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2 drives or 1?

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  • 2 drives or 1?

    I`m building a new system and have been reading a lot of forums that have a difference of opinion regarding hard drives, so my question is whats the benefits of having 2 Hard drives as opposed to one? Or would one suufice, I`m currently considering 2 80 gb western digital 7200, or 1 120 gb.

    Many Thanks

  • #2
    For the most part, it really comes down to personal preference. Depending on the amount of storage you need, you can do well with either setup.

    But if you're talking RAID, then you can get a bit better performance since the system will be writing to both hard drives simultaneously instead of just a single drive being written to. Of course, if the array goes down, you will likely lose all your data unless you're running a redundant array (like RAID 1 or RAID 0+1).
    Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill
    My Toys

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    • #3
      lol then he'd need 4 80gigs for raid 0 + 1

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      • #4
        I know, but I was giving examples of redundant arrays.
        Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill
        My Toys

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        • #5
          lol good salesman:laugh:

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          • #6
            Thanks Guys, I`ll be honest, I have absolutely no idea what raid is or does, what I was thinking of doing was to have HD 1 (main) with Windows, Norton, Office e.t.c on it and have HD2 just for games as I`m building this system primarily as a gaming system, although I do intend to use it for other things.

            Is there any benifits to doing this?

            Again Many Thanks

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            • #7
              I certainly think so.
              It is common practice to use seperate partitions for Windows and vital apps such as Office and AV programs.
              While using another partition for games, videos, mps's etc. etc.

              That way, when you clean install you only have to redo the partition that Windows resides on -- meanwhile your data lies safely on a seperate partition.

              The same applies to drives as well as partitions.

              With storage costs being what they are currently, you might consider a 3-4Gb system partition, leaving the rest of the drive for apps, games and media. That would leave the other drive available for backing up data. It's cost effective and fast for storing in comparison to burning. and 3 or 4Gb is a plenty for the OS including updates, service packs etc.

              But there are a lot of ways to skin a cat, this method being just 1.
              The reason a diamond shines so brightly is because it has many facets which reflect light.

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              • #8
                I like the idea of getting the two for RAID 0, but your prolly not much into that and its becoming more a thing for really extreme performers with new drives like the WD JB's out now. I'd still recommend the two 80GB (esp if they are JB's) because you can stora all your zipped games (from the legit cd's you bought, of course) service packs, MP3's, and other crap. And 80GB is enough that you could prolly put everything on one drive and its partitions, and back up everything you need duplicates of on the other. Its not likely two drives will go out in the same computer ever... far less likely they will go out simultaneously...

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