Adding a third HD?

[Nick F]

Right, I need some advice. I have got one SATA drive and one IDE drive. Together they have got a combined limit of 370GB. I am however nearly running out of space and need to buy another HD to let me extend my storage.

Would the best thing be to pick up another SATA drive and run them in sync and make the IDE a backup drive?

Any opions please!

[Nick F]

anyone know any good links on information regarding RAID?

[unrealrocks]

If you just want more space - just shove in a SATA drive and run them sepearetely ... RAID is a pain and if you can live with having several drives you might as well.

I have 7 HDDs in my PC and none of them are RAIDed and I live fine.

[chriswood_7]

Hey guys

Just seeking a bit of advice of my own. Im hoping to buy an 80GB SATA driver this weekend, and I already have a 120GB IDE.. Is there much performance difference, ie will I benefit from anything other than more space?

Cheers

Chris

[egg]

There's not really a big performance difference in both types of drive. Also raid 0 doesn't seem to make much difference speed wise either. One benefit is the sata cable is a lot thinner than an ide therefore slightly easier to hide.

[chriswood_7]

And thats seriously it? I thought the transfer rate was a lot higher?!

Think ill just get an IDE to be honest mate...

Chris

[noveltylamp]

The thinner SATA cables allow better airflow. Depending on your usage RAID may make a difference, i used to have a RAID array then sold one drive off, the difference i noticed was when trying to load up lots of things at once it took longer, however just launching one thing at a time was the same speed.

If there's no price difference go for SATA for future-proofing.

SATA allows a max burst speed of 150mb/s, compared with 100 / 133 for normal ATA100 or ATA133 drives.

Of course, your drives never reach that speed so that doesn't really matter much at the moment.

[RDL]

It's not worth setting up RAID, unless you can backup your existing drive, since you will lose all of the data when you setup the RAID.

[chriswood_7]

Well I have rounded IDE cables anyways, and they are all hidden away as Ive already maximised the airflow efficiency in my case. I think its pretty pointless me bothering until I upgrade my current drive in a few years time or so!

Cheers for the advice though

Chris