hard drives

[h4rders]

I am going to build a new computer. I am building PC Buyer's Guide for Entry-Level Gaming -- January 2012. I am going to order a few parts each month until I have them all. My question is about hard drive space. In my case I need to wipe the hard drive clean every year or so because of virus or slow computer which is a pain in the butt. I d/l lots of movies and music and lose them in the process because I am to impatient when reinstalling windows. Would it make sense to have a hard drive for my os and a different hard drive for all my downloads? How do you guys handle that? Thanks for any help.

[kujoe2002]

I am going to build a new computer. I am building PC Buyer's Guide for Entry-Level Gaming -- January 2012. I am going to order a few parts each month until I have them all. My question is about hard drive space. In my case I need to wipe the hard drive clean every year or so because of virus or slow computer which is a pain in the butt. I d/l lots of movies and music and lose them in the process because I am to impatient when reinstalling windows. Would it make sense to have a hard drive for my os and a different hard drive for all my downloads? How do you guys handle that? Thanks for any help.

I wouldn't post anything here that you are doing illegally (just a thought) as I'm skeptical that you bought all those movies.

I recommend that you keep your OS hard drive ONLY for the operating system and program files. I learned my lesson a long long time ago when I stored EVERYTHING on the same hard drive, I got a trojan and had to wipe the drive and lost 4 years of research. I have a separate physical hard drive for all of my documents as well as a separate hard drive for all of my installation files and drivers. I would highly recommend both. Anytime I reinstall my OS, I don't have to worry about re-downloading winamp, WMP, Firefox, etc. Also in case you lose your resource DVD/CD, you don't have to worry, all your drivers for your mobo and hardware are already on a hard drive.

I would look at free software like CC cleaner and gamebooster. CC cleaner will help clean your computer. They say gamebooster improves your performance during gaming but IDK.

[ua549]

Install free Microsoft Security Essentials to help you from getting those pesky malware infections. It is very lightweight and doesn't interfere with normal computer operations as many other packages do.

[h4rders]

So if I get this right. My primary hd is for my os and programs and games I install on to it. Then a secondary hd for content I acquire "legally" like pictures, music, videos and such. Then another for the programs, drivers and files that were downloaded or installed for the primary hd so I have them on hand after I reinstall windows. Great advice thank you. What size hd's should I use for each?

[wh666-666]

You only need an entry level 80GB drive for OS, Installed programs, etc.

Others, depend on how much you need to store. At the moment, I have 2 x 500GB drives, but Im soon going to need to get a 1TB drive.

On my server for example, the OS and everything is on a 40GB or 80GB drive and then my personal files or anything that can identify me is on a 500GB drive and then all my backed up CD collections, etc etc on another 500GB drive.

This way, when I come to upgrade my capacity on my backed up music drive, I can sell one of my old 500GB drives, without worrying about someone getting hold of private documents.

[PriMaTe]

You can partition a hard drive so that if you format the windows partition, the data on the other one won't be touched. Say you have a 1 tb hard drives, you can make a 100gb windows partition for your C:, and then partition the other 900gb as your D:

Then if you need to format your c: with windows on it, nothing will happen to the 900 gb partition with the data on it. That's how I've always done it.

So you only have to buy one hard drive, instead of 2 and save a little money, especially the way hard drive prices are right now.

[h4rders]

So a extra hard drive or a partition of a hard drive are safe from viruses and trojans. This is going to make my life a lot easier thanks for the help.

[kujoe2002]

So a extra hard drive or a partition of a hard drive are safe from viruses and trojans. This is going to make my life a lot easier thanks for the help.

you can get a 2TB HDD and partition it into different sectors. Does not mean that it's completely safe. It depends on what you save on that sector. If you save a virus to that sector, there is a possibility that all you files will be corrupted which is why I recommend making a partition about 10-50GB and save all your documents on there.

[ua549]

So a extra hard drive or a partition of a hard drive are safe from viruses and trojans. This is going to make my life a lot easier thanks for the help.

Not necessarily. Malware can do damage anywhere on a system.

[sonar]

My recommendation would be the following:

1 SSD (OS + programs)
2 drives in a raid 0 for media/games/data (size depends on your needs).
1 external drive for backup storage.

[Geforce255]

Beware of winsxs, though. Anything smaller than an 80 gig drive will cause issues as the side by side directory grows, and grows, and grows, and grows.

I abandoned my 40GB SSD once winsxs got to 23GB.

[ua549]

I don't know what you guys do, but my WinSXS folder uses less than 5 GB with slightly more than 56k files. I have lots of apps installed - probably more than most people.

[Geforce255]

I don't know what you guys do, but my WinSXS folder uses less than 5 GB with slightly more than 56k files. I have lots of apps installed - probably more than most people.

Dunno.

I do a lot of development work. But I can't imaging compiling .Net apps would have any impact on Winsxs. I don't make registry changes. I do install a lot of programs, and uninstall them. Seems that it doesn't free the space after uninstalls.

I have 144,441 files in 20,700 folders. Over half of them say AMD64 on this I7 machine.