Dick Splash Posted March 2, 2005 Share Posted March 2, 2005 As part of my upgrade shopping I've seen some large hard drives. Are there any advantages in having two of them or will a large one suffice? DS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocky Posted March 2, 2005 Share Posted March 2, 2005 There are more qualified to answer than me, but I'd say one drive partioned would be better. Unless you want to take advantage of an efficient page file by having it on a seperate drive, i.e. one SATA drive for booting and another drive on the Parallel controller for the page file. (That's what I am doing, got a new SATA drive right here ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dannik Posted March 2, 2005 Share Posted March 2, 2005 There is a performance boost gained by using multiple, high RPM drives, as long as they are on separate IDE channels (as opposed to sharing a ribbon) or separate SATA headers. This is why "power gamer" computers tend to have one or two small, stupidly fast SATA drives for the OS and games, to zip through boot/load times, and one or two huge, slow drives on the normal IDE channels, for slow but high volume storage of media, music, all your content that doesn't require ultra-low latency, but takes up a lot of room. In terms of pure storage, one big drive is probably best. For video/image editing and gaming, the small/fast-big/slow combination can be tweaked for maximum performance. Partitions are great for organization, but they don't necessarily perform very well if you are multitasking across partitions, as three partitions on one drive still share a single half of an IDE header, or SATA channel. Low access times don't really matter if the cable the drive is on is saturated with traffic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firefly2442 Posted March 3, 2005 Share Posted March 3, 2005 RAID would be another great performance boost. Or to protect your data. Whichever way you go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dick Splash Posted March 3, 2005 Author Share Posted March 3, 2005 ......... ............ Errrrrr........thanks for that lads....... Now I've got a headache DS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CR6 Posted March 3, 2005 Share Posted March 3, 2005 There is a performance boost gained by using multiple, high RPM drives, as long as they are on separate IDE channels (as opposed to sharing a ribbon) or separate SATA headers. ← Dannik makes a great point here that many people don't realize. Personally, if two 160GB HD's cost the same as one 300GB HD, and you don't think you need even more HD space later, I would get the two 160GB HD's. Why? - You cut in half the risk of HD failure. If your 300GB HD dies, that's it. If one of your 160GB HD's fail, you still have the other one. - You can set up a RAID array down the road if you like - You can get better performance if you keep the HD's on different channels (and they cannot share the channel with anything else, including a CD burner etc.) That's why if your mobo supports SATA, you're better off getting SATA HD's The two reasons to get the 300GB HD is if - You want space >160GB on one partition to capture huge video files. - You plan to get a second 300GB or larger in the future My current setup is IDE 1: 160 GB WD HD for data storage IDE 2: CD burner and DVD drive (master/slave) SATA HD 1: OS & games SATA HD 2: Virtual memory & other programs So for example, when running a game, the CPU can access the game data on one channel and the virtual memory on another channel simultaneously. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dick Splash Posted March 3, 2005 Author Share Posted March 3, 2005 My current setup is IDE 1: 160 GB WD HD for data storage IDE 2: CD burner and DVD drive (master/slave) SATA HD 1: OS & games SATA HD 2: Virtual memory & other programs← Oooo Blimey!........it's a lot more involved and something I'll have to look into more at the time I buy. DS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CR6 Posted March 3, 2005 Share Posted March 3, 2005 Hey DS, it really doesn't have to be that complicated. Like Dannik said, the config above is more for a computer enthusiast than a regular user. I'm sure that if you are just starting off doing digital video editing, a 160GB HD will be adequate for your current needs, and you can save some money for other upgrades. 160-200GB is the "sweet spot" in terms of price per GB right now when buying a single HD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specter Posted March 6, 2005 Share Posted March 6, 2005 I'd go with the two 160's over the 300 for a couple of reasons. 1)If the 300GB fails, you lose everything. 2)The 2 smaller drives are easier to manage. 3)You can set up RAID for redundancy and back ups. RAID really doesn't produce a big performance boost. Designed mainly for backing up and data safety. 4)It has been my experience that it is way less of a hassle if something goes wrong to have the two smaller drives, as you won't lose everything if one fails, and replacements are more cost effective. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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