Hard drives

[Mad5cout]

I am starting to put together a build for a new computer. I never really thought about this until I read something on partitioned hardrives but I am wondering how you guys feel about the dual hardrive situation. Is it necessary? benefits vs cons? I have always used a unpartitioned single drive and never really thought anything of it. Give me your general advice and suggestions and more importantly WHY. I'm not a fan of spending money just to say I have something. The purchase must have purpose. Thanks ahead of time!

[sir_digalot]

partitioned is fine if you want a cheap way to separate say, operating system from data files/video, it also means cutting and pasting is REALLY quick... if you are a frequest o/s installer and cannot spring for a couple of drives ( or do not have the space/ports to plug them in) partitioning is a good wat to ensure you do not lose data on a reformat of the C: drive.

however

should the drive fail you lose everything, unlike having two independant drives in the case of a failure with the latter you only lose data on the failed drive (hopefully the operating system drive) another advantage of seperate drives is space allocation want a bigger drive for data slap in a bigger one and copy the stuff (or just bolt on a new drive like i do) windows will even let you span new drives accross a whole load but i do not recommend that.... better to have seperate drives again in case of failure, with partitioning you often nee da 3rd party partition manager to re allocate space and you are still restricted onthe size of the physical drive....

if you can get 2 smaller drives that fulfill you needs i recommend it over one larger drive that is partitioned and thats purely from a data security point of view...

however i did use partitions for the longest times with no issues, other then when i performed the wrong format or the operating system did it for me ( ahem linux ballzing all my data)

[frank_rizzo]

if ur thinking bout running RAID i would not do it if u use this computer for anything other than gaming.

i partition all the time. its good for keeping my games and stuff away from my other stuff.

[LordBeer]

if ur thinking bout running RAID i would not do it if u use this computer for anything other than gaming.



Curious about why you'd say that. I always thought RAID was a good thing other then the fact it kinda wastes hard drive space. It's always going to find things faster and it will save your data if one of the drives dies on you (depending on the setup). If you want fast load times and have a lot of data you cant live without :thumbsup:

[frank_rizzo]

RAID can cause all kinds of problems. and if a drive dies your data goes by by.

[LordBeer]

RAID can cause all kinds of problems. and if a drive dies your data goes by by.

With RAID 0 that is true but RAID 1 setup would be fine if a drive failed.

[sir_digalot]

raid 0+1and Raid 5 are fine too they tend to be too excessive for home use..

1 example of raid 0 i have 2 80gb sata's and instead of a jbod span i use raid 0 but i wanted 150gb for the operating system drive... all my data is on other drives... i will be changing my motherboard very soon albeit it with an almost identicle model, but i doubt severely that it willpick up the raided discs so i will have to reinstall the o/s.... but sometimes it is better to blow out the cobwebs anyway.

raid 5 has saved our (and millions of other peoples) behind when a server hard drive chokes.... again the issue as was already said with raid it wastes disc space... in my case i would rather have the space then the redundancy since i own all the programs i need and use so reinstallatio is no problem.
as hasbeensaid if the one hard drive dies that is partitioned you still lose ALL your data.