Advantages of Multiple HDs?

Frame352 · 14 Mar 2008 at 22:49

Hi folks,

Just a question out of curiosity really, but I see many proposed or recommended specs in the general hardware section, where multiple hard drives are listed.

What, if any, are the advantages to this? I'm not talking RAID btw, I mean where someone will say they'll use disk X for their OS and programs, disk Y for games, and disk Z for media etc.

Probably a very common-sensical reason, but as I say, I was just curious

rpstewart · 14 Mar 2008 at 22:58

Multiple disks means multiple sets of read/write heads so if things are laid out properly you don't get the same problems with concurrent I/O as you do on a single disk.

For example I have all my photos on one RAID array but the Lightroom database that they're catalogued in on another array. This means when I import a new set into Lightroom the RAID5 array is reading flat out while the RAID0 array is writing the thumbnails etc flat out. Do that on a single drive and the heads have to read then move then write then move then read again and that vastly increases the time taken since the moves take far longer than the reads and writes.

Mattus · 15 Mar 2008 at 02:31

I'm considering getting a second drive for my OS and basic programs, because it annoys me that even with a powerful CPU and 4GB RAM, the whole thing slows to a crawl when a program is using the HD intensively.

sosrandom · 15 Mar 2008 at 18:17

If you have say 3 drives you can used 2 for backup and 1 for the OS + Programs. In my experience the OS drive usually breaks first also, even recently I had 2 WD500GB AAKS brought at the same time and the OS one went.
I now have 4 drives after getting another and getting one returned, so It means I can uses 1 for the OS and have backups if any break without having to resort to raid.

NathanE · 15 Mar 2008 at 19:45

If one drive fails you don't lose all of your stuff...

More disk heads are better than one for performance/concurrency...

Frame352 · 15 Mar 2008 at 22:23

Okay, thanks for the feedback guys.

I'm guessing then, that apart from not losing all my stuff, an average user like me (games, internet, MS Office), isn't going to see any real benefit?