What kind of hard drive?

[Sierra Rose]

I recently bought a new computer system that failed. The man who built it swears it is because the two 500 gig hard drives were striped and wants to put in one big terrabyte hard drive instead. Does anyone know if this is a good idea?

I notice Paul Fierlinger recently posted his system with two mirrored 500 gb drives. Is this a better way to go?

If I agree to the mirroring, would it solve the problem? If anyone knows.

[Paul Fierlinger]

recently posted his system with two mirrored 500 gb drives. Is this a better way to go?

What I was told about this way of arranging drives is that they result in a faster system because two drives are working in tandem on processing playback. The downside is that if one drive goes, both go, but for that I meticulously make backups. But there are people here who know much more about this stuff than I do. I'm writing this reply just because you quoted me.

[idragosani]

I recently bought a new computer system that failed. The man who built it swears it is because the two 500 gig hard drives were striped and wants to put in one big terrabyte hard drive instead. Does anyone know if this is a good idea?

Striping, if I understand what your guy means, is a way of creating a big virtual drive across two or more physical drives (i.e., RAID) so data in a file is written across both drives instead of just on one. I will spare you the technical details. Did he explain why it failed? A 1 TB drive will work, if you want a big drive like that.

I notice Paul Fierlinger recently posted his system with two mirrored 500 gb drives. Is this a better way to go?

If I agree to the mirroring, would it solve the problem? If anyone knows.

Yes, Mirroring is generally better in a RAID system than just striping. Basically, anything written to one drive is 'mirrored' automatically on the second, so if the drive goes out, your data is still intact on the second drive and you can continue to work without any downtime (the crashed drive will need to be replaced, of course).

[Paul Fierlinger]

OK, so I have both, I believe, mirrored and striped. My RAID was broken recently and the mirroring salvaged my data, although I had backups anyway.

[Sierra Rose]

Thank you both. I have given up the idea of one big hard drive as suggested by our computer guy. I will go with the two smaller ones mirrored. This is all so over my head anyway.

We started with 2 hard drives, not mirrored, following the specs someone else suggested. When one failed, everything failed. Lucky I hadn't time to put much work on that computer before this happened. My frustration is how long it has taken for the man we hired to figure out the problem. I will never use him again.

[idragosani]

Thank you both. I have given up the idea of one big hard drive as suggested by our computer guy. I will go with the two smaller ones mirrored. This is all so over my head anyway.

We started with 2 hard drives, not mirrored, following the specs someone else suggested. When one failed, everything failed. Lucky I hadn't time to put much work on that computer before this happened. My frustration is how long it has taken for the man we hired to figure out the problem. I will never use him again.

Yeah, sounds pretty ridiculous it took him so long. I just bought a new 1 TB drive the other day, only because it was under $180 and I couldn't pass up such an offer. I may use it just for making backups from the drives where I do my production work (I have separate machines for doing audio and video).

I hope the mirrored drives work better for you! I am sure you you must be really be chomping at the bit wanting to use TVPaint and not having your shiny new machine available!

[Sierra Rose]

I have been pleasantly surprised at how easily TVPaint goes on my much less powerful internet computer. I have been able to keep drawing over the weeks and that has saved my sanity. If I don't draw every day now, I feel out of sorts.

I plan a visit to Rome to see my new grandson, Alexander, in the spring and this experience shows me I can take my tablet and dongle and use my son's computer while there and be just fine.

Not that I don't miss my three monitors though. I'll be very very glad to be back at my bigger work station.

[User 767]

Did your system have just two drives, striped? I think that would be a bad idea, no matter what.

If you're using multiple drives, why? For lots of data, or for speed? (or automatic backup?). I'm assuming for speed from your other comments. I use a single drive for system/applications, another single for assorted data, and a RAID for streaming data (like video), and a bunch of RAM for actually using applications. My experience is that a 'striped' system doesn't offer much benefit. If you set up scratch disks to the RAID, things will generally flow nicely.

Out of curiosity, what did you say you wanted when you got the system set up in the first place? I think you may get some functional suggestions as to how to deal with the disk system if you share that. There are a lot of options...

[Sierra Rose]

I'm so lost in this world of computers, but I understand that 2 drives together is faster than one big drive.

[ZigOtto]

I'm so lost in this world of computers, but I understand that 2 drives together is faster than one big drive.

... when the velocities of your drives are equal, but it could be wrong in other cases,
i.e. 2 drives 7200rpm together isn't faster than on big 15000rpm !

[idragosani]

I'm so lost in this world of computers, but I understand that 2 drives together is faster than one big drive.

They can be, and this is especially true on dedicated busses like SCSI. But the drives must be matched in size and speed, of course (i.e., redundant).