Single, Double or Partition hard drives?

[Mippie]

hi,

im just finalising my new system and i have one last question. I have pretty much decided on running with the seagate 7200.10 250GB HDD as one of my drives, but still unsure whether or not to have another drive for the OS or Partition the seagate. Or if another drive is a good idea what is the recommendation and why?

thankyou in advance

 

[semi-pro waster]

If you have 2 drives then you can have the swap file on a different drive which (providing the drive itself is fast) ought to speed it up.

I don't bother to partition my drives but there are good arguments for doing so, particularly if you may want to re-install say the Windows partition only and leave games/mp3s on another.

 

[FatRakoon]

Agreed.

I myself, if I had just that one 250GB HD, would partition it.

I find it almost stupid to not have it partitined because should you need to reinstall it, unless you canmagically kill off the windows folder somehow, and also the MyDocs etc folders, and still leave all your data, you are stuffed and will end up with a knackered install that you cant really get rid of fully, or, your new installation will be in a foolder called Windows.000 or something, making your setup a bit poo.

I myself use Multiple HDs.

For example, on my main PC, I am currently using

SATA 0 =
C: @ 8GB - This has Windows and system tools only
T: @ 60GB - This has my ISOs and installation stuff

SATA 1 =
D: = Apps & Games

SATA 2 =
E: = Media

SATA 3 =
F: = Junk - I use this for backing up anything from My Docs ( Which is kept as clean as possible at all times ) plus my EMails and is also used for my downloads etc

Using multiple HDs also speeds quite a few thigns up too!

For example, I have 4 DVDRW Drives in my main PC, and I can burn 4 DVDs at any one time, or burn 3 and use one to watch a movie perhaps, but also I can burn 4 DVDs, and defrag the drives too, I avoid defragging a drive if I am burning just in case, but at the same time, as those jobs, I can quite happily convert an AVI Movie to DVD perhaps and at the same time, I can also play a game of Doom3 or HalfLife2 for example.

I cannot do half that stuff anywhere near as well if I had just the one HD, but having a number of drives has allowed me to do them... In fact, a Barton 25 on an NF7S Mobo can do things like this on multiple HDs a hell of a lot better than my x2-4400 can do it one one HD, so thats shows you how much better a system can be with multiple HDs.

I will never go back to a single HD, I would rather spend that little extra and get 2 drives.

Oh, and if you do get 2 drives, use them on seperate lines Seperate controlers if possible... The benefits wont be as good if they share the same cable, especially if oyu are trying to read and write on the same cable to/from multiple devices.