Seperate hard drive?

[mikedeuk]

Im building a media center so i'll have a lot of media stored to HDD.
But if i wanted to change my OS in the future i'd have to reformat it.

So my idea is to have a low capacity, Fast & quiet hard drive to store just my OS and a few other apps. Then fill my WD 500 with media to to keep it "safe".

Would this work? A good idea? Or would all the media have compatability issues with the new OS anyway?

 

[fmw]

Sure, but it isn't safe until you provide for backup. To me it would make more sense to have bigger hard drive in the case and use an external drive for backup. That's what I do. I use a NAS (network attached storage) which is a RAID that sits as a node on my network. Using an external USB drive is just a simpler, single user version of the same thing.

 

[mikedeuk]

Ok thanks, For your help.
Would there be any benefit of having a small, high speed hard drive for my OS? It wouln't boot up faster or anything whould it?

 

[lawson_jl]

I always run at least two hard drives in my systems. The 1st drive for the OS and programs and a 2nd drive for my data such as pictures, music, videos, documents. I also have a 3rd drive that backs up the data drive and few things of the OS drive. This way I can blow away the OS drive whenever I want and don't have to worry about my documents on the data drive.