Two hard drives vs. one

[Jamesben832]

I'm configuring a defiance laptop and I'm not sure whether to get two 500gb 7200rpm 32mb catch, or one 1tb western digital blue 5400rpm 16mb catch, any advise on convenience, performance difference, ect. will be very helpful.

 

[SmokeDarKnight]

Hi Jamesben832,

I personally prefer to have 2 HDDs. I use one small HDD i think mine is a 128GB SSD for the Operating system and i use the other a 1TB 7200rpm HDD for all my Data and Games etc.

Reason for this is that i can put the Operating System on the 1st drive because it makes it easier to re install windows should any thing go wrong and because all my data is on the 2nd drive i do not need to re install all my software and music etc when this happens.

Hopefully nothing goes wrong with windows and you don't need to but its a bit of extra convenience should it happen.

That is my preference

If you were to go for one drive there's nothing stopping you making a partition on the 1 drive to make it look like it has 2 drives again this is quite easy to do but i prefer the two drives.

If you go for 1 drive you can always add a second in the future.

Hope that makes sense, its monday morning and my brain ain't fully engaged yet.

 

[mantadog]

Persoanlly id advise a SSD for the OS + some of your main applications and then a 2nd magnetic drive for mass storage of photos etc. That way you get the best of both worlds that smoke described above and a faster feeling system.

The SSD can be as little as 120GB with a 1tb drive for music, photos etc.

 

[Jamesben832]

Hi Jamesben832,

I personally prefer to have 2 HDDs. I use one small HDD i think mine is a 128GB SSD for the Operating system and i use the other a 1TB 7200rpm HDD for all my Data and Games etc.

Reason for this is that i can put the Operating System on the 1st drive because it makes it easier to re install windows should any thing go wrong and because all my data is on the 2nd drive i do not need to re install all my software and music etc when this happens.

Hopefully nothing goes wrong with windows and you don't need to but its a bit of extra convenience should it happen.

That is my preference

If you were to go for one drive there's nothing stopping you making a partition on the 1 drive to make it look like it has 2 drives again this is quite easy to do but i prefer the two drives.

If you go for 1 drive you can always add a second in the future.

Hope that makes sense, its monday morning and my brain ain't fully engaged yet.

You misunderstood my question, I am already getting an ssd in the m.2 slot but my question is whether the difference in performance of a 7200rpm 32mb catch hdd to a 5400rpm 16mb catch is noticeable. I also would like to know if I have to save things separately to each one, thanks for the answer though.

 

[t-dome]

A 5400 RPM harddisk is noticeably slower than one with 7200 RPM.

 

[Jamesben832]

A 5400 RPM harddisk is noticeably slower than one with 7200 RPM.

So would you recommend two 500gb 7500rpm or one 1tb 5400rpm?

 

[mantadog]

It depends on the workload. if its just for storing music etc then the slightly slower drive will be pretty much the same. If you plan to pull a decent amount of data from it for video editing, loading a game or such like it will be fairly noticeable. IMO if you are having a separate ssd fro the os it would not be any less convenient to have 2 other 500GB drives.

it is slightly more convenient to have the OS and everything else on one drive but really not so much once you have split the os onto a new drive that adding a 3rd would make any odds.