Two 1 terabyte HDs in a residential desktop Windows 7--any problems?

[RayLopez99]

I installed two one terabyte SATA II hard drives on a new PC (Windows
7 desktop) with a i7 chip. BIOS gives an option of IDE vs AHCI--I
chose IDE since I heard it has fewer potential problems and is not,
for a non-commercial system, that much slower, and in fact sometimes
quicker.

But does anybody see any other potential problems? I have them set up
as logical drives C (for 1 TB) and D (for the 2nd TB)--same as the
physical drives. Don't think that it makes a difference these days to
split up your HDs into many logical drives, as the hardware has become
fast enough to compensate for any size matters.

RL

 

[Paul]

I installed two one terabyte SATA II hard drives on a new PC (Windows
7 desktop) with a i7 chip. BIOS gives an option of IDE vs AHCI--I
chose IDE since I heard it has fewer potential problems and is not,
for a non-commercial system, that much slower, and in fact sometimes
quicker.

But does anybody see any other potential problems? I have them set up
as logical drives C (for 1 TB) and D (for the 2nd TB)--same as the
physical drives. Don't think that it makes a difference these days to
split up your HDs into many logical drives, as the hardware has become
fast enough to compensate for any size matters.

RL

I don't think you have too much to worry about.

A while back, 48 bit LBA was introduced for IDE disks. The capacity
break point with that change, was 137GB. At that time, you needed
48 bit LBA support in the hardware and the OS, to be able to safely use
a disk larger than 137GB. So that's a little history on the last
capacity breakpoint.

The next break point, is 2.2TB (sector number represented by a 32 bit
integer). Your 1TB drives are under that limit. You can currently
buy a 3TB drive, and then you need to read up on what to do for a
drive that big.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

Another technology to look out for, is "Advanced Format" disks.
The sector size used to be 512 bytes per sector. It is possible
to build disks with different sector sizes than that. On an
optical drive, I think the sector size is 2KB. Some OSes will
accept any of those common sizes, while for others, there can be
problems.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2888

I don't know what has happened to the 4K sector disks. Initially,
there were a few complaints from people, that the performance
of the disks wasn't right. The hard drive industry has apparently
agreed to transition entirely to 4KB sectors within a couple years.
But I've heard zero about this topic lately, and I don't know
what that means, whether the transition will still happen or not.

Paul

 

[Flasherly]

I installed two one terabyte SATA II hard drives on a new PC (Windows
7 desktop) with a i7 chip. BIOS gives an option of IDE vs AHCI--I
chose IDE since I heard it has fewer potential problems and is not,
for a non-commercial system, that much slower, and in fact sometimes
quicker.

But does anybody see any other potential problems? I have them set up
as logical drives C (for 1 TB) and D (for the 2nd TB)--same as the
physical drives. Don't think that it makes a difference these days to
split up your HDs into many logical drives, as the hardware has become
fast enough to compensate for any size matters.

RL

I use NTFS when I have to, but otherwise prefer FAT32. FAT32 seems
more resilient to abuse. Good partitioning software also makes a world
of difference. Once corrupted, a NTFS drive is usually hosed -- a
mess when they're large to recover, after rejected and orphaned by the
OS. Do the same thing to FAT32, switch off the power midwrite, have a
terribly horrible bug crash the system, and the only damage is usually
the last point being written -- very worst case scenario -- there's
possibly extensive sector and naming mismatches (similar to an
everyday affair with a drive on its way south. Discounting the OS,
which I keep purposely small for that reason, and installs elsewhere).
With potentially 26 drive letters available -- why anyone would use so
many, is up to the person and nothing to do with hardware. Hm..13
drives here. Variously organized for different purposes. It could be
instead 13 directories on a couple drives, though that wouldn't be
factoring long term storage against fragmentation. Back to NTFS and
its optimization stratagems -- which is nice, with a prayer for hoping
like hell it never gets corrupted.

 

[Metspitzer]

I installed two one terabyte SATA II hard drives on a new PC (Windows
7 desktop) with a i7 chip. BIOS gives an option of IDE vs AHCI--I
chose IDE since I heard it has fewer potential problems and is not,
for a non-commercial system, that much slower, and in fact sometimes
quicker.

But does anybody see any other potential problems? I have them set up
as logical drives C (for 1 TB) and D (for the 2nd TB)--same as the
physical drives. Don't think that it makes a difference these days to
split up your HDs into many logical drives, as the hardware has become
fast enough to compensate for any size matters.

RL

I am going to install a 2T drive in one of my XP machines today.
Splitting them is going to be one of the questions I have. I
personally would like to be able to break mine into 4 or 5 pieces. I
think 3 is the limit though. It is nice to be able to label the
volume labels to make finding things quicker.

 

[Paul]

I am going to install a 2T drive in one of my XP machines today.
Splitting them is going to be one of the questions I have. I
personally would like to be able to break mine into 4 or 5 pieces. I
think 3 is the limit though. It is nice to be able to label the
volume labels to make finding things quicker.

The limit is higher than that. You can place multiple logical partitions
in an extended partition. I don't know the exact highest number of
partitions you can have, but the capability outstrips the Windows
drive lettering.

