how many hhd's?

para08 · 6 Aug 2008 at 00:13

hi,

dunno much at all bout hdd's so was wondering if anyone could help me out here. i use my machine mostly for gaming and have always used one main hd in 2 partitions (half OS, half for games).

now i was thinking of maybe getting 2 hdd's, one for OS other for games. would this be a better option? and would i get better gaming performance with 2 hdd's instead of the 1 partitioned?

thanks in advnce

semi-pro waster · 6 Aug 2008 at 07:24

If you are buying new hard drives you'll probably notice a difference simply because they are new hard drives and technology has advanced.

However I would recommend going for two hard drives if you can, it is easier in the case of a reformat and should be a bit faster because you aren't trying to read/write between partitions on the same physical disk so you can obviously have two drive heads moving independently.

platinum87 · 6 Aug 2008 at 09:27

ive stopped all partitions because its not any faster or cleaner, and its still 1 hard drive, and TBH i use folders instead of partitions, backup partition is ok etc but for general use i wouldnt bother

mdjmcnally · 6 Aug 2008 at 11:05

Personally I go with 3 these days

Disk 1: OS and some Utilities
Disk 2: Apps and Games
Disk 3: CD Images for Virtual Drive and Anyother stuff

This works out quite well for me

NickK · 6 Aug 2008 at 11:22

I always thing that segmenting apps from windows was a waste of time because a windows reinstall means you have to install the application again or the app half works...

domthecondom · 6 Aug 2008 at 13:10

I have 3 Harddrives

2 x 74gb raptors at Raid 0 (OS/GAMES/Programs)
1 x 300gb Seagate Baracuda (My Documents.)

I find that applications don't work as well if you have em on a different Harddrive and then reinstall the OS

jkulas · 6 Aug 2008 at 15:40

I have a somewhat related question. I'm about to invest in a couple of velociraptors and I wanted to get some feedback on the configuration. 1 will be for windows, 1 will be for games and majority of data, media etc will be on a slower 3rd drive.

Where would you put the pagefile? I was thinking since I'm going to be running vista64 with 4gb ram the pagefile wouldn't see much use so it would be better on the first OS drive. Any thoughts?

Saul · 6 Aug 2008 at 15:47

According to CPC, The 750Gb Spinpoint F1 are nearly as fast as the Velociraptors with a lot more space.

sutom · 6 Aug 2008 at 18:00

Is it best to not bother with partitions at all then?

I might get a 750GB or 1TB as a main drive for Vista/Apps/Games/Media, and figure if I wanted to format for a reinstall I'd just reinstall all the apps/games too. But I'd need to copy all the media to several other small drives to back them up....

I'd use a 160GB drive I have for my OS instead but it's probably much slower than a new Samsung F1

para08 · 6 Aug 2008 at 19:42

semi-pro waster said:
If you are buying new hard drives you'll probably notice a difference simply because they are new hard drives and technology has advanced.

However I would recommend going for two hard drives if you can, it is easier in the case of a reformat and should be a bit faster because you aren't trying to read/write between partitions on the same physical disk so you can obviously have two drive heads moving independently.

ah right i see, i'm thinking of getting 2 320GB's now. so would it be a good idea to use one strictly for vista and the other for all games/apps/etc? thx

para08 · 6 Aug 2008 at 19:47

NickK said:
I always thing that segmenting apps from windows was a waste of time because a windows reinstall means you have to install the application again or the app half works...

so if windows is on one drive and everything else another, nothing would be affected with a window reinstall? wouldnt that be the same result as just reinstalling windows to one partition of a hard drive?. i thought the whole idea of partitioning was to make the computer think of 1 hdd as 2?