setting up 2 hard drives

[DBD]

I have a 160GB hard drive and I bought a Western Digital 250GB hard drive. I installed the WD 250GB as a slave with 1 partition.

Should I use "Virtual memory" on the new 250GB (I'm using it on my 160GB)

Should I assume the new WD 250GB is faster than my old 160GB that came with my 2 year old emachine, And Install my games on the new one?

What should I set the memory usage to "programs" or "System cache" (its set to programs)

I want my computer to be set up best for gaming

Thanks

 

[Shannon]

As a girl with 5 hard drives installed, here's what I'd do.

Move your "My Documents" folders and stuff to your second drive

Assuming you're using Windows XP, make a partition on the 160gb drive just for the OS. I use a 30gb partition. Then, I'd install all future games on the second partition of the 160 drive, and I'd save your files and whatever data you may have on the 250gb drive.

The seperate OS partition is so that if you need to reformat and reinstall windows, you can do so easily without losing data.

 

[mike4realz]

yes i agree...u definitely want to use a separate partition just for winxp itself, that'll give u the best performance too...and "NO" don't use virtual memory on any other drives or partitions besides xp cuz ur just wasting space and they're not even being used. only use virtual memory where ur operating system resides.

just leave your memory usage to "programs" (default recommended)

 

[locki433]

If you can get your page file and a seperate drive on a different channel, that's the best way to go about it. If it's on the same drive, it has to stop accessing the file it needs to to read or write to the page file, so having it on a seperate drive helps that. But since IDE doens't support simultanious read/write movements on the same channel, you need to have them on seperate channels

 

[DBD]

Thanks for the help

Yes I have XP but I only have the emachine restore discs that came with my computer. Can I still put XP on its own partition?

"separate drive on a different channel" Does this mean giving each hard drive its own IDE cable?

 

[locki433]

Yes, it means giving each drive it's own cable.

 

[RicoDirenzo]

And how do you do that on an emachine?????? How to you IDE cable two hard drives on different 80 wire IDE cables in that machine? And why? IDE 0 Master and Slave cause no problems other than the fact they the data transfer rates for PATA drives will never reach the 100 or 133mhz data transfer bus speed. You use SATA drives on your puters and he has an Emachine with IDE only, I presume....?????????? Using a small partition for the OS is good advise but with two drives the partition is just fancy dancing. Given the size of the drives and the placing of the Swap files on the slave, he will not suffer any noticeable performance problems with his home PC emachine on IDE anyway. Two drives...one for programs and the other for backup of data. Retoring the OS in a small partition is useful primarily if you ony have one drive.....and given the size and cost of drives today it is simply unnessesary to complicate your system setup with large numbers of single drive partitions. I'm not saying this to you but it is advise that I give to myself....like everything in life that actually works efficiently, given all of the possibilities, choose the simplist construct, simplicity is the best medicine!!! Viz: Keep it simple stupid!! (directed to myself).