Mirrored or double drive--current thinking?

[markg2]

My wife's XP machine is ready for the pasture. The machine has a second drive that we both use for storing redundant Acronis images of her OS and mine with other images stored on the second logical drive of her primary hard drive. The setup has worked fine.

At work she has several PowerSpec computers that arrive with mirrored drives. The computers are reliable and inexpensive. You would have to install a 3rd drive to have the Acronis resting place as with our current setup. I really do not see the value.

So I'm here posing the pre-purchase question, given the preceding, as follows: For a home computer that does a lot of important personal Quicken work for us among other tasks, the basics would be: Windows 7 with a Win8 upgrade disk, 4-8 GB memory, Intel instead of AMD average speed mulitcore processors with graphics on the processor (we do not do games nor imaging other than looking at stills)

With the questionable aspects being:

1. Machine pre-configured with the OS and whatever belongs on a boot SSD drive vs. standard drive?

2. The second drive being larger than her current second drive since the first SSD drive would be smaller due to cost?

3. Assuming I could configure at will with PowerSpec (which I do not know, particularly with the SSD component) are there other boxes that don't advertise and keep the cost down yet folks here have found to be reliable and have decent repair--service options?

4. ANY suggestions along these obvious lines are surely welcome!

Mark

 

[bigmck]

You have listed a lot of facts, but I am not sure of what your question is?

 

[markg2]

Questions refined

1. Today's market--is it reasonable (vs. quasi extravagant and only for borderline technophiles) to order a machine with the primary drive an SSD (fast boot time) + a large second (and possibly a 3rd) storage drive?

2. If yes to '1', do you all have experience with computer manufacturers that offer the aforementioned setup without difficulty, for a good price and solid service. Our excellent experience has been with IBM and IBM/Lenovo for both desktop and laptop machines for ~10 years. But Lenovo is considerably more expensive than say Powerspec (for example) which my wife has had good experience with (not needing service so that's an open item) with 2 machines for over a year.

3. Given the setup referred to in '1' and assuming the primary drive is an SSD and would be much smaller than a conventional primary drive (SSD/GB cost), and given our behavior of storing redundant Acronis copies imaged from our individual 2 computers on my wife's (the computer purchase in question), would you tend to purchase a very large 2nd drive and partition it as needed or purchase a large 2nd and add a 3rd drive for the additional storage and partition it as needed yet have the additional safety of spreading the redundant data between physical drives?

 

[bigmck]

1. Today's market--is it reasonable (vs. quasi extravagant and only for borderline technophiles) to order a machine with the primary drive an SSD (fast boot time) + a large second (and possibly a 3rd) storage drive?

2. If yes to '1', do you all have experience with computer manufacturers that offer the aforementioned setup without difficulty, for a good price and solid service. Our excellent experience has been with IBM and IBM/Lenovo for both desktop and laptop machines for ~10 years. But Lenovo is considerably more expensive than say Powerspec (for example) which my wife has had good experience with (not needing service so that's an open item) with 2 machines for over a year.

3. Given the setup referred to in '1' and assuming the primary drive is an SSD and would be much smaller than a conventional primary drive (SSD/GB cost), and given our behavior of storing redundant Acronis copies imaged from our individual 2 computers on my wife's (the computer purchase in question), would you tend to purchase a very large 2nd drive and partition it as needed or purchase a large 2nd and add a 3rd drive for the additional storage and partition it as needed yet have the additional safety of spreading the redundant data between physical drives?

1) I have mine setup with a SSD of 120 GB which has my Win 7 and all of my programs on it. I then have a 160 GB HDD which has songs, pictures, letters, etc on it. You might need a bigger one depending on how many documents you have. . If anyone is using a SSD, this is the standard way of setting things up. == My third drive is a 500 GB HDD which is used only for my backups. It has two partitions, one for the Win 7/Programs and the other for my Documents.

2) I can't speak on number two. I put my SSD in myself. Most PC's now are not sold with SSD. I have observed that if you want one with an SSD, it is going to be a premium price. You might be better off to purchase a SSD (well under $100) and have someone install.

3) You need to have a separate HDD for your backups so that if a HDD fails, your backups do not also fail.

 

[markg2]

Thanks--answers all questions.

Mark

 

[kbrady1979]

Pretty much any factory built PC these days can be fit with an SSD after it is purchased if you want. Also, an SSD + bulk HDD is quickly becoming the norm in modern systems. I have a 128GB SSD for my OS and programs/games, and a 2TB HDD for the rest of my "bulky" data. Works like a charm.

