[Tech] Hard Drive

[Zhar]

Hello again my beloved friends.

I am yet again in a battle with my computer, but this time it is my hard drive giving me the sucker punch. So,

My current hard drive is probaply broken in some way (which is not a miracle because it's about 4 years old), so I am now looking for an upgrade.
But, not just A upgrade, but 2 upgrades. Because our dear Pwnstar convinced me it would be smart to get a backup hard drive.
So, after working on a musselboat in Ireland this summer, I am swimming in gold (moneh).

So with this, my dear THN brain-trust, save my soul!

(ps. 1 TB is more than enough for me!)
(pss. I have already been eyeing the Seagate Constellation ES 7200.1 1TB)

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

Have you considered having 3 hdd, small solid state drive C, 2nd internal drive and a external backup drive. SSD's many times faster than conventional drives, and have a smaller airflowblocking profile.

 

[Zhar]

I have not yet considered that option, mainly because I have no idea what it is and secondly because I don't think I'd have enough room in my case for that.
But other than that, the many time faster than conventional drives sounds very good.

Oh, and before I forget, here are my current specs (including my hard drive)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9300 @ 2.50GHz
L2 cache: 6.144 kb
4 GB RAM
PEGATRON CORPORATION Benicia

 

[Silk]

IMO:

HDD1: A SSD drive for your windows install and other windows applications (browser, office, etc)

HDD2: A large drive which you should partition into at least two logical drives. e.g. a 1TB partioned to 2x500gb. Makes life easy if you want to have downloads and backups and movies etc on one "drive" then games on another.

 

[Haven]

Have you considered having 3 hdd, small solid state drive C, 2nd internal drive and a external backup drive. SSD's many times faster than conventional drives, and have a smaller airflowblocking profile.

Exactly this.
1 x 2.5" SSD for the OS 64GB is usually fine for this.
1 x 2.5" Fast Spindle drive >250GB for apps/games
1 x Slow/Cheap External USB/Network/eSATA drive for backups/archive. >1TB

You can get a caddy that allows 2 x 2.5" drives in a single 3.5" bay so space in your computer should not be an issue.

 

[Zhar]

That sounds very swell, this might sound a bit simple of me, but would my computer require more power for that?

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

That sounds very swell, this might sound a bit simple of me, but would my computer require more power for that?

More power than....?

(To answer that, post your psu) iirc hdd dont use loads.

 

[Wol]

That sounds very swell, this might sound a bit simple of me, but would my computer require more power for that?

If your computer can't handle a single spindle hard drive and a single solid state hard drive, then you probably have other issues than just storage You shouldbe fine. Most external caddies have their own power supply anyway as USB wont usually give enough on its own.

I'd recommend an external as a backup drive anyway. If you have a backup drive internally, then it'll be clocking up just as many horus as your main drive. If you leave it out and only use it when youre backing up, then itll be running for less time, and will last longer overall (world time, not life time)

 

[Traxata]

That sounds very swell, this might sound a bit simple of me, but would my computer require more power for that?

The question that's more important than will you PC have enough power for that is, which motherboard are you using, and by extension of that, what SATA controller does it have built in. A HDD is roughly specced in to a PC to use at most 20W (they in reality don't use anywhere near that an external HDD without it's own PSU will pull 2.5 watts from USB 2.0)

Depending on this answer (we can find the info about your SATA controller with the model number for your mobo) will let you know if it's worth getting X, Y or Z in the way of HDDs.