34 replies to this topic

[ebbinger_413]

i have a total of eight hard drives in my computer i am very happy to say that. i have a server case, duh. three of the hard drives are scsi each drive is 9 gigs...yeah i know...so thats 18 gigs total. then i have four ide hard drives which is 2 20 gigs and 2 6 gigs for a total of 52 gigs...so 18 + 52 is 70 gigs yeah ....then i have a mac hard drive in there that is only 1 gig...i use that for my paging file...so 8 hard drives for a total of around 70 gigs. then i have an ide controller with 2 cd drives on there (one burner the other just a cd drive) and i have a cd scsi drive in there as well...my case is totally full...not to mention that i tossed ten fans into the thing. i have a cpu fan, three in the front of the case, one on the side of the case, three in the power supply, and two on the back of the case. it is a wonderfull system that is dual booted with xp and vista beat.


is that crazy everyone thinks so...yeah...even i do...

[yordan]

How many is too many hard drives ? No limit, I would say. As long as your computer is not slowed down because of too many disc controllers compared to number of processors, I would say there is no limit.
I have seen professional systems with up to one thousand drives (yes, 1000 drives), the customer had quite a lot of data and wanted the cpu's to never wait for the disks. And the customer never complained he had too many drives.
Of course, for home users, with the current systems available, I would say that a sigle 160 Gig disk or two 80 Gig disks seems enough.

[STEELHED]

Is there a law of diminishing value with that many hard drives?

[hazeshow]

I have a beautiful Compaq Proliant 3000 Server with a 7-disk-Hotplug-SCSI-Raid, it's pretty cool and real fast, BUT the whole **** is LOUD and uses a lot of VOLTAGE. So I agree with yordan that for the average user it would be better (and cheaper) to have one 160 GB disk than having 8 20 GB disks.

I think systems like yours make sense if you're doing a lot of back-up stuff, or if you're running a RAID for performance or data security reasons. But I do very much understand that you love your box.

GreetingZ

[Trekkie101]

Too many disks is when your wasting more money on running costs than is needed, for example you may have 10 hard disks each with 10GB, now that may be a lot of data storage but if you never cross 50GB, then is there a real need for the extra 50GB? They are wasting power and really doing nothing and adding to the computers perfomace degrading. So basically use as many as you want, theres 13 hard disks in my schools server all doing something and right now running into space limitations which will be solved probably by an extra users server.

[yordan]

Is there a law of diminishing value with that many hard drives?[

As usual, when you buy 1000 things at the same time : you ask 60% discount, if it does not work you go to the next provider, if you aren't successfull you issue an international call for tender...

[techocian]

I've got my own desktop and another that i just mess around with and a box full of junk parts and stuff that i use to put up the messed up Windows 98 computer. I plugged in like 3 hard drives once to that computer and it didn't do me much (Duh! I NEVER use it?). But yes the computer runs an old Athlon processor and requires lots of cooling. Guess what i did? I removed the bottom lid and replaced it with one that has the ventilation holes in it then i placed my case over the Air conditioning vent. The temperature of my room definitely went up but in any case i have a very cold computer to work with. Is something wrong with the picture? Is my computer going to have frostbite?

[Sarah81]

Well ... if you can find practical (or even just fun) uses for all that storage space, then I don't guess it's too much. If you aren't knocking over little old ladies and stealing their purses for money to buy more hard drives, then cool. *grins*

But, my personal preference is to just do one or two medium-sized hard drives and use flash storage or CD-Rs for the rest of my data. I'm lazy and don't have a whole lot of money to spend on computer stuff...and because I move around at least twice a year (college student), 100 percent portability is vital to me.

Hence, the laptop with 30 gigs of HD space and the 128 MB flash drive, plus the tons and tons of CD-Rs.

Not to mention the online storage solutions.

[Retaining]

I think you have too many drives when you can't remember where you put stuff... I have 2 hard drives right now: a 36 GB Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM Serial ATA (soon to be 2 in RAID 0), and an old 40 GB ATA drive that I use for backups and Linux. The Raptor gets excellent performance, and I like to put all my music on the old HDD so I'm not putting overhead on the drive I run my programs off of.

[Silvercoke]

i have a total of eight hard drives in my computer i am very happy to say that. i have a server case, duh. three of the hard drives are scsi each drive is 9 gigs...yeah i know...so thats 18 gigs total. then i have four ide hard drives which is 2 20 gigs and 2 6 gigs for a total of 52 gigs...so 18 + 52 is 70 gigs yeah ....then i have  a mac hard drive in there that is only 1 gig...i use that for my paging file...so 8 hard drives for a total of around 70 gigs. then i have an ide controller with 2 cd drives on there (one burner the other just a cd drive) and i have a cd scsi drive in there as well...my case is totally full...not to mention that i tossed ten fans into the thing. i have a cpu fan, three in the front of the case, one on the side of the case, three in the power supply, and two on the back of the case. it is a wonderfull system that is dual booted with xp and vista beat.
is that crazy everyone thinks so...yeah...even i do...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

yeah it is a lil crazy, it uses more power than just 1 70GB hard drive. It would be smarter and probably safer to get bigger Hard Drives.

