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Best way to set up HDD

R

RD48

Junior Member
I am putting together my new system soon, when it arrives. I bought a seagate 320GB SATA drive, and currently own a 120GB Ultra ATA HDD and a 30GB Ultra ATA HDD. I don't know the main difference between SATA and Ultra ATA except that my SATA drive has a faster data transfer rate.

My question is how should I set up my system? Are the Ultra ATA drives to slow to use as an OS drive; and then use the 320GB SATA drive for my storage drive? Or should I partition the 320GB drive for the OS, use norton ghost to make an image copy, and later when I have the money buy a smaller faster drive to use for my OS drive? Or am I over thinking all this and just use my 320GB drive for everything.

Thanks, RD48
 
Personally, I prefer the single-drive approach - if the 320GB drive provides enough overall space for your needs. More drives consume more power, produce more noise and dump more heat into your case - if you care about HD power, noise or heat considerations.

Regardless of whether you use multi-drives or multi-partitioned single drive, I think frequently imaging your OS is a good practice. A damaged or infected OS is a much more likely system failure than a failed hard drive.

I run a multi-partitioned single-drive system. My OS partition is imaged to a backup partition 2 or 3 times per week. This practice has saved me from forced OS reinstall on many occasions (usually due to operator error such as failed tweaks, etc.). It takes 5 minutes to backup my OS partition and 10 minutes to restore it.

The obvious problem with this setup is that I'm completely screwed if my HD fails. My next upgrade will probably be an external drive, with the main drive cloned to the external drive weekly.

Hope this helps!
 
Thanks, thats what I was wanting to hear. One drive is easier to deal with. I will probably turn the 120GB drive into an external backup drive.

Thanks, RD48
 
Originally posted by: RD48
I will probably turn the 120GB drive into an external backup drive.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what you'll want to do. That's what I did, and I couldn't be happier. I used this enclosure, and am happy with it, also. BTW, are you aware that you get free backup software (the best, Acronis TrueImage) with all Seagate drives now? Here's a link to it: download "Disk Wizard". It works great, and will even let you make disk images, with varying amounts of compression.
 
I bought another hdd; a samsung spinpoint 320 gig SATA. Will the seagate disk wizard work with the samsung drive? I am not sure which drive I want to use as my primary and how I exactly want to set them up.

thanks,
RD48
 
So, I suppose it was a stupid question. I just thought the acronis software would help to back up the samsung drive as well. Or at least allow me to back up my seagate drive to the samsung.
 
Seagate's software is proprietary and only works on their drives (and Maxtor since they bought them out - tried that myself).
 
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