Are two hard drives worth it? (Dell D820 Laptop)

[PilotMatt]

I am looking at purchasing the D820 laptop from dell. There is an option to purchase an extra 80gb hard drive (80gb 9.5mm 5400rpm) for $150.

The other option is upgrading from a 40gb, 5400rpm drive to a 100gb, 7200rpm drive for $179.

For basically the same amount of money and storage area, which set up will make my computer run the fastest?

Is there any issues with running both a 7200 and 5400 rpm drive. I am assuming that with the laptop that they would be on the same cord.

[jnalpak]

dude, two HD's in a laptop? how heavy is this thing going to be? I would stick with ONE midsize and go with an external HD thats like 300GB

BTW
5400rpm < 7200rpm
if storage access is VERY important to you go with the higher RPM. If this is a poker machine that you will use to track your hands with i would go with the higher RPM.

[PilotMatt]

This will be only for poker.

Thanks for the help, i was hoping that one hd would be better (read lighter)

[Rick Nebiolo]

[ QUOTE ]
For basically the same amount of money and storage area, which set up will make my computer run the fastest?

[/ QUOTE ]

Two hard drives won't matter much for speed unless they are set up in a raid array (not sure this is done for laptops). But if you want data security along with the ability to quickly get back to a known good configuration having two hard drives is a must.

Check out this recent post regarding two hard drives, although my partitioning scheme is a bit over the top. It can be slimmed down though.

For a laptop I'd put two partitions of the first drive, one for WinXP and Programs and one for data (you can set up PT and postgresqu so the data is in the second partition, along with favorites, Firefox configurations and so on).

On the second hard drive use one small partition for your virtual memory swap file (increases speed), one partition for ghost images of your WinXP and programs, and another partition to backup data. Use SyncbackSE to backup data and key program elements (e.g., Firefox profiles) between Ghost backups. Note that I'm fairly certain that Norton Ghost can be run of a CD (you want to image your C: drive when it is at rest using DOS/Ghost).

Believe me, this system will save you time and data if you ever have a hard disk crash.

~ Rick