Dual hard drive advice

[GreenfeetNick]

I was putting together my first system and was wondering if there is any consensus on whether two hard drives are better than one. I was going to use a 74 gig Raptor for my OS and a 500 gig Caviar for everything else, not in any kind of RAID setup since I was told this would make everything run faster. Is this the best way, and do I need to put anyother software on the OS drive or should everything go on the second one?

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Nick

 

[runswindows95]

I have two HDD's as well. The first one is OS's and programs. The second is data. Going this way makes it easier if you have to reinstall an OS or something.

 

[skyguy]

I'm gonna take a different perspective here......

I'd suggest you stick with your Raptor as your primary and install all your programs there. But then instead of a 500gig hard drive, get 2 - 250 gigs drives.

Since your data will be stored on your 500gig, if something ever happens to it, you're SCREWED. It's actually better if your Raptor would die, because you can always reinstall programs........but you'll NEVER get your data back. However, if you get 2 - 250gig drives, then you can start to fill 1 up, and archive that to the 2nd 250 drive. If one goes down, no big deal, you've still got your data on the other one (just backup once a week and you're fine). Then at some point if you ever need the other 250 gigs, just buy another 250 drive, they'll be alot cheaper by that time.

BACKUP drive = your best friend.

 

[GreenfeetNick]

Just to clarify some terminology. When you say store my data.. things like pictures, web pages, etc, but not games, apps, on the storage drive?

Thanks,
Nick

 

[skyguy]

Correct. Your primary hard drive would have all your installed programs, on the FAST drive. Then you put your data on your secondary drive......things like photos, movies, kids stuff, school assignments, whatever it is that you do. Then you simply copy that to the 3rd hard drive.

The reason for this is your primary FAST drive stays for programs only, to keep things lean and fast. Then you keep your data on your 2nd drive. BUT if it craps out at some point, then you're screwed and you lost your irreplaceable data. BUT if you have 2 drives instead of one, then you have a duplicate set of data, so if one data drive goes down you're fine because you have another one ready to go.

It all depends on how paranoid you are about data security, and if you have data that can't be replaced. Myself, I have stuff that is absolutely irreplaceable and if I lose it, I'm finished. So I have 2 copies of all my data. I'd rather spend the $100 for an extra drive than cry when my one hard drive fails and I lose EVERYTHING.

Just food for thought, in case you have important data. You know best what you'll use this system for. So just consider it.......packing all your eggs into one basket might not be the best couse of action for you, but it's your call. Just wanted to throw out the suggestion in case.

 

[bunkgoats]

Make sure you do the appropriate redirect so that your documents get saved to your data drive automatically.