Harddrive organization tips

[MoDsOuRcEdOtNeT]

To give a breif introduction I've had 2 maxtor harddrives in the past few years fail within a year. I finally got a WD 120 gig off ebay (Made in 2002, installed in 2005) and now I just ordered a 250 gig because I ran outta space.

Id like to keep a backup of my unreplacable stuff (Media, documents, etc). So what would my best bets be. So far I'm thinking of using the 120 for XP/Programs/Media and the 200 for all my files, currently downloading torrents, pagefile and lastly games (Steam takes up 9+ gigs alone)

Im looking for proformance and very neat organization. Any tips?

 

[hity645]

I have dual 250's in my rig. One for os/apps/games
The other for storage, tv shows movies music etc.

I would suggest using the 250 as your main drive, and then filling up your 120 with storage so you'll have an excuse to purchase another or bigger drive. Then get some scrap parts together and build a another pc with that 120 and use it to backup important stuff. Or an external enclosure.

 

[RocketFast321]

This may seem like overkill but i run 7 drives.
80gig
three 40gig(free)
60gig(free)
30gig(free)
250gig
I keep my OS and Games on the 80
Videos on the 40
another 40 is use for downloaded files off the net
60gig is my mp3 drive
The 30gig is my back-up drive to restore my OS
250gig is my random junk drive
The other 40gig is my temp drive for when i record stuff with my TV card, or make a dvd.

 

[morpheus6d9]

80gig - os/programs
160gig - music/progs
160gig - pr0n/torrents

 

[mr saturn]

I run two computers that compliment each other extremely well.

1st computer
40 gig - 7 gig partition for overclocking, the rest for development. Programming, webdesign, graphics stuff.
250 gig - 10 gig windows partition, the rest for archived games, applications and installed programs.

2nd computer
160 gig - operating system. music, movies and tv shows. main downloading machine. hooked up to a 27" lcd tv, so it is also my HTPC. I remote desktop to it whenever i need to dl a torrent.

 

[MoDsOuRcEdOtNeT]

80gig - os/programs
160gig - music/progs
160gig - pr0n/torrents

That sounds great.

Thanks

 

[nuclearsnake]

My box:
74GB Raptor as one partition

File Server
160GB - 20 for OS - 140 for temp torrents files
250GB - Movies, App installers
250GB - TV shows
250GB - Music, ISO Images
200GB - Backup of important stuff in a removeable bay incase the house is on fire...

Profiles/Redirect Server
7x9.1GB Raid 5 - Users Profiles
Fiber Channel
6x9.1GB Raid 5 - Group1s My Documents
6x9.1GB Raid 5 - Group2s My Documents

 

[MoDsOuRcEdOtNeT]

I have another small question.

Ive gotten 2 CRC errors transferring files to my new hdd in the past 2 days.

One was one of the tracks off a pink floyd CD (Easily reripped)

Second was my Doom3 iso backup. (Again luckilly easily recoverable)

I dont know how many more are to come while I backup more this weekend and reinstall XP.

Is this a sign that sectors on my hdd are dieing and I assumne there is no way to recover any more files that may comeup?

Edit:

Chkdsk reveals this CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
File verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
Deleting index entry azureus.statistics in index $I30 of file 17642.
Deleting index entry azureus.statistics.bak in index $I30 of file 17642.
Deleting index entry AZUREU~1.STA in index $I30 of file 17642.
Deleting index entry AZUREU~2.BAK in index $I30 of file 17642.
Deleting index entry tracker.config in index $I30 of file 17642.
Deleting index entry tracker.config.bak in index $I30 of file 17642.
Deleting index entry TRACKE~1.BAK in index $I30 of file 17642.
Deleting index entry TRACKE~1.CON in index $I30 of file 17642.
Index verification completed.

Errors found. CHKDSK cannot continue in read-only mode.

 

[hity645]

200GB - Backup of important stuff in a removeable bay incase the house is on fire...

This made me laugh, in the event of a fire both machines go out the window followed by me. Id rather deal with smashed hardware than smoldering hardware.

 

[[LYL]Homer]

Gigabytes are out, terrabytes are in.

Workstation:
74gb OS
250gb incomplete torrents
250gb complete torrents

HTPC/Server
80gb 40 for OS, 40 for misc apps
250gb music
250gb PVR
300gb movies
250gb movies
300gb TV shows
160gb file server, photos, backup
35/90gb REV drive for backup of 160gb drive

....and I'm maxed out.

Think I need a NAS solution.

 

[ilkhan]

36GiB raptor for OS/games/programs
4x300GiB R5 for storage of torrents, TV shows, movies, music, my docs, outlook info, desktop, favorites...

I can basically reformat at any given moment and lose nothing but save game files I care nothing about and the time it takes to complete.

 

[MrGuvernment]

putting files onto a 2nd harddrive in your computer is not "backing up" anything.


I see no point in partitioning a 250g drive if it is a slave drive - just use folders.

 

[general]

What you need to do is order another 250Gb drive and a 2 port ide RAID card and run them in RAID-1. This will save your data WHEN one of these fail. WD's fail too. You can put your OS and main apps on the 120 and back up drive images onto your raid. This will give you some tolerance for failure of your main drive. I would consider buying a Raptor for your main drive. You can find some used ones around now. They're smaller but faster and given that you can sell your 120Gb, they won't cost you that much. That would leave you with something like:

36Gb Raptor (with an image backed up on a monthly basis to your RAID storage)
2x 250Gb IDE drives in RAID-1 run by an adaptor card not an on board RAID setup

This will keep your data relatively secure (won't protect against disaster) and not cost you a ton.

When you want to get serious about your data, then get an external USB drive and copy of the 250Gb RAID contents over ot it once per month and leave it at a friend's house. That way you're protected in case of fire, theft, etc. Of course, this is not so big a deal for the average user.