Hard disk upgrade question...

[tickleonthetum]

I'm trying to work out what Hard disk Drives (HDD)s to get as part of my system upgrade. My problem is, do I get 2 HDDs, one small for windows and one big for all the data (saved games, my work, music, videos, etc..) -]OR[- do I get separate drives for each category of data?

At the moment I have 1 200Gb HDD split into 2 partitions:

C: = Windows, Applications, Games
D: = Our Data (Everything else!)

When I upgrade I want to seperate the data out as shown below:

C: = Windows, Applications, Games
D: = My Documents, Saved Games, My Pictures, My Music, My Videos, etc.
E: = My Work / Data
F: = Multimedia Storage (I want to put my 400+ CDs on the computer to listen to, and some DVDs, etc.)
G: = Downloads (Stuff being downloaded and waiting to be backed up)

Here's a break down of my thinking so far:

5 Separate Drives = 5 x 320Gb at £35.55 each = £177.75

+ Faster
+ Safer (if one goes only that data is lost, easily replace with new drive)
+ Little bit easier to backup
- Each drive will be of a fixed size.

2 drives = 1 x 320Gb + 1 x 1.5Tb at £35.55 + £94.98 = £130.53

+ Sizes of sections can be varied
- Not safest (all our eggs in one basket)
- Little bit harder to back up

I can't decide which to go for! The cost isn't the most important factor, so other things come in to play. My priorities are Performance, safety, cost (up to £200).

The drives mentioned are all from Scan 320gb = Seagate 332048AS SATA 3Gb/s NCQ, 1.5Tb = Seagate ST31500341AS SATA 3Gb/s NCQ.

The Rest of the upgrade is i7 920 + TRUE + 2 Fans @ 3.8GHz OC. Asus P6T Deluxe V2, 6Gb DDR3-1600 CAS 8 RAM + Corsair HS/F, Sapphire 4890 1Gb 950/4000 Graphics card, SB X-Fi PCI-E Audio card, LG GH22NS40 22x DVD R/RW. To be purchased end July - end August on Scan Finance. Next year I hope to spend the same again on a 2nd GPU in Crossfire, a watercooling case & system, and a 24" Monitor.

What do you all think is the best route to take? please.

[aidanjt]

If you want to play it safe, get 3x320GB disks and run them in RAID5 for OS/Apps/Games/Data, and a separate 1TB disk for data backups.

[tickleonthetum]

If you want to play it safe, get 3x320GB disks and run them in RAID5 for OS/Apps/Games/Data, and a separate 1TB disk for data backups.

3 x 320 would be insufficient for my needs. Also I do my back ups to DVD, but may get either an external HDD or DAT/DLT system next year.

Intend to have several Apps., approx. 10 games, Windows 7 Pro and associated data on drive C. Drive F will have over 400 CDs ripped onto it and a dozen DVDs as 700Mb DIVX's, and few other bits and bobs. I also wish to keep my downloads and my work on separate drives to avoid cross contamination during writes.

I am not keen on RAID systems as they introduce new performance and usability problems. RAID 5 is slower for example because of the parity system, and also when lots of writes take place that are smaller the the stripe size. Also you lose the space of 1 drive to the parity system so I would need 6 320Gb drives!

[tickleonthetum]

Anothe person suggested something like this:

1 x 320Gb System Drive
1 x 640Gb My Data Drive (partitioned into 2)
1 x 640Gb Multimedia & Download Drive (Partitioned into 2)

This might work for me.

Backups
The problem with backing up onto a hard drive is you need a drive big enough to equal the drives you have in the PC, so say a 1.5Tb, but then you only have one backup copy. I have learn't from experience that this is folly. I used to maintain a single set of backups and unknown to me several hundred files had had their contents corrupted. So when I overwrote the backup with a new one I destroyed the good backup with the corrupt one, thus losing those files forever. So now I keep rolling backups, every new set is archived. This way if I go to the most recent backup copy and that is corrupt, then I can go to an older copy, and so on until I find the original uncorrupted version.

Performance
My thinking behind the performance issues is that if I am playing a game that accesses the system and data drives frequently, and downloading from the net while playing MP3s, then having each of these on seperate drives is going to make the system a lot faster as otherwise the HHDs head has got jump about all over the place trying to keep up!

[peterb]

<---snip

Backups
The problem with backing up onto a hard drive is you need a drive big enough to equal the drives you have in the PC, so say a 1.5Tb, but then you only have one backup copy. I have learn't from experience that this is folly. I used to maintain a single set of backups and unknown to me several hundred files had had their contents corrupted. So when I overwrote the backup with a new one I destroyed the good backup with the corrupt one, thus losing those files forever. So now I keep rolling backups, every new set is archived. This way if I go to the most recent backup copy and that is corrupt, then I can go to an older copy, and so on until I find the original uncorrupted version.
snip---->

Not if you compress the data into a single archive - you could use Winzip for that. The problem with having a backup drive permanently connected (and I know you didn't say that you do) is that it is always on and therefore wearing out - and also subject to the risk of being overwritten accidentally.

[dodgybob]

If your budget is up to &#163;200, you could buy 4x 1tb drives if Scan matches ebuyer's current price for the Hitachi drives. Should be enough space what ever set up you chose to have with those. You might even find 3 of them sufficient with one as system and the two others in a raid 1 mirror.