1 HD or 2?

[mailliw]

So I will be building a new computer soon and I was wondering if it would be better to get 2 HDs over 1. This is what I was looking at.

For 1 hard drive 640GB WD
or
For 2 hard drives: Still would get the 640GB for storage but use this for OS and stuff 160GB WD

I really don't need that much storage as I will be using the computer mostly for gaming. A few of my friends said its better to have 2 hard drives and run the OS on one and use the other for storage.

 

[one-shot]

I actually have the 160 AAJS. It is around 40Mb/s read. I just got a new 1TB WD Black, which is almost twice that speed. The 160GB is relatively slow and I would just make several partitions out of the 640GB and put the OS on that.

 

[r_manic]

Agreed. 1 or 2, it doesn't matter to me, but the hard disk where your OS is gonna be should be fast. How does this 320GB WD look?

 

[jsc]

For all practical purposes (sustained i/o), the WD 640 Black is just about the fastest sub 1TB drive out there - at least until the single platter 500 GB drives arrive.

 

[jitpublisher]

1 WD 640 black.

 

[r_manic]

This one right, the WD6401AALS?

 

[mailliw]

Thanks guys, I guess i'll just get the WD640 Caviar Black

 

[bluzman32]

For all practical purposes (sustained i/o), the WD 640 Black is just about the fastest sub 1TB drive out there - at least until the single platter 500 GB drives arrive.

are the WD 1tb black drives faster than the wd 640gb black drives?

 

[jive]

Hi,
1 or 2 disks it's not a problem with the sata2. The question should be did you need 1 terrabyte+ of storage. If the answer is yes then go for it.
On my pc I have 3 disks: 1 for windows 7 64 bits, 1 for xpro 64 bit and one external drive 1tb for cross platform between the two os and storage. I have 2 640 black and 1 tb black too.
For the question about the if it's fastest or not , I think it's not relevant, if you open a game in 2.3 sec, or 3.5 sec. Will you really see a difference. I got three black becaue I do a lot of video transfert and from time to time 40 minutes instead of 55 minutes means a lot. But for gaming home application I don't think it's really important.

 

[r_manic]

How many hard disks would a typical, mid-range motherboard support? 3? 4?

 

[Xenonvector927]

How many hard disks would a typical, mid-range motherboard support? 3? 4?

I bought the cheapest motherboard in the store, and it still supports four hard drives, plus any additional drives you put on the IDE bus. And to the OP, I also have that drive, and it really slows down when loaded with data. I get very slow IO speeds with it, as I have used 93%. I see you've already made the decision then. Good choice going with WD.