Hard Drive Arrangement Advice

[Ryan Patch]

Hey all. I've just purchased a new computer, refurbished. It came with 2 x 160gb 10k rpm drives. I'm wondering how you would advise the best way to spread out my data on those drives are. Would love some input:

Scenario 1.
1 x 160 gb - Programs
1 x 160 gb - Project files

Scenario 2
2 x 160gb - RAID 0 Programs
1 x 320-500 gb 7200 rpm (extra - purchased) - Project files

Scenario 3
1 x 320-500 gb 7200 rpm (extra - purchased) - Programs
2 x 160gb - RAID 0 Project files

This is assuming that project media is on external disks.

Also, I'm thinking of purchasing another internal disk for scratch files. I've been running these off an external drive up to this point, and am considering whether to keep them on an external, or perhaps alongside the project files on a larger internal? Would it be a major disadvantage to run both project files and scratch files off same disk? I know that the disk devoted to project files is supposed to be free to be able to read/write the project files often.

I'm also open to suggestions of a RAID 5 array, etc.

Thanks!

 

[MichaelP]

I would do scenario 3 given the options posed.

Michael

 

[Richard Foster]

I agree with Michael