Upgrading to SATA HD: 2 drives better than partitioned?
-
amoreena
Upgrading to SATA HD: 2 drives better than partitioned?
I'm planning to upgrade to SATA hard drive(s). I've always heard it is better to have your OS and stuff on one hard drive and capture to a seperate, empty, dedicated drive. First, is that true, and second is it better to have two seperated drives or will a 400 GB drive with 2 partitions achieve the same results?
-
sjj1805
- Posts: 14383
- Joined: Wed Jan 26, 2005 7:20 am
- System_Drive: C
- 32bit or 64bit: 32 Bit
- motherboard: Equium P200-178
- processor: Intel Pentium Dual-Core Processor T2080
- ram: 2 GB
- Video Card: Intel 945 Express
- sound_card: Intel GMA 950
- Hard_Drive_Capacity: 1160 GB
- Location: Birmingham UK
Think of it this way....
A hard drive resembles an old fashioned record. The computer reads and writes from/to the hard drive with a laser, which can be likened to the old fashioned needle on the record player.
To read/write the needle has to move about on the record surface to locate the information or find a free gap in which to write.
If you partition a drive so that it has 2 drive letters and appears in windows explorer as if you had two physical hard drives, it is still only 1 drive.
Now place a Second physical drive into your computer and you have two of these needles moving back and forth - this has got to be more efficient as you are sharing the task between the two devices.
Another consideration is that if/when the hard drive dies a death, with One hard drive you lose everything. With two hard drives you would be extremely unlucky if both drives fail at the same time.
Need more convincing?
A hard drive resembles an old fashioned record. The computer reads and writes from/to the hard drive with a laser, which can be likened to the old fashioned needle on the record player.
To read/write the needle has to move about on the record surface to locate the information or find a free gap in which to write.
If you partition a drive so that it has 2 drive letters and appears in windows explorer as if you had two physical hard drives, it is still only 1 drive.
Now place a Second physical drive into your computer and you have two of these needles moving back and forth - this has got to be more efficient as you are sharing the task between the two devices.
Another consideration is that if/when the hard drive dies a death, with One hard drive you lose everything. With two hard drives you would be extremely unlucky if both drives fail at the same time.
Need more convincing?
-
amoreena
Nope, need no more convincing! Seems like your saying that at some point during video capture/editing/rendering, one HD can be reading as the other is writing as opposed to the same HD reading and then writing back to itself? I currently have a Western Digital 100 GB EIDE that is only 40% full. I'm thinking I can purchase a 80GB SATA for the main HD and also get maybe a 250GB SATA just for video usage. maybe put the 100 EIDE in an external enclosure for back up, what do you think? Thanks for the help!
-
sjj1805
- Posts: 14383
- Joined: Wed Jan 26, 2005 7:20 am
- System_Drive: C
- 32bit or 64bit: 32 Bit
- motherboard: Equium P200-178
- processor: Intel Pentium Dual-Core Processor T2080
- ram: 2 GB
- Video Card: Intel 945 Express
- sound_card: Intel GMA 950
- Hard_Drive_Capacity: 1160 GB
- Location: Birmingham UK
amoreena
That sounds like a good idea.
I have 3 internal Hard Drives and my 4th IDE slot is taken up by my DVD Writer. I also have placed a 4th Hard Drive into an external USB enclosure. The USB drive 80GB contains all of my set up disks, personalised registry settings, downloads etc. and is obviously portable.
Great for jobs like fixing a friend or relatives broken computer.
My Windows XP Operating system and Programs (Such as Video Studio 9, Microsoft Office etc) all reside on the Boot up drive "C"
My Data, videos, word documents, spreadsheets etc etc are on one of the other drives "Z" but important stuff gets automatically copied to my third drive "D"
When dealing with videos, The program is on drive "C" the raw captures are on Drive D but get rendered to Drive Z. This way I am spreading everything around mindful of my analogy above regarding a hard drive being likened to a record player, this way I have all 3 internal hard drives working for me.
If you go for a set up like mine, another suggestion is to put a copy of your operating system onto one of the other hard drives. the reason for this is as a safety measure should drive "C" fail, then you can boot up with the other hard drive and at least retrieve data if not fix the fault.
To do this I open the computer case and remove the power supply to the other hard drives so that the computer is only aware of the one I wish to install an operating system onto. This makes the installation totally independant of the other hard drives.
You then use the system BIOS to select which hard drive to boot from.
This is preferable to the normal multi-boot system where you simply install the system to another drive and end up with an XP Boot menu.
The problem with that method is if your "C" drive packs up you lose that boot menu and so cannot get the computer going even with the other hard drive.
Regards
Steve J
That sounds like a good idea.
I have 3 internal Hard Drives and my 4th IDE slot is taken up by my DVD Writer. I also have placed a 4th Hard Drive into an external USB enclosure. The USB drive 80GB contains all of my set up disks, personalised registry settings, downloads etc. and is obviously portable.
Great for jobs like fixing a friend or relatives broken computer.
My Windows XP Operating system and Programs (Such as Video Studio 9, Microsoft Office etc) all reside on the Boot up drive "C"
My Data, videos, word documents, spreadsheets etc etc are on one of the other drives "Z" but important stuff gets automatically copied to my third drive "D"
When dealing with videos, The program is on drive "C" the raw captures are on Drive D but get rendered to Drive Z. This way I am spreading everything around mindful of my analogy above regarding a hard drive being likened to a record player, this way I have all 3 internal hard drives working for me.
If you go for a set up like mine, another suggestion is to put a copy of your operating system onto one of the other hard drives. the reason for this is as a safety measure should drive "C" fail, then you can boot up with the other hard drive and at least retrieve data if not fix the fault.
To do this I open the computer case and remove the power supply to the other hard drives so that the computer is only aware of the one I wish to install an operating system onto. This makes the installation totally independant of the other hard drives.
You then use the system BIOS to select which hard drive to boot from.
This is preferable to the normal multi-boot system where you simply install the system to another drive and end up with an XP Boot menu.
The problem with that method is if your "C" drive packs up you lose that boot menu and so cannot get the computer going even with the other hard drive.
Regards
Steve J