Looking for Opinions on Hard Drive Setup

**Allane** · 02-23-12, 11:09 AM

So, I'm starting to think that my current 600GB drive is failing on me. I've been noticing a general slow down with loading times and Windows has been sluggish when quitting from games or just doing things in general.

I tend to do my homework before asking questions, but this one I just can't decide on.

I've come up with two options for a hard drive upgrade. I'm not going for extreme performance or capacity here. I've never exceeded using 300 GB on a single drive, simply because I don't have many games and I like to keep my drives clean.

The first is getting a 30GB SSD for my Windows and drivers, and a 500GB HDD for all my other applications. I understand the advantages of having the SSD for booting and loading drivers and such, and that would help me a lot since I turn my computer off at night. A simple 7200 RPM drive is more than sufficient for my level of gaming as well.

The second option is getting two HDDs and running them in RAID 0. I keep any important things on a separate flash drive, so I'm not too terribly concerned about losing data from hard drive failure. I know that Windows won't boot as fast when running RAID, but I should notice a difference when loading pretty much everything else. My idea was to get two 320GB drives, and run them in RAID. If I'm understanding it right, I would have a combined 640GB of space, with nearly twice the read/write speed due to RAID 0. If I'm wrong, please do tell me.

I already have all the parts lined up, I'm just not sure when I want to go through with purchasing them, so there's no rush in getting them.

Allane.

**JimboIncinerator** · 02-23-12, 11:29 AM

Firstly i have to ask when was the last time you defragmented your hard drive? IF it has been a long while or never your load times will definitely degrade over time. So if it has been a long while do that first and if it still sucks then consider your two stated options.

I would go with option 1 becuase you will see a great increase in speed if you keep the SSD as your boot drive. 30 Gig may be a bit small for that i would go with 64 gig for boot.

You are corrected about raid 0 you will see approximately 2 times the speed as a single drive. However as a note since you are running raid 0 your chances for a hard drive failure is higher than a single drive.

**Allane** · 02-23-12, 11:50 AM

I'm running a defrag even though it says there's 0% fragmentation. The Disk Defragmenter says that it ran today when I started up my computer, but I don't know if it actually did anything, nor has it been doing anything the past couple of times.

**RhysJD3** · 02-23-12, 05:34 PM

I agree that 30 GB is too small. I'd recommend at least a 120 GB for OS. I'm using a 180 and able to load Win7 64 and BF3. You definitely want your games on the SSD for load speed. I'd skip RAID since a single SSD is faster than two standard in Raid. I'd also recommend a SATA 3 if your computer supports it or if you'll move it to a new computer if you build one (future proof it).

Your computer is probably crapped up with gunk in the registry, files... This is why I rebuild my entire OS every 1 1/2 years to 3 depending.

**Allane** · 02-23-12, 05:45 PM

I've had Windows 7 for 3 years now, and it's 25GB in size right now, so maybe 30GB is too small. The thing is, I already spent about 500 on parts upgrades, and I'm looking to make a slight upgrade from what I have right now. Right now, sub 200 is what I'm looking at.

I don't demand ultra high performance out of my computer. With the way I have it set up now, an SSD to run everything would be frosting to a cake I've already had too much of.

As for rebuilding Windows 7, I don't have the luxury to do that on my own. I had to get Windows 7 through my brother over MSDN (My college doesn't offer MSDN unless you're in one of their tech programs. I'm in a criminal justice program). If and when I get a new storage solution, I'll see if he has any more keys for Windows 7.

**Kanati** · 02-23-12, 06:39 PM

Go with the two drives in raid0. SSD just doesn't matter enough to justify the dollar per gig price tag it's still carrying. Is it faster? yes... Does it matter if windows loads in 15 seconds or 30? Not really. Or whether MS Word loads in 3 seconds or 5? um... don't think so.

**Kanati** · 02-23-12, 06:41 PM

Oh... and this is coming from someone that has built somewhere around 25 SSD PCs and built my work pc with JUST a 120 gig SSD. And have my home pc running two platter drives in raid0 for a boot drive.

So... from experience is what I'm saying.

**RhysJD3** · 02-25-12, 12:11 AM

I like loading BF3 maps in 12-18 seconds vs over 1 minute with my SSD vs dual Raptors in Raid 0. It was software Raid though on the MOBO.

**flame** · 02-25-12, 09:58 AM

I like my 120g SSD, with a 320g for storage. A little pricey but for the games I leave on the SSD it is sweet. I got a really good deal on my SSD from intel, otherwise the price is still slightly higher, but with HDDs going up in price it might not be a bad idea.

**SapiensErus** · 02-25-12, 12:36 PM

I have built a number of systems, recently many have had SSD's.

I first must disagree with Kanati. Sorry man... I have built quite a few SSD systems recently and countless HDD systems in the past. The SSD was the single greatest improvement to non-gaming performance I had ever seen in many computers. Went from a dual core 2.6 to a quad core 3.3 in one case, then changed the RAID 0 stack of four SATA II 7200 RPM HDD for a single SATA II SSD the next month. The change from 2.6 to 3.3 and adding two cores made very little difference except in games; but the SSD made all other aspects of that computers performance very noticeably faster. I can see it in benchmarks and also in general use.

It will actually enhance gaming in some cases where there is lots of disk activity (level loads, saves, etc). But games are typically programmed in a way to try to avoid disk activity while the action is going on. But from experience, SSD's blow HDD's away for general computer operation and "snappiness".

Importantly and SSD consumes less power, generates less heat, blocks less air movement in a case and make no noise. And is a noticeable bottleneck remover for many productivity applications and general operation/multi-tasking.

I have loaded up on SSD's recently. In my gaming rig I have two Corsair Force III 180gb SSD's in RAID 0. My media center has a Corsair Force III 120, and my other media centers/guest PC's have some OCZ and a Corsair 60gb variants I don't remember the specific models off hand. The only HDD's I use HDD's are in a NAS with two 1tb disks in RAID 1 for safe storage of important data and then a USB 1.5tb external for anything else I need to store or move around. All my rigs just have SSD's, card readers and optical drives; gone are the FDD and HDD.