Storage Setup Opinion

[jbm715]

Hey yall,

I'm trying to figure out how I want to setup my soon-to-be-bought-and-built-computer's storage.

First off I want some kind of backup of my pictures, music, etc. Ideally I'd like to use an SSD for the Operating System.

So, right now I am planning on buying a 60GB Sata III SSD for OS stuff and 2x 1TB HDD to Raid 1 together for storage. I think I don't fully understand the purpose of having an SSD for the OS. Would it be in my interest to ONLY instal the OS to the SSD and install programs and games elsewhere because of the number or reads/writes they do? If that is the case, then I guess I might need to have another hdd for games and programs.

Maybe I should scrap the SSD and just go with a regular hdd for the OS?

What is yalls thought?

 

[sminlal]

Putting the OS and your application programs on the SSD will make the system much faster to boot and to start up your programs. Ideally, you'd buy a drive that's large enough to hold all your programs, but if you can't afford that then buy one large enough to hold the programs you use most frequently.

RAID is not a backup - if your photos, music etc. are important to you then you need to back them up to an external drive. RAID protects against a drive failure, but it's worthless if you accidentally delete something, if your disk gets corrupted or virus-infected, if someone steals your system, if you have a power hit that damages the system, etc. etc.

Take that second hard drive and instead of using it as part of a RAID set, put it in an external case and use it for regular backups. If you can afford it, buy two external hard drives, alternate backups between them, and keep one of them offsite - that will protect your data from almost any imaginable threat.

 

[jbm715]

Best answer selected by jbm715.

 

[jbm715]

Thank you for the response! I never really thought about corruption, viruses, etc. I will probably take your advice and put one of my 1TB HDD in an external enclosure.