Which HDDs and how many should I use? (see details)

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

I’m looking to buy some WD-drives for a new system-build,

 but I’m wondering a couple of things I’m not sure of.

My knowledge about HDDs is somewhat limited, so if it’s OK I’ll put some questions here:

First, I’d like a drive that’s good at performance, but it doesn’t need to be a Raptor or anything.

So quite obviously a Black Caviar would be the one to go with.

But I found there’s a 3Gb/s-version and a 6Gb/s-version.

Then the Motherboard I’m set on has connectors for “Serial ATA 300MB/sec”.

That’s the same as 3Gb/s right?

If so, could I still use a drive of 6Gb/s but it would just use half of that speed?

Or would it not work at all or would it even have a different effect?

Then also a different question:

What configuration is best to use in a system used for media, editing and games?

Would it help if there’s a separate drive (not partition) used for the system and smaller programs,

 then larger programs and games and such on a second drive?

Or at least some division like that…

That would seem to be as there would be 2 drives working parralel

 and not 1 drive reading system, programs, games and separate files all on its own.

So it would spread the work and stress over 2 or more drives,

 or does that not change anything at all?

I would really appreciate if this could be answered

  and it would really help me out on deciding what to buy.

Greetings!

2

Yes, 6Gbps is backwards compatible with 3Gbps. So any drive should work on a motherboard without it. There may be a jumper setting you need to set is all. As far as 2 drives, yes, I would recommend that. I use 3 drives in my machine. 1 For windows and “small” programs like 7-zip, flash, adobe reader etc. The second one is for big programs and media/games. The last is a backup of the 2nd(not RAID). I just copy files to both locations

3

Alright, so do you also use the 2 main drives as normal and not in Raid?

Cause there’s a case of Raid0, which splits the files to both disks to balance workload right?

Then there’s also a case of just using the drives independant from each other, so they don’t share anything.

Which I was thinking of using, the latter that is.

If I should, do you have any tips on which sizes of drives I could use best?

I guess a smaller one for the system and smaller programs and a larger one for heavier programs and games?

Like, I don’t know, 250GB and 750GB.

Which probably adds to the cost though.

As buying 2 separate disks seems to cost more than buying 1 of the same total size.

Thanks for your reply.

4

Well, your budget is of course going to be the biggest constraint on what you do. In my setup, all the drives are 1TB, but yes, your primary OS drive could be smaller. 500GB or something. Then maybe 1TB for a secondary. The reason I have 2 secondary drives and manually copy/backup from one to the otheris then I need not worry about recreating a raid array or anything. I can put either or both drives in another PC or motherboard and it just works.