New Samsung 1TB Drive

[CK1]

I have just bought myself a new Samsung 1TB Drive to go in my system. (£98 from Savastore.com)

I have mainly bought this drive as an archive for all my media, ie. video's, music and photographs. I already have 3x 250GB Samsung drives and am wondering what the best configuration for all these drives would be?



I am conscious of the fact that the 1TB drive is going to be a lot quicker than the other drives but as it is only going to be used as an archive the speed benefits of this drive are going to be negated. I have considered putting 2 of the 250GB drives in Raid 0 to increase speed but am not really sure of the benefits here.

I like to keep the system drive (C on it's own hard disk (or disks if I choose Raid 0) with no additional data so that this can be re-formatted / re-built without impacting my data.

No doubt when the cost of 1TB drives comes down further I will buy another one but in the meantime what is the best configuration?

Regards

[peterb]

I'm not sure why you think the 1T drive should be faster than the other drives - in practice I think it unlikely that you will notice any difference.

Same goes for RAID0 - and to configure the drives you will need to backup all the data from them - set them as a RAID, then copy it all back - for negligible practical performance gain (and in some cases, RAID 0 write performance can be worse than a single unstriped drive - particuilarly if ypou are not using a high performance dedicated controller.

Is the data (photographs etc) irreplaceable? I(f so, you might want to consider RAID 1 - either on two of the existing 250GB drives, or buy a second 1T drive - but remember that RAID 1 is NOT a substitute for taking backups.

Or you could use the 1TB drive as a main drive and mount the 250G drives in external caddies for backing up the data.

[arthurleung]

One thing you need to consider, you are going to access the archive on the 1TB drive 3 times more often than the 250GB drives. If you install OS on the 1TB drive, when you access the archive on the 1TB drive, your OS will crawl slowly.

You can install programs/games on the 1TB drive but the OS stay on the 250GB, then you get the best of both worlds.

[peterb]

when you access the archive on the 1TB drive, your OS will crawl slowly.

Slight exaguration!

You can install programs/games on the 1TB drive but the OS stay on the 250GB, then you get the best of both worlds.

Very true.

[CK1]

At the moment I have the System (C:\) on on HDD, I have an archive drive (D:\) for my documents, CD images, downloaded software etc and finally a Media drive (E:\) for movies, music and photos.

The music and photos are backed up to MP3 player and DVD's respectively. I have not bothered to back up movies as they are not irreplaceable.

However I do stream movies from this PC to my HTPC downstairs via Wi-Fi.

I think I will do a transfer of E: to the new 1TB drive and then use the spare drive that creates as an internal backup for D: or Raid 1 the D:

[peterb]

Problem with using a permanently mounted hard drive for backup is that

a. It is being used all the time when the machine is powered up - and so using up its 'life'

b. If ypou have something nasty happen to the machine (component failu=re, power spike or the like) there is a (albeit - small) risk that the backup drive will be damaged at the same time.

Backup should really be an offline process - you connect the drive (or other backup medium) when required. Disadvantages of doing this with a hard drive are

a. If a drive is going to fail, statistically it will fail during the early part of its use, or towards the end of its life, so a new drive that isn't used very much might fail because of this early "burn in" phase.

b. A drive that isn't in regular use all the time might not start up when it is required - but again this is a small risk - but that is no consolation if it happens to you and your irreplaceable photo collection is lost.

The advantages of using two 250G (or if you can afford it - another 1TB drive in RAID 1 is that you do have a dgree of resiliance - but again, RAID is no substitute for backup. For cast iron safety (as much as these things are cast iron) consider backing up to two external drivres, that are mounted as required, or the really important stuff to a flash drive, or DVD - but remember that the archive life of DVD is predicted to be about 10 years at most - some say less, so you need to consider that aspect.

I'm sorry if this comes over as a bit negative, but backup is the one thing people forget until it is too late. A quote I like is "!Hard drives are mechanical components - it isn't a question of if they will fail - it is a question of when - and that is an unknown quantity) I had a narrow escape - but it was a close enough call to make me re-evaluate my backup strategy - I now back up to tape. It was expensive to buy - but n ot when compared with the the alternative (in my case) of using a data recovery specialist. (In the end I didn't have to - but ... )

[Lucio]

You know, in 10+ years of using computers, I've never found myself thinking "wow this hard disk is so much faster than they used to be"

All this talk of access times, latency, seek times etc. is very much marketing hype. Unless you're using these hard drives for some very heavy data crunching (and we're talking files into gigabyte sizes), all that matters is the size

[peterb]

You know, in 10+ years of using computers, I've never found myself thinking "wow this hard disk is so much faster than they used to be"

All this talk of access times, latency, seek times etc. is very much marketing hype. Unless you're using these hard drives for some very heavy data crunching (and we're talking files into gigabyte sizes), all that matters is the size

Yes - a very good point - particularly when looking at a home set up. (Different when you are using high end servers in a commercial environment which can take advantage of the full speeds available from SATA or SAS - where the components will be matched to ensure that everything is optimised, and nothing is over-specified)

[Cosworth]

You know, in 10+ years of using computers, I've never found myself thinking "wow this hard disk is so much faster than they used to be"

All this talk of access times, latency, seek times etc. is very much marketing hype. Unless you're using these hard drives for some very heavy data crunching (and we're talking files into gigabyte sizes), all that matters is the size

VERY TRUE!

[SiM]

Copying big files... Don't you find it faster? I certainly do.
Loading time for games... much faster than it used to be too...

[DDY]

Compared to the 20GB drives I used 10 years ago I can certainly tell the differnce.

[peterb]

Copying big files... Don't you find it faster? I certainly do.
Loading time for games... much faster than it used to be too...

Faster than what - if you mean ten years ago - see below.

Compared to the 20GB drives I used 10 years ago I can certainly tell the differnce.

Not surprising - you are using faster hardware everywhere, disk controllers, processor, improved read/write algorithms in the software, improvements in file systems, and general improvements in disk technology. You aren't comparing like with like.

[SiM]

Not surprising - you are using faster hardware everywhere, disk controllers, processor, improved read/write algorithms in the software, improvements in file systems, and general improvements in disk technology. You aren't comparing like with like.

Even with same hardware, os and a sata to pata converter, it would probably still be faster. And what you have said is besides the point. You are not comparing like with like when you compare P1 to C2D, because of different motherboard; but wouldn't you agree that C2D is faster than P1

[peterb]

Even with same hardware, os and a sata to pata converter, it would probably still be faster.

Key word is probably - but the point was, would it be noticeably faster... (But if you want to connect an old 20GB disk to a modern system and conduct some tests, I'd be interested in the results)

And what you have said is besides the point. You are not comparing like with like when you compare P1 to C2D, because of different motherboard; but wouldn't you agree that C2D is faster than P1

I wasn't comparing anything with anything - I said that there are improvements in hardware and operating systems which would also contribute to a speed increase (perceived or real) So I would expect a modern OS to be faster, but that may not be down solely to the disk drive.

There is also a small psychological effect - in general when we upgrade an OS, or the hardware, we expect a performance increase, and that can colour our judgement.

Aplogies to the OP - we have rather wandered off topic!

[arthurleung]

Slight exaguration!

It gets really interesting with NCQ on and basically my system locks up waiting for the file transfer to finish. I ended up having to switch off NCQ on system.

[peterb]

That may be an NCQ implementation issue. There is a (disputed) article on Wikipaedia that refers to performance issues, and a Google search on NCQ performance issues throws up a few more links.

A very, very broad generalisation would seem to be that it depends on the drive, controller and the type of application! (In other words, no definite conclusions!) Clearly it doesn't work for you!