Does the boot drive matter?

S

setscrew

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jul 19, 2000
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Ok, a question for all you individuals out there who possess more knowledge than I.

I have two hard drives to be driven by a controller card (each being a master): drive one is a WD 27 GB, 7200 RPM, 2MB cache, ATA 66; drive two is a Maxtor 80 GB, 7200 RPM, 8MB cache, ATA133.

Which HD whould you place as the boot drive and which for storage?

I had intended to place the 27GB as the boot drive, but my friend said I would see faster overall system performance (XP Home)with a couple of partitions on the 80GB and it acting as the boot drive in lieu of using it "just for storage".

Any input?

TIA
 
i agree with you. put the swap on the other though.
once the comp is booted. the speed of the boot drive doesn't matter, unless your accessing it.
 
Thank you for your input. I am planning just to keep the 27GB for the boot drive, applications and temporary files. The 80GB is for longterm storage and various gaming programs.
 
Make sure you put the gaming partition(s) on the outter edge of the disk and the long term storage partition innermost, for best performance where you need it. If you slap your partitions on ane after the other, they should go from outside to inside, I believe.
 
OK; great advice.

I am planning to make three partitions: one for the swap/page file (2GB) and divide the remainder into two equally sized partitions (approx. 37GB each). The swap file would be easy to find, but I assume the lower ranking letter designator signifies outer disk placement with higher significance moving inward according to your information.
 
That should be the case if you don't fiddle with the drive letter assignments. I believe you can also look at the partitions under disk management and left -> right equates to outside -> inside.
 
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