Need advice on HDD setup

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cageman

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Nov 8, 2006
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I'm about to setup (actually re-setup) my HDDs. I ended up getting 4 HDDs.

1. WD 150GB velociraptor
2. WD 74GB raptor (8MB) - have more than 50 reallocated sectors
3. Seagate 160GB (8MB) ST81608 SATA
4. WD RE2 500GB (16MB) WD5000YS

Before getting the velociraptor, I installed Win 7 (x64) on the raptor (74GB). Then I found out that the drive has more than 50 reallocated sectors. So, the drive itself may be not really reliable and may die soon.

My questions are:

1. How are you going to use those drives, if give to you? What would get me best performance? I do photo editing, movie encoding, and some games (not FPS). Don't really need to use all of them. Maybe I can trade to find other drives as well. :)

2. I put quite a lot of time to install OS and programs I frequently use. Probably I can do that again, but don't want to do that again. Is there any program (preferably free) that can copy everything in 74GB raptor to other drives?

Thanks!
 
1.Assuming that WD 150Gb raptor is the fastest of all drives I would make one partition on it, and install Windows onto it. WD 74 GB (which has more than 50 reallocated sectors) as storage for the something you do not care about, or for something that can be restored from some other location in case of the disk failure. The rest of the hard drives can be partitioned and used as data storages.

2. Yes, there are a lot of such software for disk cloning either free or paid. Goolge something like "disk cloning software" and use one of them.
 
cageman said:
How about using 74GB raptor for paging files?
Click to expand...

That would be fine...although it may still be under warranty. Plug the serial number into WD's warranty check URL and see if it can be RMA'd.
 
If it were me I'd probably sell both Raptors while they're still worth something and I'd get an SSD (60-80GB) for the OS drive, then put all data on the 500GB and use the 160GB as a backup drive... You always want a backup drive for your most important data imo. If necessary I'd replace that drive eventually w/a larger one if you have too much essential stuff to back up. That's just me tho...

If you're stuck with what you've got, I'd use the VRaptor as the OS drive, the 500GB as the data drive, the 160GB for backups and I'd just hawk the 74GB Raptor regardless, or try and RMA it. Using a drive that's going downhill for your page file might be playing w/fire if your system actually accesses the page file often (and if it doesn't then what's the point?).

You can definitely use an imaging app to move your OS install to another drive... I like Norton Ghost because it's served me well and it's actually worked quite well even w/SSD (v14.0) which usually involve a few quirks as far as partition alignment etc. There's freeware imaging apps that you can use as well tho, I've used DriveImage XML in the past with good results and I believe Win7 itself includes a drive/OS imaging tool tho I haven't messed around with it yet... Heard it works just fine tho (unlike the awful backup tools in WinXP).

P.S. I hope you didn't actually recently buy that VRaptor brand new, SSD have made them irrelevant imo. Altho if you don't multi-task a lot or use heavy apps (Photoshop etc.) then the investment might not be worth it to ya. You can get a great 80GB SSD for $220 tho (X25-M G2), or a 60GB for $155 (OCZ SOlid 2 or Agility), or a 120GB for $285-310 (Solid 2 or Vertex). Very nice upgrade for any heavy multi-tasker imo, one of the best upgrades I've ever enjoyed... So much so that I ended up buying a 40GB X25-V for my netbook when I realized prices on 'em weren't gonna shift significantly 'till next year.

You can always use symbolic links to move games unto the SSD or off it in order to juggle space w/o breaking the installs, or just leave 'em on the 500GB. SSD help w/level load times and such but sometimes it's not as noticeable as the performance boost they offer within the OS.
 
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Thanks all for the sincere advice! Unfortunately, 74GB raptor is out of warranty. Vraptor for OS, and 160GB for the backup sounds most reasonable to me.

Not really seriously play with PC nowadays. But will consider to get SSD, when I become more serious!
 
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