What's your hard drive set up?

Associate
Joined
30 Jun 2009
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Location
Norwich
I'm still struggling to decide on how to arrange my storage.

1. I want and ssd for os (but what size)
2. a raid set up maybe for my games
3. just a large drive for movies/music etc

main concern is speed/size/price for ssd. if I go for a 128 crucial then alright for the money good read/write but I wouln't be able to install my games on there as well as my os. the 256mb is too much at mo and there's no speed differences :(

how are you running your drives?
 
Associate
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25 Oct 2007
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Get as big a ssd as you can afford and if you run out of space just put the games that don`t fit on the data drive.

I run 16GB ssd for OS (don`t game) and normal HDD for data.
 
Soldato
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3 Apr 2007
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7,262
Location
South of the Watford Gap!
OS/General Crap/TEMP/Secondary Backup = 2 x 500gb Seagate 7200.11 (partitioned as 80gb for OS and the rest for the rest :))
User Profiles/User Data = 1.5tb Seagate 7200.11
Music/Videos = 1.5tb Seagate 7200.11

Edit: I only purchased the 2 1.5tb disks a few months ago and with my son downloading any old crap 1 of them is already two-thirds full so might be looking at getting another pair.
 
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Soldato
Joined
9 Feb 2009
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Location
Sunny Fife
2x Wd RE3 320gb in RAID0 for os/games I would have liked smaller drives for this but I got them at a good price on the MM. 215 max Transfer rate, avg 165, burst speed ~1900 with an 11.6 access time. Nothing on these drives is of importance i.e. I can lose it all & not bother.
1x500gb Samsung Spinpoint f1 for Media/backup.
1x500gb WD Blue for Media/backup.
Going to add another 1-2tb soon for movies/backup & maybe get some offsite backing up too for important stuff.
 
Associate
Joined
28 Jun 2004
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845
Location
Sheffield
2*640GB WD Blue + 2*640GB WD Blue external hardrive backup + 3*500GB seagate in a PC at my parents for off-site backups.

First 640GB split 20/64/512 GiB for OS, files, music
Second 640GB split 20/64/512 GiB for games, downloads, films

I'll be getting an Intel 80GB SSD shortly for OS and games and building a fileserver/download box with the external harddrives when I can afford to, but am just applying for a mortgage right now, so might be skint for a while!
 
Soldato
Joined
17 Jan 2005
Posts
3,822
Location
London
Main comp
1x WD Black 500GB - OS, Games, Apps
1x Seagate 250GB - data from old computer

Server
1x WD Green RE3 500GB - OS (+ duplication)
1x WD Green 1TB - data

I'm probably going to replace the OS drive in my main rig with a 128GB SSD in the next few months and maybe add another 1TB drive to the server.
 
Associate
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28 Jan 2009
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400
Location
Gloucestershire
Pretty much the same as Nightwish! 2x WD 640GB blue. I don't have any backup drives though. Got a 120GB esata that i suppose i could use for backup if i needed it.

Drive 1: 640GB partition, system drive (install all programs there)
Drive 2: 3GB pagefile partition. ~300GB data partition, ~250GB "archives" partition, for install files and things.

Going to take a ghost image of my system drive tonight, and keep it for when i next rebuild. Much easier to do it like that.

I also have a little barebones thing for a file/print/download server. Just got an old 80GB seagate for OS, and a 500GB WD SE for data. :)

I've seen some benchmarks for RAID, and with all onboard raid being software, it doesn't really make that much of a difference. I toyed with the idea, but I decided that its not worth the hassle.
 
Soldato
Joined
11 Jul 2007
Posts
2,524
Gaming PC - 80GB Intel x25-m g2 boot drive + 320GB Samsung F1
HTPC - 500GB
Laptop - 250GB
File Server - 2x500gb RAID1 boot array + 8x 1TB Samsung F1 storage array in hardware RAID 5.
 
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Soldato
Joined
6 May 2009
Posts
19,885
1.C 500GB OS (but only around 20gb OS and programs, rest is media and junk)
2.D 120GB Games
3.G 500GB Media Backup
4.H 250GB OS backup (acronis clone every few weeks)
5.I 1000GB External

A Velociraptor 150 should be arriving soon which i plan to put my OS. Then Ill be selling my 2 500GB drives and getting a 2tb or somthing
 
Associate
Joined
16 Jan 2006
Posts
617
My new system,

Kingston V SSD 64GB - Boot
500GB Maxtor Sata - Work, Documents
1TB Maxtor Sata - Photoshop, Movies, Pics, Games
500GB Desktop Freeagent - Backup

Im thinking of getting one of those 2TB WD RE4 disks for storing HD movies and just large files.

Storage is cheap these. :D
 
Soldato
Joined
13 Jun 2009
Posts
4,230
Location
My own head
Currently running

2 X 500GB Western Digital Blacks (RAID 0) (OS DRIVE)
1 X 250GB Western Digitial (Internal Sata 2)
1 x 500GB Western Digital Green (External USB Drive)

I was thinking of maybe taking my Raid setup down so that I can partition one 500GB nicely... and monitor the temperatures. Anyone reckon ill see a significant performance decrease from de-raiding?

Also, as for SSD costs I was just reading an article about them -

SSD Drives are doubling in capacity every year and with flash material costs steadily decreasing by 50% a year, it means the Solid State Drive is getting cheaper by the minute.

Netbooks are a big part of SSD Drive sales and represent the fastest growing PC segment in 2009. It is predicted that over the next few years the SSD will become more affordable and continue to become more popular in markets such as PC and Mobile PC technology.

Already this year Toshiba’s Digital Products Division announced its latest laptop configured with a 512GB Solid State Drive for the Portégé R600-ST4203. Toshiba’s newest development shows its aim at pushing innovation as it has increased SSD capacities on laptops from 32GB to 512GB in two years.

Rich Heye, senior vice president and general manager for solid-state drives at SanDisk, said in a statement, "With the significant improvements in performance, capacity and low pricing, these SSDs are a perfect fit for the exploding Netbook market." And with the arrival of the 1TB SSD Drive from pureSilicon at the CES 2009 this year, it is likely that we will soon be seeing Netbooks and other devices with increasing capacities of SSD Memory.
I'm waiting for 2010 to consider SSD setups, most likely Q3 for me.
 
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Associate
Joined
27 Jun 2008
Posts
335
This is my setup: Considering the relatively cheap price of storage these days I have a separate drive for each type of resources.

1 60 GB Agility SSD for windows 7 x64 bit, Office 2007 etc.
1 Samsung F1 320GB for my documents (7 years of teaching resources mainly)
1 Samsung F1 750GB for videos, films, photos.
1 Samsung F1 500GB for essential backups.
 
Associate
Joined
12 Mar 2004
Posts
294
Location
UK
1 x 320GB WD Blue - OS/Apps/Games
1 x 640GB WD Blue - Data
1 x 750GB Maxtor One Touch4 External - Backup (Full backup done every night)

I spent years running motherboard RAID in various flavours and the hassle has always outweighed the (negligible) performance benefits. Proper HW RAID with a decent controller would be a different story, but an SSD would probably be better in terms of simplicity and performance. Will likely go down that route on the next major build sometime next year.
 
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