Tiberian Fiend
Veteran Member
Two 750 GB WD Caviar Black drives in a RAID 0 array, which is then split with about 1.2 TB for Win7 and 300 GB for WinXP.
Main systems been dead for a while (new motherboard loves to run at some stupidly slow speed taking OS installs 2-3 hours to fail before I try again then get tired of trying).. but dunno I have a few several TB drives that are full laying around waiting to get reconnected.
Been meaning to do a raid-5 2 or 3TB setup but need data up first then I'll debate the undesirable cost. But that's what I'm using to archive software and also my dvds so the kids don't ruin them after a watch or two.
Laptops or desktops, there is a massive difference between being able to complete 200 IOPS vs. 60000 IOPS. On a regular SATA drive, Windows 7 took 6-7 minutes to boot; after migrating to an SSD, it takes 45 seconds. Applications load an order of magnitude faster.
What?? 6-7 minutes to boot? That's insane. Even 45 seconds is painfully slow. I mean - this is almost 2014! My 1987 Amiga 500 fully boots in 15 seconds. I can boot, connect to the internet, check my email and shut down in 45 seconds.
My new Mac with SSD can finally match the 15 second boot up time. That's my new minimum tolerable boot time: 15 second startup, 2 second shutdown.
My main desktop computer was outfitted with a 10GB hard drive. Last year I added a 30GB drive I had lying around, for a total of 40GB.
And if I didn't work with digital photos and music, I wouldn't need more than a tenth of that space.
I asked about your main work machine, not the vintage tuff you play around with. My main rig isn't even the newest in the house (Opteron 180 socket 939) but I use it for email, web use, download storage, etc. I have better machines for Netflix, servers, gaming.
What OS and processor are you running?
My main machine to this day is a Pentium III with Windows 95. As it happens, my only newer computer is a Celeron laptop with less capacity. (20GB, to be precise.)
...and of course my Model M keyboard and Logitech Trackman Marble+ USB (the old white one!) -- Nothing like a twenty five year old keyboard and decade and a half old mouse on a bleeding edge build.
I'm booting off a 256 gig SSD, but the system has 12tb of HDD's in it. The SSD is strictly for read mostly-boot, given that repeated write-wise they have the reliability of a 1987 Yugo GV.
I just gave myself an early Christmas present with a system rebuild -- new mobo, vid and some drives... so now it's:
i7 4770k
ASRock Fatal1ty Z87 Motherboard (3x SLI capable)
16 gigs (2x8) G'Skill Ares DDR3 2400
8 gigs (2x4) G'Skill Sniper DDR3 2400 (from old build)
Gigabyte Windforce GTX 780 OC 3 gig
256 gig SandDisk Ultra Plus SSD
2x 4tb Seagate
2x 2tb Hitachi (from old build)
Blu-ray Burner
Thermaltake TR2 950 Watt "gold" rated PSU (from old build)
Thermaltake Element G case (from old build)
Phanteks PH-TC14PE CPU cooler
Hooked up to the displays I already had:
Potalion 27" 2560x1440 IPS Display
2x Samsung 24" 1920x1200 LCD Displays
...and of course my Model M keyboard and Logitech Trackman Marble+ USB (the old white one!) -- Nothing like a twenty five year old keyboard and decade and a half old mouse on a bleeding edge build.
The previous build was an i7 870, 16 gigs RAM (2x4 1600 and 2x4 2400, running at 1333) and a pair of GTX 260 in SLI.
It's also fun having a Tandy 1000 SX, IIe Platinum and Mac IISE the next desk over from it.
Also putting together a SteamBox with parts from my junk bin -- I know my cup doth runneth over when the parts bin yielded a i7 920, Asus P6T Deluxe Mobo, 9 gigs of RAM, and a 1tb Hibachi. Adding a nVidia GTX 650TI Boost to it, gonna dual boot to Win 7 for gaming. Might even quintuple boot... SteamOS, OSX, Win7, Haiku, and Mint. Lord knows I've got enough sub 1tb SATA drives I could give each their own instead of trying to get OSX and SteamOS to 'play nice' with everything else.
Sort of what I expected given the drive sizes. I mean the machine is not capable of handling 720P video well, it is not a power house of gaming, and probably can not do everything on the internet but it works superbly well with the correct time period SW (Win95, Office 95, etc.) and will get you through 99% of your day to day computer needs (word processing, email, web browsing, etc.). So why have more then 40-60GB of HDD space? My Win95 machine had a 1gig SCSI HDD and it worked just fine.