2 Hard Drives better than 1 big one?

[batmanuel]

Originally posted by: gsellis
The one drive is fine. And do not partition it. That is a hold over from when the file system and drives were really unreliable and PC guys were constantly fiddling with the drive space because it was always full. Man, I think I blew DOS up twice tuning Stacker. NTFS with NT 3.1 was not very safe for work either. 😉

I don't mean to seem like I'm flaming you, but that's horrible advice. You're a fool not to at least create two partitions to seperate your data from your OS. If you have your data and your OS together on a single partition there is a very real chance a virus, a bad driver update or whatever could render your computer unbootable, making it tricky (if not impossible in some cases) to save your data before you reinstall windows. With two partitions, you can reinstall windows easily without worrying about losing any data. If you have Ghost or Drive Image, you can even automate your system restore process and have your machine up and running again in a matter of minutes using an image stored in the "data" partition. You are taking a huge chance if you throw everyting into a single partition and hope nothing ever goes wrong. Even if nothing goes wrong, it is usually worth it to reinstall Windows from scratch whenever they issue and new Service Pack (especially if you use a slipstreamed copy that installs with the update already in place).

Having a seperate data partition also makes upgrading your OS a snap as well (which won't be an issue for most of us until 2006, but it is still worth mentioning), since you can do a clean install instead of an upgrade of an OS that has been there for a while.

 

[jvarszegi]

Originally posted by: gsellis
I see no one took statistics or LP here... Adding a second drive does not decrease the chance of a failure. Each of the drives has their same chance of failure. Nothing changed except that now you have two drives that could fail. So, actually, by adding a drive, you have INCREASED the chance of a disk failure. (now the argument that each drive will be less taxed, so less chance - Read/Writes for a desktop are usually not enough to impact what the MTBF would be - server drives, maybe).

The one dirve is fine. And do not partition it. That is a hold over from when the file system and drives were really unreliable and PC guys were constantly fiddling with the drive space because it was always full. Man, I think I blew DOS up twice tuning Stacker. NTFS with NT 3.1 was not very safe for work either. 😉

I am flaming you. You shouldn't be giving advice if you don't know what the f*ck you're talking about.

 

[big4x4]

Originally posted by: jvarszegi

Originally posted by: gsellis
I see no one took statistics or LP here... Adding a second drive does not decrease the chance of a failure. Each of the drives has their same chance of failure. Nothing changed except that now you have two drives that could fail. So, actually, by adding a drive, you have INCREASED the chance of a disk failure. (now the argument that each drive will be less taxed, so less chance - Read/Writes for a desktop are usually not enough to impact what the MTBF would be - server drives, maybe).

The one dirve is fine. And do not partition it. That is a hold over from when the file system and drives were really unreliable and PC guys were constantly fiddling with the drive space because it was always full. Man, I think I blew DOS up twice tuning Stacker. NTFS with NT 3.1 was not very safe for work either. 😉

I am flaming you. You shouldn't be giving advice if you don't know what the f*ck you're talking about.

Now now kids 😉

 

[big4x4]

What do you recommend me diving my hd up to? Half and half or what?

 

[batmanuel]

It depends upon how many games and apps you plan to install. I usually go 40GB for my OS and 80GB for my data on a 120GB drive (since I have a lot of MP3s and video files), but if you are installing a lot of big multi-CD games I'd make the OS partition bigger so you can fit them all in without having to go to your other partition.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: batmanuel

Originally posted by: gsellis
The one drive is fine. And do not partition it. That is a hold over from when the file system and drives were really unreliable and PC guys were constantly fiddling with the drive space because it was always full. Man, I think I blew DOS up twice tuning Stacker. NTFS with NT 3.1 was not very safe for work either. 😉

I don't mean to seem like I'm flaming you, but that's horrible advice. You're a fool not to at least create two partitions to seperate your data from your OS. If you have your data and your OS together on a single partition there is a very real chance a virus, a bad driver update or whatever could render your computer unbootable, making it tricky (if not impossible in some cases) to save your data before you reinstall windows. With two partitions, you can reinstall windows easily without worrying about losing any data. If you have Ghost or Drive Image, you can even automate your system restore process and have your machine up and running again in a matter of minutes using an image stored in the "data" partition. You are taking a huge chance if you throw everyting into a single partition and hope nothing ever goes wrong. Even if nothing goes wrong, it is usually worth it to reinstall Windows from scratch whenever they issue and new Service Pack (especially if you use a slipstreamed copy that installs with the update already in place).

