2 HDD system, should I put OS on small slow HDD?

[layzworm]

I have 2 hdd, an 80gb western digital w800jd sata 3gbps and a much faster seagate baracuda 2tb 6gbps I know it's good to separate your os from files if you have 2 hdd and obviously I want to use the 2tb for my files. But my question is:

should I install my os on the slower 80gb hdd? or just use it for the temp files, browser cache and file paging?
or is it not worth it at all because the 80gb drive is so much slower?

 

[rolli59]

The 80Gb drive is not going to be much slower than the 2TB drive, no mechanical HDD can max out the SATA 3GB interface, SATA 6GB or not. I would use it as OS drive only and load everything else on the 2TB!

 

[chesteracorgi]

Rolli's right about the fact that no HDD will ever be really fast compared to a SSD, but there may a difference in boot time. If you have no problem with the boot up time then I give +1 on Rolli's suggestion.

 

[layzworm]

ok, but I looked at Benchmarks of these 2 and overall the seagate scored more than twice what the WD scored.

 

[chesteracorgi]

Then it depends on whether you can tollerate the slower boot up of the WD. You can always use it to store multimedia.

 

[fellskrazykayaker]

Junk the 80GB drive. Just partition your 2TB drive if you really want to keep files separate. The 80GB drive probably has much slower access times and throughput. The 80GB is much slower than more modern hard drives.

 

[Jim_L9]

You could use the 80 GB for your swap file.

 

[layzworm]

Best answer selected by layzworm.