1 Hard Drive or 2

[Jackson3D]

What are the advatages/disadvatages.

Thanks for all your help!


Me

[Susan]

There are no disdvantages if you set up the older slower drive on IDE2 with your CDROM drive, just advantages...A good reliable backup...and a place to store downloads and large files. If the 2nd drive is set up as bootable in the beginning and you happen to have trouble with your primary, then all that is needed to be up and running is a couple of jumpers. /forum/smile.gif

[Mr_Wobble]

I agree with Susan. 2 drives are soooo useful. My sysetem runs two HD's, an 8.4 and 4.3. The D: drive is set up with Windows, and all my favourite software, and can be booted from incase of problems with the C: drive.
I do regular backups of all my important files between them. It only takes 5 mins a week for a hell of a lot of peace of mind. Can you imagine backing up all your downloads, downloaded patches, favourites/bookmarks, letters, databases, spreadsheets, save games, photos, emails, etc onto a zip drive or floppies, and how long it'd take?
However, for less than the price of two reasonably sized drives, you can get one huge one which'll be bigger than both of them together.
The questions you've got to ask yourself are. 1/ Do I need backup? 2/ If it crashes/breaks do I need to be able to get it running again within minutes? If you answer yes to both, then buy 2. If not, buy 1.
/forum/smile.gif

[Mr_Wobble]

I agree with Susan. 2 drives are soooo useful. My sysetem runs two HD's, an 8.4 and 4.3. The D: drive is set up with Windows, and all my favourite software, and can be booted from incase of problems with the C: drive.
I do regular backups of all my important files between them. It only takes 5 mins a week for a hell of a lot of peace of mind. Can you imagine backing up all your downloads, downloaded patches, favourites/bookmarks, letters, databases, spreadsheets, save games, photos, emails, etc onto a zip drive or floppies, and how long it'd take?
However, for less than the price of two reasonably sized drives, you can get one huge one which'll be bigger than both of them together.
The questions you've got to ask yourself are. 1/ Do I need backup? 2/ If it crashes/breaks do I need to be able to get it running again within minutes? If you answer yes to both, then buy 2. If not, buy 1.
/forum/smile.gif

[drojman]

I use 2 hard drives, and I use the 2nd one for all of my backups etc. that way , if I have a crash, i don't lose everything. I don't have windows installed on it, but that could be a good Idea too.

[GB]

I have 1 HD, but thinking to get another one.
My reasons:
First HD:for Win9x, programs,
2nd:files you create, downloads etc-for stuff that you don't have Cds, etc.
Somethings happens with win9x, you reinstall win9x, programs from CDs you have.
In case you want to sell PC, just take out HD with all stuff you created and put in your new PC. You can not take out lets say partition with files you need from HD in PC you decided to get rid off.

Thats my opinion that 2 HD can be very usefull.

[GB]

.

[This message has been edited by GB (edited 08-30-99).]

[Ed_S]

More is better! Lots of good reasons already given, throw in my 2 cents anyway.
Currently running 3 HD's, with one mounted in removeable rack so can swap in others as needed or can take that one to other PC. Yanking it doesn't disable this machine, and can put it in another w/o messing up OS in either machine!

[BigMac]

I have 4 HDs and 2 CDs, thanks to my ATA 66 card.

[sunman]

well... get a BIG harddrive if you want..
PARTITION it!~
if primary partition gets Infected by virus..
the secondary will be safe.. same for Another harddrive.

[BBA]

You can get a performance boost with 2 drives by putting your swap file on the second drive.

And: If a virus was to infect a primary partition on a drive with 2 partitions, it could still require a complete wipe out of the whole drive.

BBA

[Jackson3D]

Thanks for all the help.

So with all this fresh in your minds what would you do: 1 Large 27.3Gb or more (partitioned) or say : 2-15Gb

keep the comments coming /forum/smile.gif

[SysOpt]

RE: http://www.promise.com/Products/ideraid/ft66page.htm

There's a brand new reason why running two drives may be better than one. Promise Technology has just come out with an Ultra ATA/66 card called the FastTrak66, which offers RAID 0 striping, RAID 1 mirroring, and RAID 10 striping+mirroring. For one thing, redundancy is nice to have if you need it, but even more interesting is striping.

Striping allows you to link multiple drives together as one virtual drive. For example, two 9GB's would be seen by the OS as an 18GB drive. Using that method, Promise claims to be able to double sustained data transfer rates compared to using a single drive. We'll try to review one and let you know how it pans out.

Scott