1 large HD vs 1 small HD & 1 large HD

[ZGundam64]

So what makes more sense?

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.

 

[sminlal]

The general answer is that it's better to put the OS on a separate disk since that means you can do reads & writes with the games/media disk and the OS simultaneously. This means that one doesn't have to wait for the other.

In practical terms, unless you're doing a lot of stuff at the same time, this will mostly affect load times and is less likely to affect the performance of what you're doing once the programs are running.

But if the programs you use are disk-intensive (batch photo editing, video editing, etc.) then more disks will help even after the programs have loaded. In that case it's definitely a case of the more disks the merrier.

 

[ZGundam64]

I don't plan on doing very much editing. Mostly gaming (online and off), streaming video watching, and that's about it.

 

[Canuck1]

If I was you, I would use the separate hard drive way like suggested above.

I would even further consider using eSATA and having the 1TB in an enclosure. IT is really convenient that way. The benefit of having your data, games, media etc. on another large disk is that if you somehow corrupt your OS or have an OS problem, a re-install won't be that big a deal. You won't be worried about wiping out your data/media etc. It's for peace of mind besides convenience.

 

[ZGundam64]

ok, in that case I have 2 250 HDs I can use. They are both Maxtor. One is a Diamond Plus II and the other is DiamondMax 10.

Which one? I can't buy another HD.