 

[GeneO]

OK, so if I understand you correctly, here is what you need:

Boot SSD drive
Secondary larger data drive
Even larger external drive to backup your SSD system image and data drive to.

Forget mirroring - if one drive fails your SOL. If one drive gets corruption your SOL. And your probability of one drive of a mirror failing is twice that of a single non-mirrored drive (sort of).

 

[markg2]

Additional questions on the topic

1. Does anyone here have a contrary view that no manufacturer has become particularly adept and interested in setting up a machine pre-installed with the SSD primary and with the OS installed on the SSD? I will be calling Lenovo this a.m. but that's the only company that I have historical firsthand confidence in.

2. With each new machine purchase (at least at the rate we replace machines) processors involve a new describing language and confusing product array. For 'quickness and responsiveness' for home business use that does not involve graphics manipulation other than view and editing images in Picasa and that sort of thing can you all recommend a processor range that will be okay for ~5 years forward?

3. The machine we're replacing is my wife's 6 year Lenovo Thinkcenter XP with 2GB that's clean as a whistle but underpowered for Quicken and Quick books (particularly loading the large databases). For reference, my 5 year (upgraded from Vista 32 bit) Win7 is 64 bit + 4GB with a standard laptop drive is more than quick for my lesser needs. Considering her new machine may upgrade to Win8 at some point and does handle more stuff than mine does the new machine want more than the 4 GB of mem?

4. Since she's not doing fancy graphics and games has Intel's onboard graphics vs. separate graphics card make price/performance sense (we'll retain our existing Acer flat screen monitor)?

5. Is there a particular type of hard drive that we should specify as the 2nd and 3rd standard (non SSD) drives?

Did I miss anything?

Mark

 

[GeneO]

Intel's on-board graphics should do fine. An i3 Ivy bridge should work fine. Memory is fairly cheap, get 8GB and make sure it comes with the 64 bit version of the OS installed. Get USB 3.0 Get a 128GB SSD and a Tb or so data drive then buy yourself an external USB 3.0 drive for backups.

 

[kbrady1979]

Intel's on-board graphics should do fine. An i3 Ivy bridge should work fine. Memory is fairly cheap, get 8GB and make sure it comes with the 64 bit version of the OS installed. Get USB 3.0 Get a 128GB SSD and a Tb or so data drive then buy yourself an external USB 3.0 drive for backups.

This^^

 

[markg2]

Intel's on-board graphics should do fine. An i3 Ivy bridge should work fine. Memory is fairly cheap, get 8GB and make sure it comes with the 64 bit version of the OS installed. Get USB 3.0 Get a 128GB SSD and a Tb or so data drive then buy yourself an external USB 3.0 drive for backups.

1. Is USB 3.0 backward compatible to 2.0 external flash drives?

2. Is the term 'Ivy...' incidental to i3, i5, i7...?

3. Regarding the storage drives, there are SATA and other similar cryptic names. Which drive name offers the best all around speed and efficiency? Does the name then equally apply to a desktop drive as well as a laptop drive?

4. There's always 'another', faster wireless spec being introduced. I wouldn't hold off 'waiting' but I also don't want to buy a machine when a new spec is just going into production. Is this a good 'still' time to buy (and this really would apply to all the important computer segments)?

The data flow bottleneck has always been between the drive and processor(s). It used to be called the data bus. Has there been any significant improvement in this area in the past several years or does it remain the bottleneck?

Lastly, (and to be thorough) my wife frequently wishes she had a laptop for the infrequent times it would make travel sense. I could attach a laptop of her current monitor and keyboard and mouse. There's an obvious cost > laptop vs. box. The question--apart from the primary SSD drive, what kind of realistic internal hard drive storage can you expect today for reasonable dollars in the laptop (I'm assuming that you could add 1 additional drive unless you used the DVD bay)?

 

[kbrady1979]

1. Yes

2. Ivy Bridge is just the code name for the 3rd generation Core series of Intel CPU's. They are currently the newest in production.

3. SATA is all you need to deal with now.

4. Wireless N is the what you'll be dealing with for now, although Wireless AC just came out. There are just now a few wireless routers that do AC, and it isn't even a "standard" yet. Stick to N.

5. Even with high-speed SSD's out on the market, your storage drive will always be the slowest component in your system. Reading/Writing data to/from it will still be the slowest process on the block.

6. I think they make drives for laptops all the way up to 1TB these days. As for how many drive bays there are, you'll just have to check the particular model you are looking at to see how many it will hold. Some require extra hardware to be installed in the empty "bay". You could always get a larger SSD and use an external HDD for data storage.

