Are there any advantages or disadvantages to having two hard drives? Does it change anything when using an external hard drive?
1802638
Install a Solid State Drive for programs and a normal "spinning" HD for storage, this will make a fantastic machine.
1802639
Using a 2nd physical drive gives you better options for performance and for recovery. For example, you could have OS and applications on one drive, and data on the other. This improves performance because you're splitting the workload across the multiple drives. This is not the same as using two or more partitions in the same physical drive; that's just for organization, or to overcome limitations of some older operating systems that couldn't handle larger drives. For recovery, you can use one physical drive to backup the other. If you lose one of the drives, you still have your backup. Doesn't work that way with two partitions on the same physical drive. If you lose the drive, you lose both partitions, so there's no real recovery option there.
1802640
Advantages you have a lot of space, cons none that I know of, the external drive does not change anything
1802641
I can't be of much help yet; I bought the laptop for my Ph.D disseration in Economics and haven't yet begun to gather the tons of data I'll need. So I should find out soon. Using Windows 8 has been difficult. Totally unintuitive.
1996152
Hello Dany, I know you can make the same configuration that the MD389LL/A has with one hard drive and an internal SSD. I believe you can go with two hard disk, too. Your systen will perform best with an internal SSD and hard disk. You are welcome.
2147309
When I first got it (about 9 months ago), I started with 1 hard drive and it worked fine. I added another drive in single disk mode and it's also working fine. Although I didn't set it up as RAID, I remember I had a choice to turn it into RAID. However, I don't remember if formatting both drives is required for RAID; it's not required for two drives in single disk mode. This was a few updates ago, so it might have changed, but I think you can still start off with one drive, add another drive in the future, and set them up as RAID.
399559
Yes. I currently am using 2 HDD's for total redundancy of my data so 2 4tb drives only provide 4tb of data storage. I am using a 3rd 4tb HDD to automatically backup the data. In the future if I add 2 more 4tb drives I could double the capacity of both the online storage and backup capacity.
2189973
I don't recommend it. Stuffing two drives in could stretch the material and compromise it's durability. Also, if you stick two drives in one case and they knock against one another, you could damage one or both. The case material absorbs the energy of an impact; one hard case just transfers the impact to the next, unless they are fastened together somehow. You could order two, see for yourself if you can make do with one, and then return the second if you think you don't it.
1571724
SOME hard drives require using two USB ports on the computer to provide adequate power whether they are USB 2.0 or USB 3.0. It depends on the hard drive, not the version of the USB port. This drive does not require two USB ports.
1762478
The manual doesn't say. I used a 1TB drive and it worked fine. You can add 2 external drives, but no mention of size limit there. You can map it as a network drive, so you can move content back and forth that way, but slower ofc.
558908
I know you can switch to use an external hard drive but the box only recognizes one hard drive at a time. Meaning if you use an external drive, it won't let you access the internal hard drive until the external is unplugged.
527108
ABSOLUTELY. I have been using a pair of 3TB, a pair of 4T and a pair of 1 TB seagates for some time with no problems. I do not use any of their special back-up software. (KIK, Ph.D.)
581385
There are 4 drive bays. I haven't done so, but I understand you can rig the DVD slot for an additional drive. I have already added USB external without a problem. As far as the larger that 2TB drives - sorry, I haven't tried that. I'm running two small drives to handle the OS in a RAID configuration and 2-2TB drives in a RAID for everything else. Just haven't had a reason to upgrade beyond 2TB yet.
2020842
One drive-likely no problem. You could try attaching 2 drives and might be fine, I am not sure. Again, to be safe, buy a "powered"hub.
94953
External drives are better in quality and durability. I have both and prefer the external.
533746
Yes you can, its like having two hard drives connected independently only via the same cable.
240458
Each drive will always be a bit different, as no two drives will have the exactly the same free space. Mine is 931GB
477120
That will depend on your OS and drive manufacturer. I'm using Win 7 and a Seagate drive so I had to partition my 3TB into 2 logical drives. Don't quite understand why but that's what Seagate said I had to do.
532978
Hi to the best of my knowledge an experience on a Windows platform it shows as 2 separate drives. On the Mac os it shows as 1 drive.
1343109
I have been using mine with a second hard drive daily with Windows 7 ultimate with no issues at all. I see no reason why it wouldn't work.