Two Hard drives for a gaming rig?

[Bulmers]

A while ago I posted asking about a good build for a PC that will be used mostly for gaming. Two of the people who responded listed two seperate hard drives for the build they suggested. One smaller, faster HD, and another larger, slower HD.

As I'm a newb, I recently became curious as to why I would need two seperate HDs and if its really worth it to buy the smaller (36G, 10,000 RPM) as it is just as expencive if not more expencive than the larger hard drive. <---- wordy sentence, but I'm rushing.

 

[gregm517]

I actually am looking into that myself... I was looking at a 150GB 10Krpm HDD (main) and a larger 320GB 7200rpm HDD for storage reasons.

I would say basically that the OS and Games (if you play) can be installed on the faster hard drive and movies, music, etc can be stored on the other drive. That way your system would access the fster hard drive when you are booting, loading software, playing games, and such.

I think it really depends on you and your storage needs and of course how much money you want to spend!

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Bulmers
A while ago I posted asking about a good build for a PC that will be used mostly for gaming. Two of the people who responded listed two seperate hard drives for the build they suggested. One smaller, faster HD, and another larger, slower HD.

As I'm a newb, I recently became curious as to why I would need two seperate HDs and if its really worth it to buy the smaller (36G, 10,000 RPM) as it is just as expencive if not more expencive than the larger hard drive. <---- wordy sentence, but I'm rushing.

it is a personal choice. if you are talking the raptor and you get a 36GB, make sure it is the new one w/16MB of cache as the older original raptor was not that good.

some people like the responsiveness with a faster hdd, others like the size of the 7200rpm ones and some like the best of both worlds. since most people have hdds for longer than 1 build, and the hdd is the slowest component in a computer, some like to speed it up a bit.

running the pagefile on a seperate hdd ususally helps out too for a bit of speed if you are accessing it quite a bit.

if the extra $$$ of the higher rpm hdd meant you needed to cut back on the gpu or ram, i would definately get a cheap hdd and go with more ram (2GB) and a better gpu since once you start gaming the only time a hdd helps you out is when you first start the game and when you change levels.

 

[Bill Brasky]

That's exactly what I'm doing right now. Using a raptor for an OS drive, because I like the responsiveness, and then best price/gig for storage.

 

[thegorx]

Two drives are nice for back ups and extra storage because larger drives might cost more, two smaller 300GB drives might be a better deal. And for file read and writing two drives can be better than one if set up correctly.

As far as games go, I don't think you'll see that much difference using faster drives and 36GB, for loading games I assume, won't get you very far when games are at least a GIG or two each

I've got four EA games for example 10GB in the progam files

Now getting enough memory is a good idea, that really seems to make a difference when loading games