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3 HDD configuration help

OMGWTFBBQ

OMGWTFBBQ

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 5, 2007
89
21
Hi,

I have two WD 640gigs and the stock WD 500, and I am having trouble deciding on the the optimum configuration. Any help would be most appreciated! I am open to suggestions. I use my computer for general use as well as for my video editing and graphic design hobbies if that info helps.

I am curious as to the benefits of of the following:

Drive 1 (640)
partition 1: 150gig for OS
partition 2: Bootcamp
remainder: Offline storage

Drive 2 (640)
partition 1: Applications
remainder: music/photos
(scratch disk here?)

Drive 3: (500)
Time machine

Would there be a noticeable benefit to having the applications being separate from the OS boot drive? What if anything else should be split across multiple HDs to increase speed? I've heard of moving the swap file from elsewhere on the forum but I am not sure as to what exactly that is nor the benefits of doing it.

My final question(s) is how exactly I could go by moving my application folder to another drive separate from the OS drive? Just drag and drop? What is this deal with making an alias?


Thanks so much in advance for your advice!

Cheers
 
crickets

Alas is there nothing wrong with this setup? I can't seem to find a similar thread elsewhere in the forum. I'm really curious as to switching the application folder to a different drive. :confused:
 
I'd leave the 500 as your boot drive. I'd use one of the 640s for Time Machine. This way you can keep a longer backup history. On the other 640, partition off 140 or so gigs for Boot Camp and leave the other 500 for OS X.
 
OMGWTFBBQ said:
H
I am curious as to the benefits of of the following:


Drive 3: (500)
Time machine
s
Click to expand...

This is backwards. Time Machine should go on your largest disk drive. Ideally, the TM drive would be about twice as large as the sum total of all the drives it backs up. But MUST be larger if only be a small amount

I woud put the OS and applications on the first drive and also the boot camp partition on the first drive. Because you will not be using both of those at once

Keep a 500 GB drive for data and video scratch. You video scratch disk should be on a drive other than the OS or Apps.

I see no reason to use partitions except on the startup/bootcamp drive

You will also need at least one external backup drive so you can copy your data and take it off site. Better to have two of these.

Eventually you will need to upgrade the TM drive to at least a 1TB. That would free the 640 for use as an offsite backup drive.
 
thanks for the responses. Kyre, I want to use the new 640s as the boot drive because it is faster in terms of the read-transfer rate. ChrisA, I think you are right about the partitions, I guess I don't really need them. My reasoning in using the partitions was to increase the speed of the bootdrive. By limiting the drive to 150, I'll be able to shorten the seektime that the head has to travel across the hard drive.

Does it make sense to do a raid 0 of the two 640s and just manually backup to the 500 my important documents?
 
How about:

  1. 640GB - Operating Systems and Applications (OS X and Windows)
  2. 640GB - Time Machine
  3. 500GB - Data and Scratch

Sharing the OS and Apps on one drive really shouldn't impact performance that much, especially if your 640GB drive has higher performance then the 500GB.

Reading and writing data usually is not speed-intensive and having a separate scratch disc for Photoshop and video does improve performance.

And a 640GB Time Machine drive would give you about 25% "extra" space to backup data as your 500GB drive fills.
 
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