Single partitioned drive Vs. Multiple drives

Arterion · 15 Jul 2010 at 22:58

Hi all, just a quick question; is there any operational/performance implication for having two separate drives (one for OS, one for storage) as opposed to a single drive partitioned into two pieces?

Muel · 15 Jul 2010 at 23:14

Indeed, one hard drive with two partitions can still only read at the speed of the drive, say 100mbps. If you have something you want from both partitions, that means that the data ll has to fit down one 100mbps cable.

If you have two hard drive instead, you have two 100mbps cables.

whitecrook · 15 Jul 2010 at 23:19

It's particulary handy when decompressing large archives i.e read from one drive and write to the other.

d_brennen · 15 Jul 2010 at 23:26

Redundancy is also important to consider

thepeganator · 15 Jul 2010 at 23:32

I have four drives with various things on each, wouldn't even think of going back to a single drive, a 2tb would be the same as what I have in total now, but I have the option of backing things up, extra speed, easier reinstalls etc etc.

AbsenceJam · 16 Jul 2010 at 00:42

A drive can only do one thing at a time so if you're using it for everything it gets thrashed like mad, even a some slow downloading can cause that. More drives the better.

andy.scott · 16 Jul 2010 at 11:32

Multiple drives every time.