Running OS off a dedicated Hard Drive

"It's a very good strategy. Not only the system performance will improve, but backups will become much easier. You can reformat your system drive any time without losing your documents.

For a fast system drive you can't find anything better than Intel's or OCZ's SSD, but they might be too expensive. Raptors' got much better $/GB ratio.

Important thing to know that SSDs come in the same package as HDDs. Same size and shape! However, SSDs are usually 2.5"" form factor (like notebook HDDs), so they are smaller than a typical desktop HDD. Since most PC cases are designed for 3.5"" form factor (typical desktop HDD) you need a drive bay. (Thread about this.)

This is a better approach than creating separate partitions because you can buy a very fast, but small drive and you can store your movies, songs, etc. on a slower, but much cheaper and bigger drive. This way you save money and you get a very fast system."

"In response to Damien's question of So what does 2.5 compared to 3.5 mean?

2.5 and 3.5 refer to the size of the drive - 2.5"" and 3.5"", respectively. The standard form factor for drives is 2.5"" for notebook/portable hard drives, 3.5"" for desktop hard drives, and 5.25"" for optical drives (CD/DVD readers and writers).

Most solid-state disks (SSDs) come in only the 2.5"" size so that they can be easily put into a laptop (where the power savings are substantial). To put one in a desktop you'll either need a flat surface to lay it (not recommended) or a special mounting bracket. While I've never seen a 2.5""=>3.5"" bracket, I have seen 2.5""=>5.25"" brackets.

Installing it in the bracket for your desktop is simple enough: screw the SSD into the brackets, slide the bracket into your case, and then screw the brackets into place."

I use only a single disk but I partition it in two different partitions since my disk is never a bottleneck and I get the benefit of a "drive" to the operating system and another "drive" to my data.

"This is just what I am doing, though for different reasons.

One common reason is to be able to repair one's data. The separation of OS & applications and one's data is significant enough to warrant different drives. However, this is particularly true with Apple computers.

My old tower Mac has a data disk in MacOSX's HFS+ format. This can be partitioned to allow the editing of movies in one partition, then moving the final movie in a standard format to a different partition, which will not be so fragmented.

MacOSX is on one drive, with a large, contiguous swap partition on another. Debian Linux is on a third drive. Many Linux applications, such as OpenOfficedotorg, have been ported to MacOSX. I find they run far more smoothly on Linux, and Debian Linux has libraries that allow it to read & write transparently to the HFS+ drive. There are several, less simple, options for connecting Windows & Linux; and it's important to write files in international standard formats. Linux has desktops that resemble any other operating system's."