External harddrives

Discussion in 'Computer Science & Culture' started by alexb123, Jul 7, 2008.

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  1. alexb123 The Amish web page is fast! Valued Senior Member

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    Can a multi core computer read 2 drives at the same time? So if I had an external drive that stored my music would reading if from an external drives slow the computer down less than from a single drive?

    Is an internal drive faster than an external drive? Is a second internal drive hard to set up?
     
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  3. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    I have to access my second HD if I want to do anything on it. My primary HD won't "see" the secondary during "normal" operations.
     
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  5. alexb123 The Amish web page is fast! Valued Senior Member

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    Umm so the computer cannot use both at once. Surely it cannot be that hard for the computer to multi task?
     
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  7. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    It can only do what it is programmed to do.
     
  8. alexb123 The Amish web page is fast! Valued Senior Member

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    Oh Yeah I know. Its just I would have thought it would not be that hard to do so I'm surprised. Esp with dual core processors.
     
  9. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    Those are within each of the HD. They cannot be accessed by another HD as of yet.
     
  10. phlogistician Banned Banned

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    Your computer can see as many drives as you can physically attach to it. You can copy and paste between different drives, mirror them, RAID them, or concatenate them.

    External drives don't necessarily slow your computer down, and using muliple drives can offer performance benefits, as you increase bus bandwidth, ie, move swap files to a different HD to your Ooperating System, and data like misic to yet another, so one bus only deals with OS files, the other swapping, and the other data, and you separate our feeds, and there is no contention for resource.

    If you want real fast access to data, buy a 64Gb memory stick, and put your music/videos on there. It doesn't get much faster.
     
  11. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    The only thing that slows external drives down is whatever connection you use to connect it to your system with. If it's USB 1.# is going slower than 2.#, there is then connections like Firewire and of course Optics which are far faster.

    As Phlog puts forwards Memory sticks are the fastest mainly because of the lack of moving parts (of course they aren't always the cheapest option if you are looking for large amounts of storage space.)

    As for Read/Writing to more than one drive at a time, it's no problem for a computer with even a single core to do.
     
  12. alexb123 The Amish web page is fast! Valued Senior Member

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    Thanks for the guidance. Still unsure of what to do. Are the new 10,000 RPM drives much better than the 7,000? Also, was reading about 20,000 RPM drive will these as good as they sound?
     
  13. MacGyver1968 Fixin' Shit that Ain't Broke Valued Senior Member

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    Raptor 10k rpm drives are fast. But can be a little pricey. The also have smaller sizes. I have a 74 gb Raptor here at the office. I was going to set up a test to see how much faster it is than a standard 7200 rpm drive. I also was going to compare it to a 15k rpm scsi 320 drive.
     
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