Having a seperate data partition also makes upgrading your OS a snap as well (which won't be an issue for most of us until 2006, but it is still worth mentioning), since you can do a clean install instead of an upgrade of an OS that has been there for a while.

Adding additional partitions will actually slow the drive down as to access across each partition, the head has to jump to each with partition seeks, FT seeks, and then data accesses. I used to be paranoid for a long time, but I can capture any data and redo the system in similar times (I build unattended installations for XP).

You might want to bone up on this... Bart's PE Builder With PE, you have access to data and ability to move, restore, or fix issues without any dire issue.

4X4, getting an 80GB drive for the OS is the best idea. But keep the 200. Always do on another drive what you could do in a partition. What about the 60GB you have in your signature or is this for a new machine?

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: jvarszegi

Originally posted by: gsellis
I see no one took statistics or LP here... Adding a second drive does not decrease the chance of a failure. Each of the drives has their same chance of failure. Nothing changed except that now you have two drives that could fail. So, actually, by adding a drive, you have INCREASED the chance of a disk failure. (now the argument that each drive will be less taxed, so less chance - Read/Writes for a desktop are usually not enough to impact what the MTBF would be - server drives, maybe).

The one dirve is fine. And do not partition it. That is a hold over from when the file system and drives were really unreliable and PC guys were constantly fiddling with the drive space because it was always full. Man, I think I blew DOS up twice tuning Stacker. NTFS with NT 3.1 was not very safe for work either. 😉

I am flaming you. You shouldn't be giving advice if you don't know what the f*ck you're talking about.

I guess that advice goes both ways. What specificially do you object to? The statistics, not using partitions, or that NTFS in NT 3.1 sucked?

 

[jvarszegi]

Originally posted by: gsellis

Originally posted by: jvarszegi

Originally posted by: gsellis
I see no one took statistics or LP here... Adding a second drive does not decrease the chance of a failure. Each of the drives has their same chance of failure. Nothing changed except that now you have two drives that could fail. So, actually, by adding a drive, you have INCREASED the chance of a disk failure. (now the argument that each drive will be less taxed, so less chance - Read/Writes for a desktop are usually not enough to impact what the MTBF would be - server drives, maybe).

The one dirve is fine. And do not partition it. That is a hold over from when the file system and drives were really unreliable and PC guys were constantly fiddling with the drive space because it was always full. Man, I think I blew DOS up twice tuning Stacker. NTFS with NT 3.1 was not very safe for work either. 😉

I am flaming you. You shouldn't be giving advice if you don't know what the f*ck you're talking about.

I guess that advice goes both ways. What specificially do you object to? The statistics, not using partitions, or that NTFS in NT 3.1 sucked?

I would say that in some respects, NTFS sucks now. I object to your catchall advice to never partition a system drive. Partitions are useful management blocks for disks; they can compartmentalize fragmentation issues, etc.

Imagine that someone has a system with one 200GB drive. (I know already that your advice is to get multiple disks, which is certainly desirable but not always possible.) They're reformatting and doing a clean install. Now imagine that, say, they will be running some programs that will write and rewrite medium to large files often. They also have a need for a decent-sized page file, as the amount of RAM on the machine is only512 megs.

The best advice for this person is to set up two partitions: the first to hold the OS and other system files, and at least one more for programs. There is no requirement for a separate partition for the page file, as in Windows with a disk of that size, the best attack is to set the file to an equal minimum and maximum size, so it will never grow and always remain contiguous. The second partition should be dedicated to program data, with as large a cluster size as affordable because it will decrease the impact of fragmentation.

Note that keeping the OS on its own dedicated partition allows easy reformatting and OS reinstallation down the road, without having to blow away all your data. Also, if the FT of the operating system or program partition is compromised, the other one isn't affected.

