1 HD vs 2 HDs

[ZGundam]

So what makes more sense when building my new system?

I can use one 1TB hard drive for everything or I can use a 250 HD for OS and related programs and the 1TB for just my games and media.

[Starglider]

If you have the budget to do the later, why would you not do it? It won't make a major difference to performance or robustness, but it will slightly improve both. Personally I would spend the money elsewhere unless you can afford an SSD rather than a conventional HD as your OS/program drive - this is the setup I use (on my laptop) and it does make applications launch noticeably faster.

[ZGundam]

I'm sorry SSD?

Never heard of that.

[Darth Nostril]

Solid State Drive, the latest and greatest new technology. It basically consists of large quantities of non volatile ROM like you find in USB keydrives, so no moving parts.

[Meest]

I like two plus drives for the ease of reinstalling OS or in case of failures an easy swap instead of worrying which drive has the partition. Anyone have any experience with RAID performance vs a new SSD?

[Starglider]

Anyone have any experience with RAID performance vs a new SSD?

Yes. The X25-M SSD in my laptop is considerably faster than the 3 drive RAID-5 array in my workstation; applications load about twice as fast. In technical terms there's just no comparison, you need three or four 10,000 RPM drives in RAID 0 just to match the bandwidth of a good SSD, and they're two orders of magnitude behind on latency. It's not so noticeable during normal use (e.g. web browsing, programming) because everything important tends to sit in the RAM disk cache anyway, but it's very noticable when booting or the first time you open anything, or if you're working with big datasets that force everything else out of RAM.

[MKSheppard]

Starglider, how well is the wear leveling in your X-25M going? I know that there's a noticeable slowdown between a brand new SSD and one that's been used for a few months -- and that after that initial slowdown, things tend to level off as far as slowing down is concerned.

[Starglider]

Starglider, how well is the wear leveling in your X-25M going? I know that there's a noticeable slowdown between a brand new SSD and one that's been used for a few months -- and that after that initial slowdown, things tend to level off as far as slowing down is concerned.

I haven't noticed any slowdown. That effect only shows up really strongly in synthetic tests that hammer the disk with writes and deletes. It's relevant if you're running an enterprise database on SSDs, but it isn't terribly relevant if you're using one as an OS/program drive, at least as long as you're not constantly running out of memory and paging. 90% of the files on my OS/programs drive get installed once and just sit there - I think the only things that are generating significant turnover are the browser cache and the IDE (replaces 10s of megabytes of binaries every time I do a full build). In any case TRIM support (in Windows 7) should significantly alleviate the problem.

[phongn]

Hasn't Intel issued a firmware update for the X25-series that sort of fixes that issue anyways?

[ZGundam]

If you have the budget to do the later, why would you not do it? It won't make a major difference to performance or robustness, but it will slightly improve both. Personally I would spend the money elsewhere unless you can afford an SSD rather than a conventional HD as your OS/program drive - this is the setup I use (on my laptop) and it does make applications launch noticeably faster.

I do plan on doing the later. I have 3 250GB HDs in addition to the 1TB HD. The only thing is the 250s are older Maxtors Diamond Max 10s and Maxline Plus II.

Will this work? I do not have any more money to spend really. Unless I get a 500GB Seagate 16MB Cache for $59 at Microcenter.

[Starglider]

I have 3 250GB HDs in addition to the 1TB HD. The only thing is the 250s are older Maxtors Diamond Max 10s and Maxline Plus II.

I hope they're backed up and/or RAIDed because the more drives you run, the higher the chance of one failing. Personally I'd copy them all over to a newer drive just to reduce the power and the noise.

[ZGundam]

I have 3 250GB HDs in addition to the 1TB HD. The only thing is the 250s are older Maxtors Diamond Max 10s and Maxline Plus II.

I hope they're backed up and/or RAIDed because the more drives you run, the higher the chance of one failing. Personally I'd copy them all over to a newer drive just to reduce the power and the noise.

I really only want to have one 250GB for OS and the 1TB for everything else. I could copy the 250GB onto the 1TB in a folder in case.

I'm just wondering if it would be better to just use one of those or get a newer 500GB.

[Starglider]

Most modern motherboards, and for that matter operating systems, have RAID capabilities. Not particularly good RAID capabilities compared to a dedicated card, but adequate for most users. 3 x 750 GB drives configured as a single RAID5 volume will provide superior performance and robustness (you can lose one drive without losing your data) to a 250 GB drive plus a 1TB drive as separate volumes, probably at a similar price. You spend most of your time reading and even with a crappy RAID controller you basically get twice the read bandwidth all the time on RAID5. On a two drive setup this only happens when you're reading from the OS drive and the data drive at the same time. There are certain circumstances under which two independent drives can be faster, but they're rare, and that single-drive-failure-tolerance can be a lifesaver.

[ZGundam]

Ok, so with me having 3 250GB HDs and 1 1TB HD. How should I set them up?

And where would I read about setting it up correctly?

This is my first mutli-HD setup.

[Starglider]

Ok, so with me having 3 250GB HDs and 1 1TB HD. How should I set them up?

What actual data do you have? In terms of GBs of each type of stuff (programs / important files / unimportant files e.g. DVD images / etc)

[Darth Wong]

So what makes more sense when building my new system?

I can use one 1TB hard drive for everything or I can use a 250 HD for OS and related programs and the 1TB for just my games and media.

Unless you're so picky that a tiny amount of startup latency really bothers you, it seems like it would be much simpler to use a single HD. The fact that you can't seamlessly move files from one drive to another in Windows really tends to favour the single-drive solution. Besides, 1.5TB and 2TB drives are rapidly becoming really cheap.

[ZGundam]

What actual data do you have? In terms of GBs of each type of stuff (programs / important files / unimportant files e.g. DVD images / etc)

Maybe no more the 10GB or so of pictures and saved games. Though I may just start all my games from scratch just for the hell of it.

[ZGundam]

Unless you're so picky that a tiny amount of startup latency really bothers you, it seems like it would be much simpler to use a single HD. The fact that you can't seamlessly move files from one drive to another in Windows really tends to favour the single-drive solution. Besides, 1.5TB and 2TB drives are rapidly becoming really cheap.

I can hardly fill up about a total of 400GB right now so 1TB should last me a long time. Just wondering if adding other HDs is worth it or not.

At this point, I may just add another 1TB later and use it as a backup.

[TheLostVikings]

I can hardly fill up about a total of 400GB right now so 1TB should last me a long time. Just wondering if adding other HDs is worth it or not.

At this point, I may just add another 1TB later and use it as a backup.

Since HDD prices are always dropping rapidly is basically always best to buy what you need, then worry about upgrading it (for cheap!) later. imho of course.

[ZGundam]

I can hardly fill up about a total of 400GB right now so 1TB should last me a long time. Just wondering if adding other HDs is worth it or not.

At this point, I may just add another 1TB later and use it as a backup.

Since HDD prices are always dropping rapidly is basically always best to buy what you need, then worry about upgrading it (for cheap!) later. imho of course.

Yeah just going with the 1TB for now and buying another 1TB, 1.5 TB, or 2TB later for backup purposes later.

Thanks for all the help guys!

[Darwin]

I've been running two drives for years, one for OS and one for programs. It's worked wonderfully for me, and allows me to do Stupid Computer Tricks like choose what OS I want to boot just by plugging in an ESATA drive and changing the bios boot order.