Is a single 1TB HD particularly bad?

Crashgate3

Crashgate3

Crashgate3

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I was intending to use a single 1TB HD for my new rebuild, but I've heard bandied about that a single 7200rpm drive is very slow.

My current system is Athlon X2 4400 based and still uses DDR400 (which gives you an idea of the age - about 2 years old, just as DDR2 was getting popular) and has a 120GB 7200rpm disk as the primary and a 200GB 7200rpm disk as a secondary. Both are used for both data and installs really, as I don't have a tidy enough demeanour to ensure everything stays on the appropriate drive.

My new system is probably going to be Nehalem based and a bit of a beast so will I start to see real slow-down with a single drive in which the storage capacity is cutting edge, but still essentially uses 3 year old tech to get the data into memory, compared to the rest of the stop-spec components?

I don't really want to mess about with RAID 0 - I've not lost a drive yet but don't really want to tempt fate and I don't have the funds to try 0+1.

I suppose after all the waffling above, my question is: How much faster would buying something like a Raptor for the boot drive be?
 
It's fine as long as you have a decent backup method eg. external HD.

A Raptor would boot faster, and would also have quicker seek times, but if you don't need cutting edge tech then any 7200rpm drive is more then adequate.
 
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Do you have to back everything up manually if you just have a 'backup drive'? As I really don't have the patience and would rather have a slower drive than have to go through all that. Also, RAID + a backup means buying three drives to do the job of one.
 
Yes a single 1TB drive is not the wisest idea. Have a fast boot drive such as a single platter 320GB, and keep the data on the 1TB drive seperate.
 
Meh depends what you are going to do with it. If its just games just waiting an extra few seconds for the next part to load really worth paying extra for ? Its still going to be a lot faster than your current PC.
 
No matter what drives you use don't forget backup, backup, backup...I use a program call Beyond compare to mirror my data drive to another drive and then backed that second drive up to an external drive. All pretyy automatic with the right software. Cost about £30 in total for software.

Cheers
 
I run on my desktop (not my sig) a 74Gb Raptor (10k) for windows and games which improves boot up and loading times. Then I have a 640Gb disk for work/music/video and all the other gubbins you have on a pc.

But in all honesty having a 1TB disk isn't going to slow you down.
 
it won't "be slow"

i'd be tempted to get 2x 640gb drives instead though, and keep one as a backup of important data.

robocopy is free (and part of vista), for backing up quickly & easily..


robocopy /e "C:\Users\bledd\Documents" "D:\Backup\bledd\Documents"
robocopy /e "C:\Users\bledd\Music" "D:\Backup\bledd\Music"
robocopy /e "C:\Users\bledd\Pictures" "D:\Backup\bledd\Pictures"
robocopy /e "C:\Users\bledd\Videos" "D:\Backup\bledd\Videos"


if you saved that in a notepad file, as backups.bat, each time you ran the file it would copy new & updated files to the location specified on D:\

the first run would copy the lot

^then if you only added/updated 5 files in documents, and 2 in Music, only those would be copied (so each backup following the first, is super fast)




or get a 1tb, and a 640gb for backup


backup, backup, backup, backup, backup, backup, backup, backup, backup, backup, backup, backup, backup, backup, backup

it's gay if you lose everything, and you'll kick yourself
 
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bledd:
I use the /MIR switch in my robocopy bat file and it works very well, but crashgate; read the robocopy docs before implementing as a switch in the wrong place or something and you could end up removing huge swathes of folders.
 
if for whatever reason, all music files are deleted from your main drive, the /MIR switch would delete them all on the backup drive

/MIR has it's uses, but for me I'd rather have a backup that is 'too big' by keeping old files (i tend not to delete anything anyway, but still)
 
yeah, in gpedit.msc there's a 'log off script' i think it's under

i just keep mine in the quick-launch menu and run it when i've moved new files to my 'locations'
 
If you open an MMC console:

Start -> Run -> type mmc

Then Add/Remove Snap-in

Then you can add the Local Computer Policy Snap in (in Vista it is called Group Policy Object Editor) and assign a Logoff Script

T
 
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