Now imagine you're setting up a SQL Server 2000 database server on aging hardware. There are three drives in a RAID 5 configuration, and you cannot add drives; the expected database size requirements mean that you must leave the three drives in RAID 5. Your best bet here is to set up the OS (and maybe programs in this case) on a dedicated partition, make another partition with 64k cluster size for the data files (on which you'll set up the databases so that extra space is allocated in large blocks), and make one extra partition for the transaction log, all on the same three-drive array. The transaction log is often written to most frequently, and you have to make sure that it and the data files do not cause cross-fragmentation; this is important whether the database will be more heavily read or written.

 

[jvarszegi]

Now imagine you've spent up your budget on a new system, and you were able to get a 74GB Raptor on which you've decided to put your OS, and two 300GB SATA data drives. You've bought an nForce4 motherboard, which is capable of doing RAID across IDE and SATA drives, and even across partitions on different drives. You'll be doing video editing, and also some other computing where it's important that your data is protected with redundancy, but not at the same time. Here you may decide to go with RAID 0 striped across a large partition on each data drive, and RAID 1 mirrored across a smaller partition on each data drive to protect the valuable data. Or you may decide to not use RAID 0, because video editing performance is decreased when you write from and read to the same drive or drive array, but still use RAID 1 on the other two partitions.

There are lots of valid scenarios where partitioning is useful. I grant freely that most of them occur on servers, but not all of them do.

 

[big4x4]

Originally posted by: gsellis

Originally posted by: batmanuel

Originally posted by: gsellis
The one drive is fine. And do not partition it. That is a hold over from when the file system and drives were really unreliable and PC guys were constantly fiddling with the drive space because it was always full. Man, I think I blew DOS up twice tuning Stacker. NTFS with NT 3.1 was not very safe for work either. 😉

I don't mean to seem like I'm flaming you, but that's horrible advice. You're a fool not to at least create two partitions to seperate your data from your OS. If you have your data and your OS together on a single partition there is a very real chance a virus, a bad driver update or whatever could render your computer unbootable, making it tricky (if not impossible in some cases) to save your data before you reinstall windows. With two partitions, you can reinstall windows easily without worrying about losing any data. If you have Ghost or Drive Image, you can even automate your system restore process and have your machine up and running again in a matter of minutes using an image stored in the "data" partition. You are taking a huge chance if you throw everyting into a single partition and hope nothing ever goes wrong. Even if nothing goes wrong, it is usually worth it to reinstall Windows from scratch whenever they issue and new Service Pack (especially if you use a slipstreamed copy that installs with the update already in place).

Having a seperate data partition also makes upgrading your OS a snap as well (which won't be an issue for most of us until 2006, but it is still worth mentioning), since you can do a clean install instead of an upgrade of an OS that has been there for a while.

Adding additional partitions will actually slow the drive down as to access across each partition, the head has to jump to each with partition seeks, FT seeks, and then data accesses. I used to be paranoid for a long time, but I can capture any data and redo the system in similar times (I build unattended installations for XP).

You might want to bone up on this... Bart's PE Builder With PE, you have access to data and ability to move, restore, or fix issues without any dire issue.

4X4, getting an 80GB drive for the OS is the best idea. But keep the 200. Always do on another drive what you could do in a partition. What about the 60GB you have in your signature or is this for a new machine?

I still have the one in the sig.....I think it is dying though. That is why I got the 200 gig seagate. When you reformat with windows xp.....can you creat partitions there? I don't really know if I want/need a partition when I do put the drive in

 

[wchou]

As soon as I get a big one like 250gb, my 120gb and 160gb will be left outside the case collecting dust 🙂
Or will be used as spare parts, know what I mean?

 

[brad84cnc]

are there any problems with rhaving one hd on sata and the other on ide to keep them on different chains?

 

[like a fox]

Does anyone know if Seagate 36.7gig 15k rpm hard drive will work on an ide? Or do I need to buy adaptor? It has Ultra320 SCSI interface. Help!

