Separate HDD for OS?

[Ryand833]

I have a 40 GB SATA drive and a 300GB SATA drive. Currently, I have the 300GB drive in the system, with windows installed and sage, all running on the same drive/partition.

I'm trying to decide if i should either.. 1) Hook up the 40GB drive and use it as the OS drive, and store all my media on the 300GB, or 2) Make a 20GB partition on the 300GB drive for windows, and use the other 280GB for Sage media.

Would one setup be more advantageous than the other? I've got very limited space in this box, as I've built it to be a portable PVR (only room for 2 (maybe 3) hard drives).

[stevech]

a key issue is that for video files, a large 64KB block size format for the disk is optimal or essential. But for small files and the OS, you want 8K or so blocks. So this leads to at least two partitions on a single disk, or, as most seem to do, put the videos on other than the boot drive.

[GKusnick]

If you're like most of us, eventually that 300GB disk is going to fill up, and falling prices on 500GB and 750GB drives are going to start looking pretty good. When that happens, you'll have a much simpler upgrade if the OS is installed on a different physical disk.

[Ryand833]

Good point -- I'll install the 40GB and clone the OS over to it and use the 300GB for videos alone.

Thanks for the speedy replies.

[jbarr]

I basically did the same thing: 40GB IDE drive for thr OS and applications, and 320GB SATA drive for video, music, photos, etc.

But I also allocated a 40GB partition on the 320GB SATA drive as a "backup" drive. I have Acronis True Image Home execute a scheduled backup job nightly at 3:00am to backup the OS drive--full backup weekly, incremental backup nightly. Simple, easy, and a life-saver if the OS drive or SageTV gets corrupted.