Hard Drive partitions vs more hard drives

[BigEdMuustaffa]

I am building a video editing machine and plan on raiding two 500g hard drives for video storage, and using a third 500g hd as the boot drive and program drive. What are the pros and cons of partitioning a 500g hd, into say, 100g for Windows XP, 200g for digital image programs and 200g for video editing programs versus 3 additional drives, one for windows XP, and the other two for programs? Thanks....

 

[Ika]

Three hard drives will be faster in some situations, because there will be three separate heads all retrieving data at the same time, but will run hotter, consume more power, and have a higher chance of failure.

 

[Blain]

The only thing that partitioning has going for it is lower cost.
Eveything else... "Real Drives" win! :laugh:

 

[corkyg]

Agree! I would prefer to have three 200 GB drives, all SATA. If I really wanted video archival redundancy, I would consider a 500 GB eSATA external.

 

[BigEdMuustaffa]

True, but having three hard drives will certainly increase the temp inside the case, not to mention, cost more right?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

As far as I'm concerned, partitioning is for organizational purposes only. Given the purpose of the machine, I'd suggest using separate hard drives, and going about it that way. The speed increase definitely won't hurt. I have multiple disks, and partition like crazy, by the way--my partition config.

 

[BigEdMuustaffa]

Thanks all for the input.....I raided two 500g satas for storage now if I get three hard drives instead of partitioning one for op system/video , 3D , etc software, I have to figure out what to do with the third sata 500 drive....