creating a separate xp partition for games. Vista will be for music, video, general computer use, and some school work. Linux is where i do most of my programming and other development, and I use it quite a bit.

One of the big reasons why I'm so interested in this notebook is for the large hdd size and its capability for allowing me to have this setup. I hope this setup works, and I just wanted to get some confirmation from some of you. Thanks.

 

why not get a 32/64gb ssd for XP/games and then use the second 500gb hdd for linux/vista/etc.


Seems like too much hassle to deal with raid and 3-4 OS.

 

Your saying that i should get a separate external ssd and just use the 500gb for vista + linux? If so, can you link me a good and fast ssd that would be good for games. Thanks.

 

It can be done. I have experience tripple booting. Just not with linux or with raid.

Once you setup the hardware raid on the HDD's and parition them 3 ways its all the same from there.

Still your making a hassle out of it all for no reason.

Just use both HDD's in a non raid setup.

If it was me doing a triple windows OS boot I would split the HDD's like this:

Vista Ultimate x64 --> 120gb HDD1
Vista Home Premium x86 --> 80gb HDD1
Windows XP x86 --> 50gb HDD1
No OS just blank space for files (media drive) 250gb HDD2


That gives me 120gb for my primary OS so I can install all my games there, 80gb for the secondary OS's so I can have all the programs and things and some games. And then NO OS space (this is important) to store all my media and files. You want this so that way if you scamble an OS and have to re-install it you will not lose your files nor do you have to worry about moving them or backing them up.

I used to keep a very small space for the OS like 40gb and just install the games to the "media space" but since if you do install the OS again you have to install the game again anyways because of the registry entries and things of that nature, it was totally pointless. So now I put them with the OS partition and only keep stand alone files in the media space.

You can follow the same general rule just with Linux in there. I urge you to avoid raid 0 to save yourself hassles and possible problems, and the performance increase that your probably expecting is not there.

 

Wow Vicious your suggestion is really cool, with the non os space. But, when you partition it, what type of file system would you create it as. So, a non OS space where you can dump media, and then you can play it straight from there, example music and movies.

Btw, I'm not saying that I only want Raid-0. I barely even know what it does, I'm just gonna go whatever the stock setup for the hard drives is. Does anyone know what the stock setup will be, and if you do know can you explain it?

Also, i noticed that you listed the 120g Vista Ultimate as your gaming OS. Do you think Vista 64 will be better for games than XP pro?

 

Well there are several games these days that are Vista only, and if you want DX10 your also stuck with Vista, and x64 Vista is much better than x64 XP.

Given all of that I would go with Vista.

There used to be a rather large gap between Vista and XP when it came to gaming performance but for the most part that gap is now all but closed. The G50 comes with x64 Vista too so I would recomend you take advantage of it.

The default setup? I dunno it will probably be Raid 0, pre-installed with Vista x64 all as one partition thats my guess.

If thats the case Vista has a built in drive manager, you would just use the shrink function to create a new partition(s) and install the other OS's.

With XP you would install it and then have to repair the vista install to reload the Vista boot loader and you would be done, again with Linux I have no idea what or how to do it.

And yes the "media space" is a very good idea, trust me it will come in handy, also when you share common files like music/moives between multiple OS's its nice to have them all located in one central area.

I also just edited my drive setup above, I dunno why I put the OS's and media space all separated on 2 drives. In reality I would put all 3 OS's on one drive and have the 2nd drive as my media drive. This also gives the added benifit of letting anything on that 2nd drive have free reign on the drives resources because your windows boot drive will usually have some small background stuff using the drive. It wont really make a difference tho, but its cool when you have a fast computer to be downloading to one drive, while playing a game on another.

 

So, the default setup will be shown as basicallly 1 large 500gb hard drive right?

I would then setup it up like this:

Vista 64 150gb as main OS
Gaming OS, Vista 64 again 150gb
Linux 50gb
media drive 150gb

Also, for the file type of the media drive, i should have it as NTFS or whatever the Windows default is right? That way it can be read by linux and windows. And i will most likely be using gparted. I've done a triple boot before with WinXP, Vista and Ubuntu but ive never done it on 2 hard drives like this or had this non os media drive before.

Btw, thanks for your input so far, really helpful.

 

Why 2 separate installs of Vista 64? You only need 1.

 

Wouldnt it be better if you separate games from all other applications? Example, i would have lots of other stuff running on my main OS. But on the gaming OS it would just be something like msn/ventrillo and whichever game im playing.

I dont know, i tend find that games + other general computer use doesnt go to well together.

 

I wouldnt go that route, just have a clean install. Make use of MSConfig.exe

you can make it so that nothing starts @ startup and you manually start the programs. So even if you have a ton of stuff installed none of it will be active unless you need/want it.

Having 2 installs just means more work for you, swaping OS's when you didnt really need too and losing about 40+ of space for a dual install of the same OS.

 

Hmm ok, i already make use of msconfig. I guess im just a bit paranoid about games and other applications.

Also, i just wanted to confirm that the notebook on stock settings will show the two hard drives as one 500 gb drive. Thanks.

 

I should be an early adopter of the full fledged A1 version and will do a big review on it. So you will know at some point but I wont have it untill offical release. Somebody else in Texas may get one first and report from the RGcon event.

 

Yeah i probably wont get it until mid August i think. I'm waiting on Canadian stores in Vancouver to get it or post it on their website for pre order. I'm also thinking of upgrading the battery to the 9v, hopefully I'll be able to configure it into the laptop without having to buy it separately.