Two HDD's

[Paul Maskell]

I know this is a silly question, but apart from the obvious (more memory), Is there an
advantage to having 2 HDD's?

 

[Will Dormann]

I know this is a silly question, but apart from the obvious (more memory), Is there an
advantage to having 2 HDD's?

If you ever need to transfer data from one drive to another, it goes
significantly faster if it is from one physical drive to another as
opposed to one partition to another on the same drive.

In the DVD creation process, I find myself doing this quite a bit.


-WD

 

[Will Dormann]

I know this is a silly question, but apart from the obvious (more memory), Is there an
advantage to having 2 HDD's?

Another advantage is you can back up important files from your primary
drive or even image the entire thing onto the second one. That way if
your drive fails, you've got backups.


-WD

 

[Rod Speed]

I know this is a silly question, but apart from the obvious (more memory),

You dont necessarily even see that with 1 drive of the same total capacity.

Is there an advantage to having 2 HDD's?

One obvious advantage is that you arent left with no drive if one dies.

I prefer to go further tho and have more than one PC
so that whatever dies I've still got a working system.

 

[Lil' Dave]

Silly nilly. HDDs do not equate with memory.

 

[Anon]

I use three different drives when I recompile video. The original file on
one drive, the new file on another drive, the compiler catch file on the
third (and fastest) drive. That way reading, writing and catching can take
place simultaneously. Speeds things up quite a bit.

 

[David Chien]

1) Backups. (eg. manually, or mirrored RAID setups)
2) Faster file copies, esp. when working with large files. HD to HD
copy is faster than HD to same HD copy.
3) Faster everything (if stripped RAID setup).
4) Seperate data from the OS HD. You can pull the data HD and bring it
to any other PC easily w/o affecting the boot OS & programs on the main HD.
5) You like more heat in a cold room ,) Two HDs produce more heat, so
you get warmer faster ,)=

 

[John Turco]

I know this is a silly question, but apart from the obvious (more memory),

Hello, Paul:

Technically, "memory" usually refers to RAM; "disk space," is what you
should've written.

Is there an
advantage to having 2 HDD's?

A separate (and large!) hard drive, dedicated solely to audio/video
capturing and editing, is a prime example, thereof.

Good luck!


Cordially,
John Turco <[email protected]>

 

[Mr. Grinch]

1) Backups. (eg. manually, or mirrored RAID setups)
2) Faster file copies, esp. when working with large files. HD to HD
copy is faster than HD to same HD copy.
3) Faster everything (if stripped RAID setup).
4) Seperate data from the OS HD. You can pull the data HD and bring
it to any other PC easily w/o affecting the boot OS & programs on the
main HD. 5) You like more heat in a cold room ,) Two HDs produce more
heat, so you get warmer faster ,)=

Just to go on with your list

5) separating apps, data, and OS onto separate HD's can give you better
performance for some apps. Taken one step further, seperating the logs on
to separate disks, for things like Exchange or SQL, improves the
performance as well.

6) Don't forget moving the paging file to it's own disk can also have a
performance increase.

In practice the answer is "it depends" on what you're running. At home I
have 5 hard disks, with OS, Apps, Swap, Data, and Temp files, spread across
different disks. This results in the least amount of contention for a disk
resource, and it's pretty simple to set up. It doesn't require a RAID
controler or stripped configuration to get a performance benefit. It's not
complicated at all to manage or maintain.

At work, we run everything from Citrix / Terminal Servers to Exchange and
SQL boxes, and real-time transaction servers. Each has different disk
configurations to suit the application in question. For example, Terminal
servers don't access the OS much once they are booted. They access the
apps a little more. But they spend a LOT of time writing profiles and temp
files. So that's the area where you need to watch for performance issues.
Typically we use perfmon to try and find out where bottlenecks are
occurring.