Multiple hard-drives instead of one

  • Thread starter Thread starter philo
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philo

Sam said:
I'm planning on building a new computer for my wife. A friend of hers
told her that buying 2 - 250gig hard-drives would be much faster than
just getting one 500gig drive. No RAID configurations are anticipated.

I'm doubtful, though. I'd think that unless you just happen to access
data that exists on both drives at the same time, that there really
wouldn't be much difference. It also seems to me that 2 - 250gig drives
would use more power and generate more heat than a single 500gig drive.

So, is there a correct answer? Or, does it really make no difference at
all.
Click to expand...


The number of non-RAID drives will not make any difference in speed..
but I'd probably use two drives anyway...
A 2nd drive could be used to backup data ...though of course you'd still
need to back up to CD or DVD
 
I'm planning on building a new computer for my wife. A friend of hers
told her that buying 2 - 250gig hard-drives would be much faster than
just getting one 500gig drive. No RAID configurations are anticipated.

I'm doubtful, though. I'd think that unless you just happen to access
data that exists on both drives at the same time, that there really
wouldn't be much difference. It also seems to me that 2 - 250gig drives
would use more power and generate more heat than a single 500gig drive.

So, is there a correct answer? Or, does it really make no difference at
all.

Thanks.

Sam
 
I'm planning on building a new computer for my wife. A friend of hers
told her that buying 2 - 250gig hard-drives would be much faster than
just getting one 500gig drive. No RAID configurations are anticipated.

I'm doubtful, though. I'd think that unless you just happen to access
data that exists on both drives at the same time, that there really
wouldn't be much difference. It also seems to me that 2 - 250gig drives
would use more power and generate more heat than a single 500gig drive.

So, is there a correct answer? Or, does it really make no difference at
all.
Click to expand...
It's always better for recovery and backup purposes to have multiple
drives, unless you are willing to lose all data when a single drive
fails.

--Vic
 
Currently she backs up nightly to an external hard-drive. So, the second
drive would only be used for data, etc. She does web-pages and wanted to
have her projects separate. I know we could partition a large hard-drive
to create the same effect. However, her friend insists that having two
separate drives is the fastest way to go.

So, does this scenario change the equation at all?
Click to expand...

Well two drives will not make the system faster...
so as long as the user is backing up every day...might as well just get one
drive...

it's the same amount of storage but less money
 
I'm planning on building a new computer for my wife. A friend of hers
told her that buying 2 - 250gig hard-drives would be much faster than
just getting one 500gig drive. No RAID configurations are anticipated.

I'm doubtful, though. I'd think that unless you just happen to access
data that exists on both drives at the same time, that there really
wouldn't be much difference.
Click to expand...

True, but it's not hard to do that. Pagefile on 2nd drive,
apps on 2nd drive, data on a drive opposite the apps, etc.


It also seems to me that 2 - 250gig drives
would use more power and generate more heat than a single 500gig drive.
Click to expand...

Negligably so.

So, is there a correct answer? Or, does it really make no difference at
all.
Click to expand...

2 x 250 is better than one 500
People working with larger files and heavy multitasking may
even benefit from 3 or more drives.
 
Well two drives will not make the system faster...
Click to expand...

Yes it will, because it is never a case that only one file
is being read. Load any application, you get windows files
and the app files loading. You also get pagefile access
even if only to allocate memory that goes unused. Two
drives are unquestionably faster than one.
 
The number of non-RAID drives will not make any difference in speed..
but I'd probably use two drives anyway...
A 2nd drive could be used to backup data ...though of course you'd still
need to back up to CD or DVD
Click to expand...

Currently she backs up nightly to an external hard-drive. So, the second
drive would only be used for data, etc. She does web-pages and wanted to
have her projects separate. I know we could partition a large hard-drive
to create the same effect. However, her friend insists that having two
separate drives is the fastest way to go.

So, does this scenario change the equation at all?

