Best way to set up hard drives?

[mcurphy]

I'm getting a Seagate 320GB 7200.10 for my new rig. I now have room in my budget for another drive ($70). So I was thinking about getting another smaller drive. Not sure which one yet, maybe a 160GB WD.

How would you set these up?

I was thinking of running the OS on the WD along with programs, and using the Seagate for storage of MP3's, videos, etc....

Would this be wasting the speed advantage of my Seagate?

I'd install the OS on my Seagate, but then that would leave less room for storage since the other will be a smaller drive.

Would it be a better idea to partition the seagate..say 60GB for OS and such and then use the existing space for storage, and use the second drive as additional storage?

And one last question...The WD I am loking at is a Raid Edition model. Is it a big deal if I don't use it in a Raid array?

I don't have a mobo that supports Raid, so that is not an option for me.

Edit I do some gaming. What's the optimum setup for gaming?

 

[DLT3C]

Suggestion: partition the .10 20GB for OS, the rest of it use for apps and games (they'll benefit from the .10's superior transfer rates over a 160WD), as well as often-accessed files (share folder, etc) and leave the 160GB WD straight for storage; that way, shall you get a virus or anything wrong with the faster drive, only the OS partition will be affected. Having a second physical hard drive is a good idea for backup purposes, so you might want to keep 2 copies of important files, 1 on each HDD, for failure-tolerance.

My opinion.

 

[DLT3C]

Basically the idea is to split your files into categories: those that benefit from faster hdd (OS, apps, games), and those that only need to be stored (mp3's, movies), and place them accordingly. I do suggest having 2 copies of important files, one on each HDD. The Raid Edition only means the hdd has higher MTBF and 5-year warranty.

 

[mcurphy]

Great info DLT3C! Thank you for the suggestions.

I am now also considering the purchase of an identical Seagate and a Raid 1 card and mirroring the drives. Do you think these drives would work well in a Raid 1 array?

Edit Decided against the Raid idea. I think I'll try your suggestion. Thanks again!

 

[DLT3C]

Given today's drives' fault tolerance, RAID 1 is not really needed for a home user. Nothing beats manual backup and, most importantly, knowing where what is (no just clicking Next through installation routines, etc). Also I would suggest keeping all documents and files anywhere BUT My Documents and the Desktop. Reason: when (if) windows goes, it takes these folders with it sometimes. Again, we are considering these worst-case scenarios:

1. failure of either a second HDD (then, you have a copy of all the important stuff on the primary)
2. failure of Windows (virus, etc, higher chance of that happening than of your HDD dying; in this scenario both storage partitons are unaffected)
3. failure of an entire primary drive (in which case you still have a copy of all the important stuff on the second HDD)

a chance of either 2 occuring at the same time is extremely unlikely (unless you drop your system during LAN movement). But that's what DVD backup is for (2nd layer of security). To add yet a 3rd layer, keep a third copy of all the important/unique stuff backed up on another machine. You may even logically disconnect the drive it's on (unassign a letter), to make it pretty-much inaccessible unless reactivated.

All of the above may seem overly redundant, but hope for the best, prepare for the worst, as "it's better be safe than BSOD" - Crit

 

[John]

Originally posted by: DLT3C
Also I would suggest keeping all documents and files anywhere BUT My Documents and the Desktop. Reason: when (if) windows goes, it takes these folders with it sometimes.

FWIW

If you want to store the My Documents folder to a different location (for example, a different drive so that if you have to reinstall the OS, it will still be preserved) it?s a simple operation. The proper way to change the location of the My Documents folder is to change the target location:

[*]Right click My Documents on the Start menu, and select Properties.
[*]Click the Target tab.
[*]Type the path to the folder where you want to move My Documents, or click Move, select the folder where you want to store your documents and click OK. You can create a new folder by clicking Make New Folder.
[*]In the Move Documents dialog box, click yes to move your existing documents to the new folder.

 

[mcurphy]

Originally posted by: John

Originally posted by: DLT3C
Also I would suggest keeping all documents and files anywhere BUT My Documents and the Desktop. Reason: when (if) windows goes, it takes these folders with it sometimes.

