Multiple Harddrive setup?

H

hawk767

New Member
I built my computer a few months ago.

My hard drive is a 1TB Seagate Barracuda. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/HDD-6Gbit,2528-3.html

I started recording video game footage for youtube again and have nearly filled the HD will raw video that I'm still converting into video files. While this isn't a problem I was wondering if running multiple drives would speed anything up like the converting time or anything like that.

From what I've read, there are lots of different reasons to have multiple drives.

For me I was thinking I could either run 2 drives or 3.

1. For the OS and whatever would be ok to put in with it. Probably a small HDD. Not sure if speed would matter as much with a drive only holding the OS.

2. This drive will hold any games I play, my steam library, and anything else If I only go with 2 drives.

3. If I got with 3 drives the second will hold the games and such but the 3rd drive will be the one that I record all of the footage onto with fraps. I'd also have the editing programs on here, sony vegas.

I'm just curious if a setup like this would increase my performance at all or if it would just help me organize my things.

System

CPU - AMD phenom X6 1100T 3.3GHz
Mobo - GA-990FXA-UD5
RAM - 8 gb Sniper G.Skill (I was also thinking of upgrading to 16 gb of RAM seeing as its not that expensive and was wondering if I'd see a performance boost for the video converting at all. Otherwise I'm content with just 8 gb.)
OS - Win 7 64

Final question. If I do decide to get 3 HDD would i be wise to get a fan for them? My Cooler Master HAF case has plenty of ventilation but just want to make sure.
 
Research RAID arrays. Put the fastest disk in use for the OS. Choose an appropriate RAID configuration for your storage.
 
All you have there is organization, not speed. I think you are fine with 8gb. How much memory is in use while video editing/converting? Check task manager. Not even sure an SSD would help you in this case, possibly.
 
When I let videos convert it usually uses up only around 50% while on idle it sits at around 25-30. It's mostly the CPU that runs kicking up to 75 - 85%.

I'll look into the RAID array thank you.

I did figure that the HDD wouldn't help out the video speed but that's ok. A lot of people also suggested getting a drive specifically for a back-up to keep an image of the other drives.

Would it be reasonable to have a back-up for my game and video drives which would probably be around 1TB for the video and at least 500gb for the games?

Edit: By the way, I also plan to do programming as well as 3d modeling on the.... video drive I suppose otherwise I'll kick the game drive up to a larger size and throw it on there. Don't know if those sorts of processes are effected by HDD speed.
 
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