Benefits of having 2 hardrives?

tomanders91 · 30 Dec 2006 at 15:53

What is the benifit of having two hardrives? On my new computer i was just going to get a single 320gb or 400gb but some people have said get two seperate ones for different things. How would they work though? would there be two HD's on my computer and then i just just install games on one?

thanks

Freakitchen · 30 Dec 2006 at 16:38

I like to have more than one hard drive in my main PC, the main purpose being to keep the operating system separate from data. I have a smaller Seagate drive (80GB) that is for my operating system and programs only, and two other larger drives for data. Should I need to format, no need to worry about my data.

I don't see much point in installing programs on a separate drive. Should you have to wipe the OS drive, most of those installations will no longer work, because of a new registry.

All that said, larger drives are now much better value in terms of £ per Gigabyte, and it's up to you whether you think it's worth getting less value from a smaller hard drive to achieve this.

FK

sic6six · 30 Dec 2006 at 23:31

to be honest i was glad i got 2 drives. for one if the drive heads screw up then thats the drive gone, including the data and anything else on there. some drives wll allow you to access certain partitions if the heads work but its not always possible. the best thing about more than one drive has plenty of advantages. harder for viruses to spread through files, faster access to information. fales are secure if you need to re-install the OS. plus if you have more than 2 you can backup your data to another drive easily enough making it harder to lose data. although you can go SATA and raid the drives (if they are the same size drives of course

ernysmuntz · 1 Jan 2007 at 20:38

sic6six said:
to be honest i was glad i got 2 drives. for one if the drive heads screw up then thats the drive gone, including the data and anything else on there. some drives wll allow you to access certain partitions if the heads work but its not always possible. the best thing about more than one drive has plenty of advantages. harder for viruses to spread through files, faster access to information. fales are secure if you need to re-install the OS. plus if you have more than 2 you can backup your data to another drive easily enough making it harder to lose data. although you can go SATA and raid the drives (if they are the same size drives of course

what are you talking about, everything you said either made no sense, was an innacurate myth or just plain wrong.

This guy from reading his post doesn't seem to have the first idea about why he wants to have 2 drives. I would recommend just getting one, if you don't know why you need 2, then you definately don't need 2.

Justintime · 1 Jan 2007 at 20:41

Well he may not have the best of knowledge but theres no reason to rag on him so badly.

fales are secure if you need to re-install the OS. plus if you have more than 2 you can backup your data to another drive easily enough making it harder to lose data

That actually made sense.

rapid64k · 1 Jan 2007 at 22:38

I also use 2 hard drives for some of the above mentioned reasons.

keybaud · 1 Jan 2007 at 23:34

Freakitchen said:
I like to have more than one hard drive in my main PC, the main purpose being to keep the operating system separate from data. I have a smaller Seagate drive (80GB) that is for my operating system and programs only, and two other larger drives for data. Should I need to format, no need to worry about my data.

I don't see much point in installing programs on a separate drive. Should you have to wipe the OS drive, most of those installations will no longer work, because of a new registry.

All that said, larger drives are now much better value in terms of £ per Gigabyte, and it's up to you whether you think it's worth getting less value from a smaller hard drive to achieve this.
FK

I normally just use 1 drive and partition it 3 ways; Operating System on a small partition, Applications on a larger one and Data on the largest.

I can reinstall the OS easily, whilst still keeping the apps and data. I can also backup my data easily, if/when needed. I also keep all my install files on the Data drive to save time reinstalling, etc.

snowdog · 1 Jan 2007 at 23:35

Offcourse 2 is better, you can work with 2 disks instead of one at once wich means double speed, you can raid em too and you can use one just as a backup for if the other would fail.

Only reason not to get it is if its more expensive to buy ( depends on size, 2x 250 for example is cheaper as 1x 500) and if your pc doesnt support it ( be it power or heat or not enough connectors or whatever )

semi-pro waster · 2 Jan 2007 at 11:01

snowdog said:
Offcourse 2 is better, you can work with 2 disks instead of one at once wich means double speed, you can raid em too and you can use one just as a backup for if the other would fail.

Just as a slight caveat to this, if you have two IDE/ATA hard drives on the same channel then you can only have sending data at the time as they send in parallel down the chain. This is not a problem with SATA since there is only one drive per channel but I'm just highlighting it as possible in case.

I'd still say the benefits of multiple hard drives were such that it can make sense to go for them but they probably aren't necessary for everyone. It does make it a lot easier to keep backups if you create a copy of important files on the second hard drive since the chances of both drives failing at once are slim without a catastrophic power surge or similar, of course though you should properly have a defined backup strategy with off-site media but being realistic most people don't. Another possible benefit that I don't see mentioned is that you can move the page file onto the second hard drive which is normally a faster setup.

Banzai_Joe · 2 Jan 2007 at 11:26

I was gonna start a thread about the paging file, but if i may, i'll tag it onto here as it is related to having 2 drives.
I was wondering whether moving the page file to a 2nd sata drive would increase performance significantly on my setup of; E6600, Gigabyte DS4, 2Gb pc5300 ram and well any (yet to be purchased) two sata drives?

semi-pro waster · 2 Jan 2007 at 11:31

I can't really add much to what Microsoft say on the matter so just click on the link. I'm not sure about significant gains especially if you have a lot of Ram but it can't hurt anyway.

Banzai_Joe · 2 Jan 2007 at 11:42

SPW, thanks dude, a most informative read.

aardvark · 2 Jan 2007 at 12:20

definitely get 2 hard drives, then when one fails you at least have the other until you get back up and running - i had one hard drive fail earlier in the year and one that is about to fail now so its well worth having lots of backup options.