Simviation Forum - Advice on setup of 2nd HD

Feb 27^th, 2005 at 8:12pm

beaky Offline
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I'm expecting my new 200GB HD to arrive any day now; want to set up my machine so that the new drive is used primarily for files (music, video, photos, etc.) and the original 40GB HD will be devoted to programs. I've got FS9, CFS3, and PF installed, plus a couple of smaller games and the usual multimedia stuff.
What I'm not sure about is partitioning, or keeping a backup of the OS (at least) on the 2nd drive. Anybody have any suggestions? I'm content enough to backup on discs; I really want as much storage room and elbow room for applications as i can get between the two drives. But I also want to make the most of what I've got performance-wise.

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Reply #1 - Mar 2^nd, 2005 at 5:33am

congo Offline
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When you get your new drive, it may well be a faster device than your 40 gb drive. If the new drive is faster, then it would be wise to use that as your primary drive.

Partitioning is simply dividing your drive into smaller parts, not much different to creating large folders, except that the operating system sees hard drive partitions as seperate physical devices and treats them as seperate hard disks.

From a security standpoint, partitioning can be very useful if the virus/threat attacks C: drive, ignoring your files on other drives.

From a management point of view, partitioning is useful because the smaller sections are quicker to work on individually. Large or single partitions take a long time to copy/format/check etc.

Free partioning software is available from many sources including the drive manufacturers websites.

The windows XP setup disc is as good as any partioning tool, and if you read the setup options very slowly and carefully, you can't really go wrong, if you do, just start again.

My advice when you get the new drive..............

Disconnect your current drive, leaving it in position.

Hook up the new drive in MASTER configuration on IDE "0" preferably.

Set your BIOS options to "BOOT FROM CDROM" first, then Boot from HDD 0 second.

Run the windows setup disc and install windows as normal

Return the BIOS to your normal boot sequence.

If you decide to keep the new drive as your main drive because it is faster, configure the old hard drive as SLAVE IDE "0".

I recommend using the new drive exclusively with perhaps 4 x 50gb partitions, or perhaps 2 x 50 and 1 x 100gb partitions. It's entirely up to your usage requirements.

The 40gb drive can be left in position or removed, and your most important data can be periodically backed up to it. This will isolate your precious data from the system and save your Power Supply Unit and power bill some extra stress, also extending the life of your 40gb drive.

Leave an intact operating system on your 40gb drive so you have an immediate backup system should your other hard drive or op sys become corrupt.

Mainboard: Asus P5K-Premium, CPU=Intel E6850 @ x8x450fsb 3.6ghz, RAM: 4gb PC8500 Team Dark, Video: NV8800GT, HDD: 2x1Tb Samsung F3 RAID-0 + 1Tb F3, PSU: Antec 550 Basiq, OS: Win7x64, Display: 24" WS LCD

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Reply #2 - Mar 2^nd, 2005 at 7:23am

Gixer Offline
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However you set the partitions up for best performance you want to keep at least 50% drive space free on your OS partition and Games partition.

Not so important on the partitions where you put vid files and pics etc though.

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Reply #3 - Mar 2^nd, 2005 at 9:29am

congo Offline
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Gixer did you ever find out the reason why that works?

Mainboard: Asus P5K-Premium, CPU=Intel E6850 @ x8x450fsb 3.6ghz, RAM: 4gb PC8500 Team Dark, Video: NV8800GT, HDD: 2x1Tb Samsung F3 RAID-0 + 1Tb F3, PSU: Antec 550 Basiq, OS: Win7x64, Display: 24" WS LCD

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Reply #4 - Mar 3^rd, 2005 at 9:07pm

beaky Offline
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Thanks guys-
I installed the 200 GB drive b4 seeing your posts, so I went with the unpartitioned 40GB master/200GB slave setup as originally planned.
I suppose I should reformat the 40 as per gixer's suggestion, but as far as speed goes, both drives (same mfr. and series) have identical speed, buffer size, and seek times spec'd, so I don't think I'm sacrificing performance for space. I think i'm really going to need the big drive for multimedia files in the near future, so I'm going to keep that for storage... maybe move a few smaller apps over there to give programs like FS9 some more elbow room.

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Reply #5 - Mar 5^th, 2005 at 7:45pm

Bubblehead Offline
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While on the subject, I'm planning to upgrade my primary hardrive to a higher capacity also. My question is what happens to the activation clause that came along with the WinXP? Will I be allowed to load my WinXP OS into the new drive without violating the activation agreement?

Bubblehead

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