 

[jvarszegi]

Originally posted by: like a fox
Does anyone know if Seagate 36.7gig 15k rpm hard drive will work on an ide? Or do I need to buy adaptor? It has Ultra320 SCSI interface. Help!

welcome back raccoon

 

[gsellis]

@ jvarszegi

Recovering multiple partitions on a drive that has had issues can be a nightmare. If you have had to try to do it, you would understand why I do not recommend partitioning. Finding the second file table on the second partition if the first and the partition table are gone is no fun. Single partitions rule. I started out with the same philosophy as you in the early 90's and about 5 years ago, move to not partitioning. About 100,000 workstations later, Occum's Razor rules - The simliest solution is always the best. The exception is that we now create a 650MB partition on the beginning of a drive that has Win PE on it. Can rebuild a desktop remotely with it even (but walkups are sometimes required or booting from the PE CD to recreate the partition). My Documents is redirected to server space with daily incrementals and other backup strategies (not this case).

Also, many really noob users get really confused with multiple partitions and drives. The best scenario with the computer newbie is to have a single drive letter, even with OS and Data (it works better if they are not admins, like some areas will insist or some software will force you into.) OMG, when they think they might be able to rearrange the space so something will fit better, bye-bye. I use the "What would my mom do?" rule. My mom got to page 25 of the Windows 95 book (which is a lot further than folks I have to support including some in IT). It just has to be as easy as can be. That makes it even more reliable as they are less prone to 'fix it' when it ain't broke.

Mechanically, the single drive is more reliable in the system as a whole. The single partition is more reliable. The chance of one drive failing in a two drive system is about the same as in a 1 drive system. The chance of one of the drives failing is greater than a single drive failing. The chance of lossing the data instead of the OS is about the same chance as losing the single drive, but potentially slightly less (assuming that the 'load' is less and reliability is tied to the amount of work the drive does not have to do - since these are not in a server...).

Big4x4 wanted to know if 2 drives were faster than 1. The suggestions are that 2 drives are more reliable than 1. I disagree. 2 drives can be easier to reconfigure. I think 2 drives are safer than 2 partitions. Except for die hard beta testers and experiment junkies (which there are many here at AT), 1 drive with 1 partition is usually the best solution.

Me, I live dangerously. I have 4 drives making 2 partitions (R0). My C: is just because I can and I was using it as a Render volume. My E: is R0 to take 2 200s and give me a 400. I now have added a 250 because that was not enough space. I don't have many backups, BUT much of the data I do have is on tape and can be restored with a little work (digital video). The other stuff is stored on DVD.

Oh, and on the root question. I think some of the 200GB 7500RPM drives are faster than their 80GB ancestors. So, the 200GB drive may be faster than a pair of 80s in a non-RAID configuration. I need to get up in 5 hours to catch a flight, so too lazy to check the drive stats.

 

[batmanuel]

If I'm setting up a machine for a newbie and they are using Windows XP, I usually just redirect their My Documents folder to the second data partition (since they usually just save everything there anyway because that's where XP defaults to). It seems to work pretty well for most people.

I also forgot to mention that if you upgrade often, it is a must to have a dedicated OS partition that you can blow away in order to do a fresh install of Windows on the new hardware. It makes life a lot easier for those of us who are always playing with new hardware.

Thanks for the info an Bart's PE though, gsellis. I've personally been using a Knoppix Live CD to get data off of PCs that won't boot (since the newer versions have CD burning), but Bart's looks like a good tool to add to the kit -especially with the AV and Nero plug ins.

And the newer large capacity drives are definitely a bit faster than the older and smaller models due to the higher areal density of the patters that enables the heads to read and write more data at a time. It does depend upon when the drives were made, as two drives of different capacities that were manufactured around the same time may have the same areal density but use a different number of platters. By the same token, two drives of the same capacity manufactured a year apart may have different densities and numbers of platters (such as an old 120GB hard drive with four 30GB platters vs. a newer model with only two 60GB platters), and thus the newer one with the larger and more dense platters may be slightly faster. I don't think it is a major performance boost like you get with a faster spindle speed or more advanced drive controller (i.e. replacing an IDE drive with a 15k SCSI).

 

[gsellis]

@batmanuel

Another thing you will find with Bart's PE, as well as the version that is available to MS Enterprise customers, is USB and Firewire support. You can boot from USB if the BIOS allows and have access, or if a device is plugged in at boot, it can be available. I regularly use a 120GB USB drive as a transfer tool, usually for image tests, but sometimes for recovery.

Other tools
http://www.ubcd4win.com/
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ - Linux Based