A third hard drive...

[Zucarita9000]

I'm currently using two hard drives, one for the OS and apps and another one for docs.

I might have the oportunity to get another hdd (not sure if it would be 80 or 160GB) for a decent price and I was wondering if having a 3rd drive is a good idea to use as scratch disc for Photoshop and as virtual memory for Windows.

I'll using the Promise PDC20378 controller from my mobo. Can I use it as regular SATA or does it HAVE to be RAID?

 

[corkyg]

Been doing that for years. Today, that is an external SATA drive - and I also have an external Firewire drive that backs it up. I can move those data drives from machine to machine, and it really makes for easy synchronization of data.

 

[Zucarita9000]

Originally posted by: corkyg
Been doing that for years. Today, that is an external SATA drive - and I also have an external Firewire drive that backs it up. I can move those data drives from machine to machine, and it really makes for easy synchronization of data.

I already have an external hdd (it's USB 2.0) that I use for backup. What I want to do is use this new SATA drive as a temp file holder, including the page file, cd images and Photoshop scratch.

Is it wise to do so?

 

[n0cmonkey]

I doubt it will gain you much for the Windows page file.

 

[Zucarita9000]

I'll using the Promise PDC20378 controller from my mobo. Can I use it as regular SATA or does it HAVE to be RAID?

 

[corkyg]

Your Fast Trak BIOS setting (after POST) will give that choice. You must use RAID, but a single SATA drive only has one choice - RAID 0, Striping. Doesn't matter whether it is internal or external.

There is one annoying problem that happens occasionally with an external SATA drive. Windows does not recognize it as external, so you can't change the Policies (grayed out.) That results in an occasional blip called "Delayed Write Failure." The fix is usually a reboot, then it might go several days without one. Mostly happens with multi-tasking while the external drive is in use.

 

[Zucarita9000]

The drive will be internal. I already have the 378 configured as an IDE controller instead of RAID. Check my other post here