What to do with spare drives?

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SirCrono

SirCrono

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Sep 9, 2006
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I've recently finished building a new desktop and was in the process of recovering pieces from the old one. I wound up with 2 2TB HDDs, 2 500 GB HDDs and a 128 GB SSD.

I'd thougt about adding the drives to my current PC but then I felt like doing something a little more creative with them.

Would it be possible to have the HDDs linked together (for instance, the 2 2 TB drivesholding data and the 2 500 GB drives holding parity data) and use the SSD as a caché or something similar.

I'm open to suggestions, but I would like to refrain from doing something "traditional" (as in a raid for storage and the ssd for OS/programs)

Best Regards
 
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photonboy
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photonboy

photonboy

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Jun 20, 2006
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Make earrings out of them, that's not "traditional."

I have no idea why you wouldn't want the OS/programs on the SSD, and I don't understand your "parity" idea. I guess you already have another SSD though. In some cases using it as a video editing scratch pad can make sense but you have to know what you're doing.

The only thing that makes much sense is:

1) SSD - Windows/apps (your OTHER SSD that I assume you have)
2) 2x2TB RAID1 HDD for backup of data
3) SSD#2 - Steam games that you currently play (especially games like Skyrim with frequent map loading as an SSD really only makes a difference for load times).

You can have an SSD as a second Steam folder, then MOVE games from the HDD to the SSD (backup, delete local content, restore but choose 2nd Steam folder on SSD).

I wouldn't bother with RAID0 as Windows will be on a fast SSD, and the HDD's are best served as slower backup. I'd put your games and media on the HDD's as SSD space is limited.
 
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Hawkeye22

Hawkeye22

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Feb 10, 2006
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Hard drives are one of the slowest components in a PC, so I don't think I'd use them as cache unless absoluely necessary. Hard drives are made for storage - not too much non traditional stuff you can do with them. Personally, I put old drives into NAS's or storage servers and use them for backups. The more data you accumulate, the more storage you need for backups.
 
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photonboy

photonboy

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Hey, I had a novel suggestion. I said use them as earrings.

Seriously though, hard drives are storage devices. There is no practical and "novel" way to use them.

SSD's are for fast access of the OS and applications, and less frequently as a scratch pad for demanding programs. HDD's are bulk storage. RAID1 is for redundancy, and RAID0 is about speed but disappearing as SSD's are now so fast.

That mostly sums it up so I really didn't know what you were expecting.
 
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SirCrono

SirCrono

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I'm actually still considering a raid 0+1 with the ssd as a caché to improve write speed, I don't know if I will actually pull it off, but the NAS is certainly an option too.
 
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photonboy

photonboy

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The SSD is pretty much wasted as a cache for hard drives meant for storage.

I've got drives that I store a lot of video on (my own, legal rips of course) and wanted to put them in a NAS to use with my WDTV LIVE. However, I've never found anything I liked.

Every NAS I found both used too much power and was too expensive. What I'd really like is something like the Western Digital personal cloud (forget the name) which is Ethernet/WiFi, DLNA, and uses 5Watts in Standby mode. If I could find something like THAT without the drives for $100 to $150 I'd be sold.

As it is, I have a 2TB Elements USB drive hooked up to my WDTVLIVE and it turns on and off with the device, but I'd like something a little more central for PC backups and storage as well.
 
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