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question about 2 Hard Drives

J

jSuvius

Member
I read that it was wise to have two hard drives so that one can be used for the main boot drive and the other just for storage. Which specifications should I look for in each one? Should the main boot-drive be smaller and faster than the secondary storage drive? Would a 74GB Raptor be a good choice for the main system drive? Also, if I use the second, larger drive for media storage will I notice a speed lapse in opening media from that drive? Thanks.
 
That's what quite a few people like to do. One drive for OS and apps, another for data. Works out pretty well.

All depends on your budget as far the what drives you get. Do you have a lot of media you'd like to store? MP3s, movies, games, ect?
 
Yeah, I do have a lot of media (about 75GB) and I will be accumulating even more once I get this new system...this is what I was thinking so far, does it make sense?

Main HDD: Western Digital 74GB SATA 10K RPM Raptor (WD740GD)

2nd HDD: Western Digital 200GB SATA 7.2K RPM (WD2000JD)

Would it make sense at all to have the 2nd drive be IDE instead of SATA or should both be SATA? Also, do I need to buy an HDD controller or is that just for RAID configurations? Thx.
 
The two HD's you are talking about is the very one's I have in my system. I doubled the pleasure🙂 and have two of each drive making a RAID 0 array (for my OS and data) with the raptors (SATA) and a RAID 1 array (for data and security) with the 200 GB drives (IDE). VERY SWEEEEET! Like you, I have a lot of digital media and I am starting to do some video editing. I even have an external Seagate HD (120 GB) just to have a bit more storage space for archiving and such. I am very happy with the WD HD's and have always used WD for years.
 
thats what some people do. raid 1 for storage so u dn't have to worry as much. restoring a load of media can be a pain.
 
I am a little confused..is RAID a necessity with 2 HDDs or only an option? I was not planning on doing it because I heard it was not much of a performance increase and in an effort to save money (I have to buy a controller then, right?). Should I be considering RAID?
 
It's an option.

I say if you have the funds, you can go for the Raptor. The setup you're looking at is great. I might suggest going with a 200GB Seagate, however. That way you can get 5 year warranties on BOTH drives.

You may want to consider other bottleneck parts in your system as well. IMO, the Raptor still does not have a good price/performance ratio. It may be wise to get a regular 80GB HDD and turn your attention to upgrading other parts of your PC.
 
Raid is kinda of a waste for a desktop machine. Truthfully the Raptor doesn't perform much above the newer 7200 RPM drives.
 
my current setup:

36GB Raptor for OS + Apps
250GB SATA for data

it works out pretty well, and it makes reformatting easy. likewise, if the operating system gets corrupted, I don't have to worry about losing all of my documents.
 
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