Primary Primary Primary <------------- Extended --------------->
1 2 3 Logical Logical Logical ... Logical
4 5 6 255

For various reasons, different OSes may not support creating as many
of those as you can. And to do a setup like that, requires planning.
Some OSes may have a 15 partition limit.

You can boot from a Primary. That may be their advantage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning#Extended_partition

Paul

 

[Paul]

That's correct - only a Primary partition can be set as "Active"
and have a boot sector. (The MBR on the boot drive will pass
control to its "Active" partition's boot sector, which will pass control
to the loader which is assumed to be on the same partition.) But the
OS can be on another partition, even an Extended partition, even on
another hard drive. Whether that other device can be external
depends on whether the BIOS has a controller for the external drive
or whether the controller is in the OS that is to be loaded. To avoid
running into a possible "Chicken-or-Egg" conflict, it's best to just put
data on external drives. As for an Extended partition being the only
partition on a hard drive that is used just for data, I don't see that
anything prevents it, since the partition table lists it the same way as
a Primary partition.

*TimDaniels*

I've even had a setup ignore the "Active" flag. In one thing I was doing
here, I changed the "Active" flag, thinking it was guaranteed to
change what does the booting, and it didn't work. Grub was behind that.
So the Active flag would seem to be a "hint", rather than a guarantee
something good will happen.

Paul

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I am going to install a 2T drive in one of my XP machines today.
Splitting them is going to be one of the questions I have. I
personally would like to be able to break mine into 4 or 5 pieces. I
think 3 is the limit though. It is nice to be able to label the
volume labels to make finding things quicker.

1) The limit is 4 primary partitions. I don't know what the limits i
on extended partitions.

2) I wouldn't split it anyway. Make it all one partition and then
use Subst to assign letters to various subdirectories. You get your
drive letters but the space all comes from one pool. (You'll need to
create a batch file to recreate them as they don't persist after
reboot.)

 

[John Doe]

I am going to install a 2T drive in one of my XP machines today.
Splitting them is going to be one of the questions I have. I
personally would like to be able to break mine into 4 or 5
pieces. I think 3 is the limit though. It is nice to be able
to label the volume labels to make finding things quicker.

You can do that with folders.

I have three hard drives (main storage units). A 32 GB SSD drive,
a 150 GB Raptor, and a 750 GB standard (could be smaller). No
partitions.

 

[John Doe]

Metspitzer <[email protected]>

1) The limit is 4 primary partitions. I don't know what the
limits i on extended partitions.

2) I wouldn't split it anyway. Make it all one partition and
then use Subst to assign letters to various subdirectories. You
get your drive letters but the space all comes from one pool.
(You'll need to create a batch file to recreate them as they
don't persist after reboot.)

What about the previously mentioned issue of badly degraded
speed?

 

[John Doe]

I have three hard drives (main storage units). A 32 GB SSD

drive, a 150 GB Raptor, and a 750 GB standard (could be
smaller).

Actually, I could do without one of the conventional hard drives.
Maybe a 64 GB SSD drive and a 500 GB conventional drive.

I suppose the raptor would sell on eBay. Or maybe I'll just remove
it and keep it for troubleshooting.

 

[Paul]

Actually, I could do without one of the conventional hard drives.
Maybe a 64 GB SSD drive and a 500 GB conventional drive.

I suppose the raptor would sell on eBay. Or maybe I'll just remove
it and keep it for troubleshooting.

Keep it for troubleshooting. That's where all my spare disks came from,
leftovers from upgrades.

Paul

 

[TVeblen]

"BIOS gives an option of IDE vs AHCI--I chose IDE since I heard it has
fewer potential problems and is not, for a non-commercial system, that
much slower, and in fact sometimes quicker."

I've never understood the reluctance to set AHCI in a modern computer.

While it is true that you will not see any real world performance
difference in a normal residential setting, AHCI simply uses the full
capabilities of a modern hard drive in a modern OS. Why would you choose
to use the legacy controller if your new computer is capable of using
the new one?

That said, if you have already installed the (Windows) OS in IDE mode I
wouldn't spend the time trying to change it to AHCI. *That* would not be
worth the effort for the reasons stated.

 

[Charlie Hoffpauir]

"BIOS gives an option of IDE vs AHCI--I chose IDE since I heard it has
fewer potential problems and is not, for a non-commercial system, that
much slower, and in fact sometimes quicker."

I've never understood the reluctance to set AHCI in a modern computer.

While it is true that you will not see any real world performance
difference in a normal residential setting, AHCI simply uses the full
capabilities of a modern hard drive in a modern OS. Why would you choose
to use the legacy controller if your new computer is capable of using
the new one?

That said, if you have already installed the (Windows) OS in IDE mode I
wouldn't spend the time trying to change it to AHCI. *That* would not be
worth the effort for the reasons stated.

Actually, it's not that hard to change, at least not on a Vista or Win
7 system. see the MS support doc here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

I had run my Vista system for over a year with IDE instead of AHCI,
and realized taht hot swapping of the drives woud be a real advantage,
so in about two minutes of searching I found this. I used the "fixit"
procedure and that did the trick. I installed the changes (whatever
they are) from "fixit" and then went into the BIOS and changed the
drives to AHCI and now have hot swap working.