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I Need A Second Hard Drive

T

The Hockster

Gawd
Joined
Oct 27, 2002
Messages
909
At the moment I have a 120GB Western Digital Cavier 8MB hard drive. I'm quickly running out of space as I have so many games, movies and music making their way onto the drive. I think I have just one spare IDE bay in my computer and I think it is ATA/100.

So basically I'm wanting another drive mainly for extra space. I've been thinking about getting another WDC drive with 8MB cache. Is this a good option, performance-wise? I see that Maxtor and Seagate also offer the same size hard drives and about the same price, so is there any reason to get one over the other?

If I do choose a WDC drive then here are the price ranges taken from a UK site for the different size drives:

WDC 40GB - £41.13
WDC 80GB - £51.11
WDC 120GB - £65.21
WDC 160GB - £78.43
WDC 200GB - £108.04
WDC 250GB - £150.40

So it looks like the price starts to jump the most once you get past a 160GB drive. I could probably afford any of those hard drives if I wanted to, but is the performance generally better with the lower size drives or does performance increase slightly as the size increases? Or is it the same on all of them?

Thanks. :)
 
WDC 40GB - £41.13 ........£1.03 per GB
WDC 80GB - £51.11 ........£0.68 per GB
WDC 120GB - £65.21...... £0.54 per GB
WDC 160GB - £78.43.......£0.49 per GB
WDC 200GB - £108.04.....£0.54 per GB
WDC 250GB - £150.40.....£0.60 per GB



areal density generally improves performance
but then again you need to look at families to determine areal density, as the larger drives are made up of more than one platter
 
Thanks.

I'm happy with my current 120GB one, which is why I want to get another WDC drive. I think I'll get at least a 160GB one though, as you can never have enough space. ;)

Now can someone tell me what benefits I can get from having two drives? There must be something I can do, like I know some people have Windows and programs on the main drive and then all their data files on the other. What exactly could I do with my two drives, move the page file to the other drive to get faster performance, for example?
 
Originally posted by Ice Czar
Multiple Page Files

Partitioning Strategies


there is alot to be said for matched drives as well, gives you RAID options, now or later ;)
Click to expand...

I literally know nothing about what RAID is and what advantages/disadvantages it offers. :eek: I know that my machine doesn't have a RAID card in it though, so I'd have to look into getting one of them it I took this option.
 
RAID
Hard Drives How and Why + Definitive Guide to RAID @ Storagereview
RAID an In-Depth Guide @ SLCentral.com
The Skinny on RAID @ arstechnica
RAID: Your Guide @ PCMechanic
RAID Explained @ AnandTech (part of IDE RAID Comparison dated)

the first link should do you though
basically RAID is either for redundancy or performance
or in the case of a RAID 0+1 both ;)

but the main criteria for RAID is matched drives,
a consideration for this purchase,
if you think you may ever need RAID in the future ;)
 
Okay, I've just read up about RAID. To be honest though, I don't think it is really for me. I'd much prefer another single, huge hard drive to store all my data on.
 
It was just a consideration, not necessarily advice ;)
Good Luck and have fun :D
 
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