The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

As it'll be cloned at the sector level the 2TB drive will indeed show as a 500GB drive. I'll hook up a SATA dock to a linux machine or boot something up with a linux live cd and grow the partition to 2TB. I do this often, even with multi-boot discs, works a treat

 

Sorry Russ, didn't see your question re the AAKS drive(s), was just finishing work; i've been running on 6 internal AAKS drives since i built the Quad machine in '07, i can't fault them, nor the 500GB AAKB (IDE) equivalent drives i've been using as external backups for almost as long. The 500GB AAKS boot drive is a bit laggy now, i've not done any fresh installs since '07 (not that i remember anyway), i have done a few 'over the top' installs though, so i guess the drive is just bogged down a bit with all the crud that builds up over time. I am very pleased with the WD20EARS drives (and a couple of 2TB Hitachi's) so thought i'd stump up a bit of extra monies for the Caviar Black as a WD20EARS probably wouldn't be quick enough as a new boot drive.

I'll pop the Quad's boot drive out tonight or in the morning and take it to work and clone it/grow the partition there to save time as the new drives are turning up tomorrow. Saves doing hours of copying/partitioning at home.


Today we bought a couple WD20EARS for a new linux server, they'll be RAIDed and used as boot drives and storage as well. Of course such drives are find as boot drives under linux, plus being linux servers they'll stay up and running 24/7 so any potential slowness during booting won't matter, in fact nor will it matter during day to day use as this is primarily a(nother) storage server for bringing (incrementally, using rsync out of hours) across huge amounts of data from various foreign branches.

(One of the servers rsyncs data across from foreign branches every night and the same data is rsync'd to a.n.other local server during the day, though we'll probably replace this daily rsync with a tape backup), i think that server has WD20EARS in it, or they may be Hitachi. We currently use 2TB Hitachi's for our nightly backups of our critical data (and take them home each night), though we could just as easily use WD20EARS drives. We're pondering getting 1TB 2.5" drives and using those as nightly backups, much lighter on the pocket/backpack

 

I've not come across any Win7-related drive problems Russ, even if i did i would just usea linux live cd or whatnot to reformat (not used killdisk myself). Over the years i've used a few repartioning programs, my current preferred method is command line program 'dd' in linux to copy at sector level, or if it's SATA drives i just whop them in the posh hardware dock we have in the office (£55). Obviously it's zero hassle if you're copying the same sized drive so partitions and the like are then irrelevant as it's an exact copy, but when the destination drive is larger you obviously have to grow the partition, or as Deadrum stated you can just create an extra one. Multi-boot disk cloning is usually fine, though in certain setups things come unstuck when you grow a partition, though in those cases you just reinstall from scatch anyway.

 

Cloned the AAKS Boot drive to the Caviar Black at work, used Acronis Partition Expert (i think that's what it's called) to grow the 500GB to 2TB, popped in the new drive (plus the 2TB Green i bought, saves me opening the case next month when i was going to buy the last pair of 2TB's) and all is well. Just need to move a few hundred Gigs of data to the Black to free up other drives and job's a good 'un. The Black is certainly much more snappy than the AAKS that's for sure.

 

Just need to figure out what to do with all the spare drives, i have something like 13 500GB's (a mix of IDE and SATA) and a couple of smaller ones (all are WD). Have found a use for one, i'll put in my works linux box for music or just spare space, trouble is i'll be waiting forever to plug it in as said machine is up 24/7, i'll just have to wait for a powercut or something, no rush . Am pondering getting the kids a NAS of some sort and putting a couple of the 500GB's in there.
So the Quad machine is finally fully loaded with 6x 2TB internal drives now, let's hope the free space lasts a while, the good thing is i won't have to open the case again for a few years, touch wood that there's no component or board failures.

We're looking at switching our critical backups from 2TB 3.5" to 1TB 2.5" as they're a tad heavy to keep carting around, going to also buy the 2.5" plastic tanks to carry them in ~

Bless 'em ~

 

We use all manner of Dell, lots of old GX series ones, a lot of those swing open types (a lot of them are knocking on 8 years old and still hanging in there, every now and then we get rid of that shocker Windows 2000 and freshen them up with XP), all sorts of new ones, they're everywhere!, being as we buy Dell for all servers and desktops/laptops. We run machines into the ground, reinstall them if they start to creak as i say, but when they croak that's when we replace them. Servers are obviously on 24/7, but virtually all desktop machines are switched off over the weekends, but desktops do have a hard life being on all day every day, plus a lot are in workshops and warehouse environments so get clogged up a lot. Luckily in any branch that has workshops we have industrial compressors so we just cart the machine over to the cleaning room and blast away all the years of crud.

Can't get over how much faster the Caviar Black is compared to the AAKS, the machine's much more snappy, i guess over the 4 years i just didn't notice the AAKS wasn't actually that quick as a boot drive.