Which is best, one 300GB hard drive or multiple smaller drives?

[rv13uk]

Im currently looking at buying the Maxtor Diamondmax 10 300GB (SATA) 7B300S0 hard drive but wondering whether its worth buying two, say, 160GB HD's instead. Im going to be using the PC mainly for gaming (im building it from scratch, first time so bit nervous but hopin itll be fine ) and the parts im currently considering are:
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard (supporting AMD 64 CPU's)
AMD Athlon 64 3800+
Crucial 184-pin DIMM RAM 2GB kit (Part number: CT2KIT12864Z4OB)
XFX Geforce 6800 256MB PCI-Express Graphcis card
Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition OS
A-top X-Blade Ultimate Black case with 580 Watt PSU

The main factors are speed and I dont want it to cost too much, the one im looking at is £160 so I guess up to £200 is acceptable. Id also like it to be at least 300GB as I want surplus space to ensure I never run out . Finally if anyones got any advice on the set up im planning to use please paste it in the 'First time PC builder' post in the cooling and modding section. Thanks.

 

[Filard]

Ok. If you want redundancy go with the two 160 GB. If you plan on just backing up all of your data via tape or DVD, then the 300 GB is ok. I always like to have more than one drive anyway. I guess it is kind of like a security blanket.

 

[SOcRatEs]

dual HDD's

I believe you'll be running XP?
if so
2 HDD's is the way I go for 2 basic reasons.
1. Pagefile goes on secondary drive (speed) XP is designed this way.

2. I use acronis true image for data backup(creates hidden partion)also secondary drive. It wouldn't work right to save back up on same drive.
if the main drive I'm backing up is where I keep the back up , then if HDD fails I loose it all.
I run XP on my sata drive and pagefile/backups on HDD 0(primary ide drive)
G'Luck
:grinthumb

 

[Samstoned]

whats that saying bout' putt'n all your eggs in one basket
with the PSU you got I would have 4 smaller drives
so yes two 160 drives would be a better solution