Advantages to Dual HD's

[Gimps]

I'm running a 1.7 P4 with 512 RDRAM and a 120GB hard drive. I was wondering if I added in a RAID setup and a second hard drive would I notice any gain in performance, or is the second drive just for additional storage?

[flounder43]

It depends on how you use it...If you set up raid, it is just for speed. Otherwise, you can use it for additional storage...

[Gimps]

Well I think I have plenty of storage with my 120GB hard drive, so if I do set up a RAID what kind of performance gains could I expect? For a gamer would it be worth it?

[It_The_Cow]

For a gamer, probably not. RAID 0 would be good if you needed fast write times. I don't think a gamer would have mush use for that. Raid 1 would be good if you wanted to make sure you don't lose your saved files. That may be a possibility for gamers. I don't think it would be worth it

[Gimps]

Thanks for the reply, I thought there may be some advantage to it since all the top computer makers(Alienware, Falcon) use dual HD's in most of their systems.

[Dagon]

For what it's worth, I have two 7200 ATA 100 Quantums in RAID 0 .

I get almost twice the Sisoft Sandra scores as a single HD, but for the most part I don't "notice" the extra speed. Maybe that's the whole point though...I NEVER notice any HD lag either.

OS installs are tiny bit more complicated, I still can't get XP to install right in anything but PIO 4.

Right now I'm doing Divx conversions and I imagine it helps there. With that much HD space, you should get into it too... but for gaming I doubt it matters, so I say do it for the extra speed!

[Gimps]

Yeah I think I may do it, if for nothing else just to say I've done it. I doubt I go with dual 120 HD's but maybe a 60GB for my second HD would be nice. I haven't upgraded to XP yet as I like my 98SE setup just fine. I've heard too many issues so far to go the XP root even if it is a whole new OS I like the tried and tested 98 system.