What is the benefit of having two or more HDDs?

Is there an actual benefit? And what would be a good combo for gaming?

 

Raid 0 for performance, Raid 5 for data backup/safety

 

What about the size of the hard drives?

 

The larger, the better ._.

 

Of course but what I am saying is that sometimes people do things like 250gb with a 320gb or something like that. Is there a benefit with two or more identical hard drives?

 

Only if you want to put them in raid 0 for faster performance or raid 1 for increased data security. Raid 1 is pretty useless on a laptop and totally not worth it. You would be better backing up your data regularly. Raid 0 is pretty extreme and you shouldn't do it unless you really have an ultimate laptop.

 

My laptop would be a Sager NP9280... would the Raid 0 go with that?

 

RAID isn't worth it for any notebook IMO because it's not true RAID (hardware), but software implemented.

 

I see it can take even 3 hard drives, and is compatible with raid 0, 1, and 5. For best performance you want an intel SSD though. Extremely reliable and a lot faster than any raid. Save a lot of money and buy it separately.

Really? That laptop has the X58 chipset, which is fully capable of raid.

 

How big of an Intel SSD? And arent they expensive? What hard drive set up should I use?

 

80GB Intel Gen2 SSD can be had for ~$220 USD.

And I don't believe any notebooks out there have real hardware level RAID.

 

If you are already throwing that much money at a laptop and were considering two 500GB 7200rpm drives, coughing up $90 for a 500GB drive and then $220 or so for the SSD really isn't that bad.

That one uses a desktop processor and chipset and is touted as having raid 0, 1, and 5 though.

 

I dont think the 80GB will be enough thats why I think I would have to go with the 160GB which is like 500 bucks

 

Intel's ICH9/ICH10 isn't hardware RAID. It still uses the current CPU for parity and such. No notebook has hardware RAID, which requires a dedicated controller.

 

The dedicated controller is built into the northbridge btw..

 

Sorry, that is incorrect. All of the integrated RAIDs on Intel's ICH series are software RAID. The same applies to AMD, nVidia, VIA, or SiS chipsets that offer built-in RAID. The key is though Intel's documentation for their Matrix Storage Manager drivers. All RAID calculations are offloaded to the CPU and not onto the Northbridge.

 

Mind quoting some parts of what you're talking about from those whitepapers from both AMD and Intel chipset?

 

I don't really want to go off topic here, but by definition, it's the software drivers from Intel Matrix Storage Manager that does the calculations for parity, etc. The Northbridge has no XOR processor in order to do this, hence why it is considered software RAID and in my opinion inferior compared to true hardware RAID (for those users that require RAID in the first place). I don't really recommend RAID for most consumers in the first place.

Going back to Jack of Blades, will you have multiple OSes or lots of games/programs? Are you currently using more than 70GB for just that? If you offload music, movies, and all that other stuff to a 500GB HDD, I don't see why 80GB wouldn't be enough. Just for my OS (Vista 64) and programs (no games), I'm only at 20GB.

 

I wonder why everyone jumped to RAID when they hear "two hard drives".

I've installed a second hard drive on my Asus, and I keep my OS, work files, programs, and similar on the stock drive. My second drive holds my games, music, and other media. The computer will be able to access your games a bit faster, I think, since it doesn't have to compete with the OS files.

 

Because he asked what would be the benefit and what would be best for gaming.

 

There are a ton of advantages to having more than one HDD.

Most laptops with multiple drives just have 2 of them.

2 Drives on there own benifits

> 2x more storage
> Separate your OS/Programs on one drive from you data/media on another drive (less chance for drive failure, faster operation speed)

Within those laptops with multiple drives most of them have a built in hardware raid controller allowing use of

> Raid 0 - Stripping, Split the data between both disks at the same time allowing an increase in speed/operation

> Raid 1 - Mirroring, Copy the data to both disks at the same time keeping an exact copy of one drive on the other allowing a drive to fail without losing your data.

I have had 2 drivers in my last 2 laptops, I would have a hard time going back to a machine with just 1 HDD as some of these advantages are just great.

Another option that is getting more affordable is to have 1 SSD as your OS/Programs drive and then a large 2nd drive for storage. This is the best work around to deal with the significant loss of storage space when using a SSD isntead of a HDD, and a single SSD is faster than even a Raid 0 setup when using a good SSD model. It is still expensive to do this however so I am waiting for the cost to go down a bit further before I seriously look into this option.

 

He asked for the benefits of two hard drives, period, not two HDDs in RAID.

And while RAID nominally gives the best performance, he was looking for good combinations, not limited to RAID.

 

I really don't see why you need to diss people for bringing up raid when talking about the performance benefits of two matched hard drives.

 

I'm dissing people? I'm just wondering why most people always automatically think of RAID to the the exclusion of benefits of two separate hard drives, like the benefits Vicious posted.