 

[markg2]

1. Lenovo only builds box computers with USB 2.0 on the front and 3.0 ports at the rear. If I run a USB hub from a rear 3.0 hub that has (for example) 4 ports on it and I then fill all 4 hub ports but ONLY 1 hub port is used at a time, is that 1 of 4 hub ports = in throughput to a device's throughput that is plugged directly into the machine's 3.0 port and not using a hub?

2. Regarding the 8GB of memory--if I wanted to ~simulate my wife's potential maximum memory use would I do that by just adding up the various application sizes and databases and data stores of potential open applications + toss in ~1GB for system use and ~1GB for the pagefile and ~1GB for graphics (the graphics would be onboard the ix processor and not a separate adaptor?

Mark

 

[bobafetthotmail]

1 if you use a hub, all devices share the same USB port the hub is connected to. As long as only one device is working at the same time, the impact on performance is minimal. This assumes that:
a. the hub is USB 3.0
b. the device is USB 3.0
Otherwise either the hub is a bottleneck or the device's own interface is a bottleneck.
Besides, front ports tend to be useful only for low-power devices (pendrives, usb headsets, keyboards, remote receivers) not hard drives.

2. Win7 x64 uses a little less than 2 GB of ram for its own stuff, while Win7 x86 needs a little less than 1 GB (but is limited to 3 GB total RAM so it's not really worth it). Integrated graphics ram use depends on what you are doing, if you don't game nor watch movies, it won't go anywhere near 500 mb. Pagefile isn't in the RAM, but is stuff sitting on the HDD (don't have it on a SSD, leave it on the HDD), and it is used as "emergency RAM" when you run out of real RAM. Something that is more and more rare to see used nowadays.

2b. yes, integrated graphics is inside the same chip that houses the processor. You connect the monitor cable to the motherboard's video output (as you don't have any other place to connect it if you don't have a video card).

 

[markg2]

So to be sure--I can add an application's exe filesize + its database and get a very good value for the RAM it will use OR I need to add x% to the preceding total that for some reason the OS will add for the total of each open application?

So once I subtract 2.5GB (overhead) from 8GB=5.5GB and subtract the total used by all open applications and data is there not an additional % of total RAM that the Win7/64 OS will want (or should be free for optimal performance) to keep as sort of free, transactional (for want of the correct word) RAM that would also need to be deducted?

Mark

 

[whs]

I always image to 2 drives - 1 internal and 1 external.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I always image to 2 drives - 1 internal and 1 external.

whs is taking advantage of the best of both worlds by using both an internal and an external HDD. An internal drive is far more convenient and, depending on the connection used to the external drive, is much faster. An external drive that is connected only when imaging is safer since it will be isolated from viruses or power surges (even if using a surge arrestor) that could wipe or fry all the internal drives in a computer.

I prefer using external drives to make images on. The backup plan I'm in the process of putting into place envolves having two external HDDs at home (actually, they are internal HDDs used in a dock; my next desktop will have two hotswap bays that will eliminate the need for a dock with its USB bottleneck) and one HDD kept in a safety deposit box at my Credit Union. I alternate the HDDs at home weekly and once I get a safety deposit box (the one part of the plan I haven't implemented yet), I'll swap it out with the latest backup once a month). This way, most of my data is protected even if all my equipment is stolen or my home burns down. I have a subscription with Carbonite (a cloud backup service) so any data not yet backed up on an HDD is still recoverable.

 

[whs]

My external drive is on an eSata port (on this sytem). The speed is about the samne as to the internal drive. On my laptop the external is on USB3 - still fast.

 

[bigmck]

2. Win7 x64 uses a little less than 2 GB of ram for its own stuff, while Win7 x86 needs a little less than 1 GB (but is limited to 3 GB total RAM

The limit is 4 GB of total RAM for 32 bit systems.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

My external drive is on an eSata port (on this sytem). The speed is about the samne as to the internal drive. On my laptop the external is on USB3 - still fast.

That's why I said depending on the connection (neither of my current machines have e-SATA). One of my docks (I have one powered 3.5" dock that will also handle 2.5" drives which will work on either USB 2.0 or e-SATA (probably SATA II) and two cute little USB powered 2.5" docks for my notebook. The bigger dock is just temporary until I get the new machine with the hot swap bays built. Once that happens, I'm losing the big dock because it eats up too much space on my desk (and its wall wart is a parasite). The little docks are for my notebook so I can do backups and restorations when on the road.