Sam
 
It's always better for recovery and backup purposes to have multiple
drives, unless you are willing to lose all data when a single drive
fails.

--Vic
Click to expand...

Good point. However, she does backup to an external drive automatically
every night, so we could recover from most disasters relatively quickly.
So, I'm not too worried about drive failure.

Sam
 
Unless you are using RAID, the speed of one 500 GB vs. two 250 GB hard
drives is the same. And there is never "the same data on both drives "
without RAID.
There is one exception to what I said above. If you buy a smaller
harddrive, say 60 GB, and mount JUST the OS on that, and then install all
the other software on a large harddrive, say 320 GB, then that WOULD speed
up the computer
 
Yes it will, because it is never a case that only one file
is being read. Load any application, you get windows files
and the app files loading. You also get pagefile access
even if only to allocate memory that goes unused. Two
drives are unquestionably faster than one.
Click to expand...


Most of my machines are set up with mutiple removable drives
and I can easily have up to three drives in the machines.
whether I have one drive in the machine or three drives...I've never noticed
any change in overall performance.

Even if there was a minor performance boost while accessing two files on two
seperate drives...
I'm not sure why you made the assumption that the files being accessed would
be on two seperate drives...
the OP already made that reference in his first post
 
Most of my machines are set up with mutiple removable drives
and I can easily have up to three drives in the machines.
whether I have one drive in the machine or three drives...I've never noticed
any change in overall performance.
Click to expand...


I do, but I'm wondering if you have the I/O divided between
them? It would seem not if you can so easily remove a drive
without breaking applications/links/etc.

Even if there was a minor performance boost while accessing two files on two
seperate drives...
Click to expand...

I would say closer to large performance boost, not minor,
but it does depend on what you're doing with the system, how
long it's been on, how large the jobs are not only to the
extent of how much data I/O is ongoing, but also how much
the filecache is flushed to make room for those jobs-
meaning rereads of data again.

I'm not sure why you made the assumption that the files being accessed would
be on two seperate drives...
Click to expand...

I made the assumption that it "can" be, it is a choice...
and since the post was addressing potential performance
differences, we would have to consider both alternatives in
a reasonably, optimal configuration.



the OP already made that reference in his first post
Click to expand...

Yes but it was stated as if such an access would be
unexpected, when it is instead quite constant by merely
considering the usage when placing files.
 
kony said:
I do, but I'm wondering if you have the I/O divided between
them? It would seem not if you can so easily remove a drive
without breaking applications/links/etc.
Click to expand...

My removable drives are all IDE...
They are *not* hot swapable...the machine needs to be off when I switch
them.

If there is any difference in machine performance with or without the extra
drives...
it's sure not anything I've ever noticed !
 
Multiple drives are faster than a single drive. Ideally you would have the OS, applications, data and paging file each on a separate physical drive. This is not always practical. Some things to consider are the fact that large drives tend to be faster than small drives (due mainly to higher density), and it is a lot easier to manage disk space on a single large drive. If you decide to use two drives put the OS on one drive, applications and data on the other drive, and the paging file split on both drives. The OS drive can also be used to backup data from the other drive. If you have a small fast drive you can use it for a paging file. I have an old 10,000 RPM SCSI drive that has slower sequential read than my much bigger IDE drives, but its faster access makes it ideal for a paging file.
 
philo said:
My removable drives are all IDE...
They are *not* hot swapable...the machine needs to be off when I
switch them.

If there is any difference in machine performance with or without the
extra drives...
it's sure not anything I've ever noticed !
Click to expand...

That's because your operating system, programme files and swapfile are all
on the one drive that stays there.

In my system I have two *fixed* drives, a 200GB and a 250GB. The OS has a
partition on one drive and the pagefile and programme files have their own
partitions on another drive, (FAT32 for the pagefile as it's faster than
NTFS) on another channel. This system is unquestionably faster than it was
when I was running everything off one HDD. If I had three HDDs I'd have the
OS, Programmes and Pagefile all on different drives.
 
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