HDD Options?

[Devilman]

Its about time I finally upgraded my aging IDE Seagates with some newer drives, but i got a few quesitons.

Ive currently got ..

80gig Baracuda IV (Partitioned as 10gb for OS, the rest for progs / games)
200Gig Baracuda 7200.8 used mainly for storage + some games.

Both drives are IDE and since my DS3 mobo only has a single IDE port, Currently having to use crappy USB external DVD burner, which is a pain too.


Im thinking of buying a WD Caviar Black 640gb drive, but not sure how to utilise it within the system currently..

I could partition the WD Black as say, 10gb (for OS) and the rest for games etc.. but how much performance impact would I likely see compared to having the OS on a seperate drive from the games / programs?

Is it better to put most programs on the same partition as the OS and keep the games seperate on the 2nd partition? (as some progs are commonly running in the background along with the OS, and possibly load on start-up)

Also would it be adviseable to instead use the 200gb seagate (or similar) for OS / Programs drive and then use the 640gb Caviar for games etc.. but I suspect this may still be slower than the WD with 2 partitions on it (1 for OS + Progs, 2nd for Games (plus some storage).

Cheers all

 

[Devilman]

TY all for the info / thoughts, has helped a lot.. I think its probly fair to say (after running HD Tune on my current drives) that yes indeed, even with a partitioned WD Black, itll still be far faster than any other combination of drives I could come up with by a fair margin...

Seagate Baracuda IV 80GB

Seagate 7200.8 200GB

Both these drives are pretty dang slow as seen here, even the 7200.8 is around 1/2 the numbers a WD 640 Black gets. Definatly looks like its only worth using the drives for backup etc..


Something im not too sure of tho, on the "health" page of HD Tune, both my drives still report as "Healthy" tho seem to have large error numbers, is this normal, or a sign of dying drives? (I get no strange noises from the drives etc..)

Are these numbers anythin to be worried about?