One or two harddrives? Need advice

[stradale]

I just bought a new computer and I specified it to have a 160 Gb SATA HD in it. However, after taking delivery I found out when installing my OS that they made a mistake and put a 80 Gb SATA HD in.

Since I bought the computer in the place where my parents live and I don't want to haul the computer back and forth, let alone ask my friend to help me out and spend another day and a half installing two windows XP OS (one tweaked for making music, the other standard for random tasks) and a bunch of programmes and documents. So I suggested they provide me with a second 80 Gb HD and I'll put it in myself. The guy from the store, who is very helpful and eager to sort this out, advised me not to do that and swap the one I have now for one HD of 160 Gb.

Can anyone here tell me what the pros and cons are to either one or two HDs? Bear in mind I don't want the performance to suffer.

My computer has:
CPU: Pentium 4 (630) 3Ghz
Motherboard: Asus P5GDC Deluxe
Memory: 2 x 512 Mb DDR
Video card: Asus Extreme AX550 ATI
Sound card: M-Audio Audiophile 2496
DVD/RW: NEC ND-4550A

Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[SFDMALEX]

I'd rather have two 80s.

1) Hardrives tend to die a lot lately and the odds of two harddrives going bust at the same time are much lower then those of your one and only.

2) It's faster incase you do a lot of torents where you can just direct all of the downloads to one drive isntead of the other withouht slowing down your system because with one you have files going in and out on the same drive resulting in a slower performance.

3) Unless you plan to upgrade to more in which case you will need a free IDE or SATA connection I would go with the 2x80 option.

[stradale]

Thanks Alex!

Your third point is something I hadn't considered yet. Even 160 Gb is going to be filled soon enough, so that is something I need to add to the equation.

Anyone has some ideas about what is faster or more reliable?

[5vz-fe]

2 is definitely better than one.....

Unless you require a partition more than 80 gigs, I don't see why having 1 160 gig will be better.

1) Moving files between partition ( / HD in 2 HD case) will be faster
2) You can set up 2 seperate page file for ur window system

+ what SFDMALEX saids

[stradale]

Originally Posted by thamar Do you know why they say 1 is better? PRICE! 2 Discs cost more then 1 Just take the 2, the mainboard has enough connections for HD's

I know he's not going to be an ass about this, he has also given me a better motherboard and videocard than I ordered with no extra cost. These parts were 80 euros more expensive and they were put in due to the fact the delivery was taking one week longer than expected.

I do know that it's more expensive and, after all, I opted for one 160 Gb HD originally. Granted, it's their fault they put the wrong HD in, but since he already gave me a considerable discount overall plus a better motherboard and video card, I'm not going to try to squeeze them for all I can on this. That is, if it's possible to copy the OSes to the new HD without installing them all over again. They said I can return the 80 Gb HD later.

[Blip]

You should also get a harddrive cooler for one of the drives.

It lowers your drive temperature dramatically and dampens the vibrations. That should also lengthen the life of your hard drive.

I'm currently using the Vantec Vortex. Very effective.
http://www.thecoolingshop.com/produc...roducts_id/905

[No.1]

^^^

How much of a temp reduction do you see with the cooler? ie. what was your normal temp, and what is it now?

And is the Votex loud?... is it the loudest thing in your case?

[Blip]

Originally Posted by thenumber1 ^^^ How much of a temp reduction do you see with the cooler? ie. what was your normal temp, and what is it now? And is the Votex loud?... is it the loudest thing in your case?

NOISE:
on Low speed it's not loud. You won't notice that it's on when using the PC. But on High Speed it is very loud. I haven't used high as I don't need THAT much cooling but for extended use High Speed setting would be quite annoying even if you're just sitting in the same room as the PC.

COOLING:
Normal temp when cooler is off = up to 40.
Low speed = varies between 26-29.
High speed = not tested for extended period.

Harddrive is 7200RPM WD.

[No.1]

Nice results... i'm gonna buy one to begin with 8)

[stradale]

Well, it's solved. I agreed to replacing the 80 Gb with one of 160 Gb. After all, that is what I ordered in the first place. As the computer store is where my parents live, my dad stopped by to pick it up for me. Instead of a Hitachi Deskstar160 Gb SATA with 8 Mb cache the guy gave him a Maxtor DiamondMax 200 Gb SATA with 16 Mb cache, to compensate for the inconvenience. Nicely done! Now all I need to do is pick the new HD up at my parents, put it in, transfer all my stuff, clean the HD I have now and return it.

[gigdy]

Originally Posted by ab1 still think 2

[RC45]

..or not.. perhaps he wants to catch up on 3 years of threads

[philip]

Ah how times have changed. I'm going what is somebody doing buying a new computer with a 160 gig hard drive.

To answer the obvious question, two hard drives. Programs and data on one, backup on the other.