[Grafitti]

I would agree with that. though i definitely could use 10 hard drives with a 200GB+ capacity each. that would make sense, if you're going for insane amounts of storage, and have to stack up the biggest ones available on the market to get what you want. but to layer hard disks with 9 or 20 GB capacity, --- that's something i wouldn't want to do. why go through all the trouble. unless you're just doing it for the fun of it. i don't see that there is a limit to how many you can have; we just heard from yordan @ 1000+ drives. but in a single case, i would think theoretically at least that the number of hard disks would have to be proportionate to the cooling power of the system. i have 2 80 GB SATA hard disks, and the shop guy stuck them in slots right over each other. whenever i would do serious video editing, bam, the computer would freeze up because the hard disks didn't have any air circulating between them. as soon as i switched slots, no more problem.

techocian 
[] Yesterday, 09:59 PM

I've got my own desktop and another that i just mess around with and a box full of junk parts and stuff that i use to put up the messed up Windows 98 computer. I plugged in like 3 hard drives once to that computer and it didn't do me much (Duh! I NEVER use it?). But yes the computer runs an old Athlon processor and requires lots of cooling. Guess what i did? I removed the bottom lid and replaced it with one that has the ventilation holes in it then i placed my case over the Air conditioning vent. The temperature of my room definitely went up but in any case i have a very cold computer to work with. Is something wrong with the picture? Is my computer going to have frostbite?

yeah it could. if it gets too cold. i've heard of people cooling it waay down, but if the parts get too cold then they stick and don't work so well. i'm not sure what the limits are, but there's a minimum on the operating temperature range.

[ebbinger_413]

yes it is taking up a lot of voltage, but hey, with the server having two power supplies i am fine .... i am working on some other smaller servers to network to and troubleshoot computers...i just finished my unattend cd for xp (using nlite ) so that all my drivers and apps are automaticly loaded...baby...

[baphometslayer]

I have 2 80 gigs in my setup, occasianally i stick another one in to put mai XBox games in.

[wutske]

Doesn't that make a lot of noise when accessing the drives ? I have a lot of old drives and they still tick hard when accessing and they make a sreeching noise (what do you except, ball bearing < fluid bearing), I even have a few drives that need active cooling on a chip before it works stable

But, there is practicaly no limit on the number of hard drives, but I don't think Windows ca

[wutske]

--oeps, pressed post button AND NO FREAKING EDIT BUTTON --
... can access more than 24 paritions (C: - Z: ), so that should be the limit.

[ebbinger_413]

no it actually doesnt make a lot of noise, and i believe you can download programs that will allow you to have more than that ammount of drives on there by assigning more drive letters (actually numbers or double letters or sumtin...i dont quite remember).

[m3ch4]

That amount of drives does sound pretty crazy...it's been suggested to reduce the drives and increase the size and I'd go for that.

Unless you have different data on each drive, in which case it would make sense to have all those different drives. Like, one drive for music files, one drive for backup, etc, that way when you go to access the drives you're only pulling specific data from specific drives and not creating a back up of the flow of data (which I guess isn't really a problem, ata/scsi still allow data to flow pretty quick).

I like hte idea of just networking a bunch of computers. If each computer has a pretty small case, and one or two drives in it, it works better in my mind, seperate cooling, seperate power, etc. Plus with giga-byte network capabilities it would be quick to access data as well, if that is an issue to people.

[yordan]

That I like hte idea of just networking a bunch of computers. If each computer has a pretty small case, and one or two drives in it, it works better in my mind, seperate cooling, seperate power...

Unfortunately, this is not the tendancy today. Today, the tendancy is grouping blades in a single cabinet : 15 two-cpu machines in the same drawar, a single power supply, a single cooling system. And several cabinets in a single rack. So you will have 50 to 75 cpu's on a square meter...

[Casanova]

Yeah I too believe That you Use Single hard disk If 160gb or so and make 8 partitions if you want ..! As thats better than wasting acess time and power..! i never saw someone use 8 hard disks ... its really crazy to think.! But its ok for servers to have multiple hard disks... If you use it for desktop Then just single hard disk is enough.!

Iam using two hard disks .Totaling 160gb {ie 80+80 gb}
and both have 2-2 partitions {virtually 4 hard disks}
I have noticed that sometimes my system goes slow On acessing another drive .. Im getting slow times in 2 drives god knows how is your system!

[yordan]

wasting acess time

Nope ! If you have two disks, access time is usually divided by two (30 milliseconds on each disk instead of 30+30=60 milliseconds with a single disk).
So, having a lot of disks is great. The only question is if you want to pay the price of noise and electrical power for obtainint it.
Yordan