Which hard drive?

[Guest]

I read somewhere that you should install programs that you want to run faster on faster drives, or should Windows be on the fastest drive. I currently have an old hard drive 5400 rpm 10GB with Win XP installed. I'm going to buy a 60GB 7200rpm drive in a couple of days and was wondering if i can install my games on the new drive instead of re-installing everything on the new drive again. Would my game play be faster?

 

[Rapmaster]

Ideally, yes you want Windows on the fastest drive but the difference isn't going to be spectacular.

So you'd be ok installing your games on the new drive.

Personally I would reinstall Windows on the new one but that's just because I'm obsessive with these things and I have too much free time =)

(in fact I am actually doing what you describe right now, on another PC.... hmmm)

 

[Dabom]

Originally posted by Rapmaster
Personally I would reinstall Windows on the new one but that's just because I'm obsessive with these things and I have too much free time =)

lol

 

[LT.Homer Simpson]

if you dont plan on moving the os to the new hd, I would at least do this:
1. Partition the drive, using a separate partition for each particular use...like one for games and others for storage.
2. Make a small partition at the beginning of the drive for swap file usage only(virtual memory)--say 600 megs at fat 16.

Example--if your first drive is C: then the second hd would be D:,E:,F, ect.....

D: then would be 600 megs fat 16 for swap--fastest part of drive
E: would x amount of gigs fat 32 for game--- next fastest
F: would be x amount of gigs for storage

You always want the swap on the fastest--also having swap on a second drive takes some burden off the first drive speeding its seek time up.
PS--Dont use the swap area for anything but swap....

 

[t'kron]

One comment, if you are running two hard drives sharing the same IDE cable be aware:

Any single IDE cable will run at the slowest speed of the two devices hooked up to it.

So if you have a fast HD and a slow HD on the same cable, both will run at the slower speed.

If you have a HD and a CDrom on the same cable both will run at CDrom speed (which is really slow compared to HD speed).