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I want a small primary hard drive but drives are too cheap

sygyzy

sygyzy

Lifer
When I built my current (soon to be replaced) system, a 80GB hard drive was a pretty good size. Throghout the years, I added 160-300GB 2nd, 3rd, 4th hard drives. I liked this setup because it forced me to keep only my Windows, Office, and (most) Program Files on the drive. I kept all my large media on seperate drives. The idea is if the primary failed, I'd only lose 80GB and it's easier to replace Windows and Program Files than it is music, movies, pictures, etc. Also, it'd be easy to image/backup 80GB to a different (larger) hard drive. Heck, you can keep 2 copies and stil have 140GB on a 300GB.

Anyway, it's gotten to the point where you can get a 300GB SATA drive for under $100. That's 33 cents a GB. Alternatively, you can get a 40GB Maxtor for $40 or $1 a GB. The obvious answer is to just get a larger drive. But with a 300GB primary, I am tempted to use the space (duh). So more space = more things to lose and also more to backup. Imaging 300GB is not easy unless you happen to have 400-500GB drives lying around.

I thought about partitioning but that doesn't really solve a (hardware) crash.

Also thought about a 74GB Raptor but they are so expensive and loud and with very little to no peformance difference.

So what do you guys do? Run huge hard drives and hope nothing goes wrong?
 
I buy a pair of Seagate 7200.10 320GB and use them as C: and D:. I hate hate hate partitions. I use a spare 7200.8 160GB has the backup clone HD for the C:. Also have an image of fresh install system on a DVD. The way I see it, if your HD fails, every partitioin you made is gonna go down with the HD. So rather than make a sh!t load of partitions and drives, I just use folders. I thought about doing RAID 1, but the JMicron RAID controller is rather flaky, so I don't wanna put any HDs on it.
 
I always do at least OS drive + storage drive. You can always get a 300 gig drive and partition it down to 150 (supposedly if you only use the outer half of platter it (infinitesimally) increases drive performance.) At least then you wouldn't be tempted to used those extra gigs 😉
 
Originally posted by: Aluvus
You could just create one small partition on the OS drive.
Click to expand...

Right, I mentioned that but that doesn't solve any problems regarding crashing. If the HD crashes, I'll lose it all. Having a seperate partition does not help.
 
Get a new (big) hard drive, and make a "small" partition for C. Use the remaing space as back up for other data.
 
If the hard drive crashes, you will lose all the data on it. So, you must backup what you have on it.

Having a reasonable size partition for the OS allows a smaller image, which is more practical for backing up perhaps different versions of your OS if you wanted to. The other partition on the same hard drive could contain data (music, pictures, email, ....), which you can backup as well.

Store the backups on another physical hard drive as well as on DVD-RW. Now, if your drive crashes, you can use the backups to restore your PC. If the secondary hard drive crashes, you can re-create your backups. If both of your hard drives crash (this is extremely improbable, but it is possible), you can use the DVDs to restore everything.
 
I put my largest drives in external housings and use them for backups. With the price of drives so low, I believe it's crazy not to have space to back up everything that's important to you.
 
I just use a 74 gig raptor for my primary drive, its quick, small and nothing much will happen if i loose that drive due to windows f-ing up or drive failing.
Ofcourse the raptors are more expencive lol

You should be able to pick up some 80 gig drives for cheap... i got a 7200.9 80gig seagate in my second comp and this thing is almost as fast as my raptor (except for seek times and end of drive read/write speed)
 
Originally posted by: JServ
Why not run two drives in raid 1? Redundency is your friend.
Click to expand...

Nothing wrong with that as long as you do not confuse RAID 1 with backup. If your file system gets corrupted (virus) or you mistakenly delete a file that you need, both drives in your RAID 1 will have a corrupted file system or missing file. You will still need to backup your files.
 
Originally posted by: Navid
Originally posted by: JServ
Why not run two drives in raid 1? Redundency is your friend.
Click to expand...
Nothing wrong with that as long as you do not confuse RAID 1 with backup. If your file system gets corrupted (virus) or you mistakenly delete a file that you need, both drives in your RAID 1 will have a corrupted file system or missing file. You will still need to backup your files.
Click to expand...
Yup. People lose all their data from RAID 1 arrays all the time, through various user and hardware errors.

Get a backup hard drive first. If you still have money for more drives, THEN do RAID 1.

RAID 1 (or any redundant array) is worthless if a power surge wipes out your drives, if you've been infected with a destructive virus or worm, if your PC gets stolen, or you mistakenly delete your RAID array.

 
The Hitachi 7K80 SATA 300 is an excellent drive and has been goiing for under $50 lately. I have one and it's surprisingly fast - beats my old 10k U160 SCSI easily. Put a pair or more in RAID-0 and WATCH OUT! See my review here: http://www.techIMO.com/reviews/

.bh.
 
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