Two Hard Drives

[PcKiller]

I always have two hard drives in my computer. And always put the real important data on the second, so that if you have to redo Windows, your important stuff is safe.

[FLY FISHER]

I use this Trios for switching between hard drives.
I works great.
I have Windows on one and Linux on the other.:)
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/search.asp?keywords=trios&image1.x=6&image1.y=3

[ZEST]

I have two physical hard drives, but only one is always connected. (The PC confuses disk letters and it becomes difficult to find files and folders.) Periodically I mirror C: disk on CD-R and I copy all my personal data on CD-RW at the end of the day. It takes only one-two minutes, as only new and changed files are added.
If anything happens, from power failure to lost sectors to mechanical problems, I open the case, reconnect the other drive (both are IDE, so no changes in BIOS are required), mirror C: disc, then D: one (my personal data) and within half hour I am back in business. Then I have time to repair the damaged HDD (or to buy a new one).

[Dag-Otto]

Good trick PCKiller

On my workstations I use RAID1 Mirroing or Duplexing
Obviously hardware raid is better, but software RAID works as well.

Here are some advantages:

One Write or two Reads possible per mirrored pair

Twice the Read transaction rate of single disks, same Write transaction rate as single disks

100% redundancy of data means no rebuild is necessary in case of a disk failure, just a copy to the replacement disk

Transfer rate per block is equal to that of a single disk