FWIW

If you want to store the My Documents folder to a different location (for example, a different drive so that if you have to reinstall the OS, it will still be preserved) it?s a simple operation. The proper way to change the location of the My Documents folder is to change the target location:

[*]Right click My Documents on the Start menu, and select Properties.
[*]Click the Target tab.
[*]Type the path to the folder where you want to move My Documents, or click Move, select the folder where you want to store your documents and click OK. You can create a new folder by clicking Make New Folder.
[*]In the Move Documents dialog box, click yes to move your existing documents to the new folder.

A very good tip. I can't tell you how many PC's I've worked on and people save everything to the Documents folder. The dektop is even worse! A few coworkers do this to some of the PC's we use and it absolutley annoys me. I wish more people would practice good file management. Or at least knew how to move the default location of My Documents, lol

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I usually split my drive into 3 if I'm using a single drive setup (that's how it goes on my laptop and my mom's desktop). C: is roughly 8 - 12gb for OS. D and E are storage drives evenly split. E is usually my multimedia drive and D is my software/games drive.

My desktop is SLIGHTLY similar. My emergency boot drive is my 7200.9 and that is segmented in 3. The OS drive is a fatter 16gb simply because I loaded a lot of stuff onto it like Adobe and Office and Macromedia stuff so I can pretty much keep using my computer as it is (it's not an old OS installation but a clean one just loaded with apps so i'm ready to go).

My boot setup is as follows:
1) 74gb WD Raptor (2 partitions, 1 for XP, 1 for vista)
2) 2x 320gb 7200.10s non partitioned. They are simply storage drives
3) 250gb 7200.9 in 3 partitions

 

[mcurphy]

Originally posted by: DLeRium
I usually split my drive into 3 if I'm using a single drive setup (that's how it goes on my laptop and my mom's desktop). C: is roughly 8 - 12gb for OS. D and E are storage drives evenly split. E is usually my multimedia drive and D is my software/games drive.

My desktop is SLIGHTLY similar. My emergency boot drive is my 7200.9 and that is segmented in 3. The OS drive is a fatter 16gb simply because I loaded a lot of stuff onto it like Adobe and Office and Macromedia stuff so I can pretty much keep using my computer as it is (it's not an old OS installation but a clean one just loaded with apps so i'm ready to go).

My boot setup is as follows:
1) 74gb WD Raptor (2 partitions, 1 for XP, 1 for vista)
2) 2x 320gb 7200.10s non partitioned. They are simply storage drives
3) 250gb 7200.9 in 3 partitions

Very nice set up. In my current rig I had a 120GB partitioned into 2---- 40GB for OS and pretty much all apps, and 80GB for storage. Then I had 2 30GB drives in RAID 0 that I used for games and performance based apps. I like your setup better though. That's a good idea to shrink the OS part down, makes it a lot easier for formats I bet. I'll probably go with something similar in my new build. I haven't comitted to 2 hdd's yet though.

 

[memories2002]

Get a small ie. 36gb raptor instead of the 160gb WD. Thats just my opinion...but it will cost you about $100 i think.

 

[Ages120]

I would get another hard drive. Seagate, Western Digital, Hitachi are brands I have found very reliable. I would go for the biggest drive with the largest cache memory you can get.
I would use the smaller drive for the OS and games and applications, and put the page/swap file on the second larger slave drive. This will give you the biggest performance gains since one hard drive will be accessing application contents into memory and also into the page file and with it on a separate drive it doesn't have to go back and forth between loading the contents and filling the page file on itself.

I wouldn't go with a raptor because for loading programs and games, because a Sata HDD will load games and applications almost as fast as the raptor with native command queuing. Like a game loading that takes 34 seconds on a larger Sata drive at 7,200 rpm will take 28-30 seconds on the raptor so it doesn't give the bang for the buck a bigger hard drive with a 16mb cache will give you.

If all out performance is what you want though the raptor is a solid choice. If your running a server I/O is the raptors best because of it's low seek times, but if things aren't fragmented and you have a NCQ drive you don't really need it. Even with close to a TB of storage I still find I wouldn't mind having even more storage if it didn't mean having to buy a new power supply.

 

[jameswhite1979]

You might want to create another partion for the windows swap file.