New System = New Hard Drive?

[CRXican]

I am moving from a Shuttle to an ATX setup and will be pulling the ram and vid card from the Shuttle as I can't really afford to have both at the same time. Now I have a hard drive dilemma.

In the Shuttle is a 120GB IDE drive. I recently bought an external enclosure that houses a 200GB IDE drive as I didn't expect to be moving away from the Shuttle. I plan on keeping the drive in the enclosure as a back up and so it can stay portable.

Should I just ignore the IDE drive in the Shuttle and go for an SATA drive in the new system? Or should I run an SATA drive as the Boot/Program drive and stick the 120GB IDE drive in there for Music and Video files? Is there any real benefit to having more than one hard drive? The motherboard is an ASUS P4P800 Deluxe.

 

[DougLite]

The latest 7200 RPMs can be significantly faster than older units, particularly Hitachi 7K250/7K400, Maxtor DiamondMax 10/MaxLine III, and especially the 10,000 RPM WD Raptor. If you're running on an older Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor, or Samsung, you will see a noticeable drop in load/boot up times, even if you already have a 7200RPM/8MB buffer drive. The down side is that the better drives cost a little more and you don't see them on crazy rebate specials like 160GB for $40 after MIR. Samsung SpinPoint P80 and Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 are generally held to be the quietest drives available.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=100592 is a very good value and above average performer, although some users complain about a 'meow' from Hitachi drives. However, they are quire reliable, much better than the IBM DeathStar days.
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=100719 is pretty darn good, and a 16MB buffer is just insane. 300GB will go a long way in storing movies and such. But it's a little higher cost/GB than the Hitachi.
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101222 costs twices as much as the 160GB Hitachi, and is only half the capacity, but is the quickest thing going on SATA.

Having a second hard drive can be used to your advantage. You can put your page file on a separate disk, allowing page operations to be separate from other disk activity by your OS, speeding up both. It also makes running multiple OSes a lot easier, experimenting with Linux is a lot easier and safer if you have a separate drive partition table to FUBAR during an install. I hope this helps - feel free to ask mroe questions.

 

[CRXican]

Thanks a lot for the detailed reply. I guess I'll leave the IDE drive (Western Digital) in the Shuttle. That way I can just add some ram and a vid card in there at a later date and boot right up. I will also leave the Seagate 200GB drive in the external enclouse as it doesn't need to be all that fast as a backup drive. The necessary info from the 120GB drive will be placed onto the Seagate.

As for the new drives, I don't hear about the Hitachi drives too much but I'm willing to try new things. I have heard nothing but negatives about Maxtors so I'll say way from them. Either way I will be putting only new SATA drives in the new rig, likely 2 drives. A raptor would be lovely but not for that kind of cash.

My other major quesiton is what to do with partitions. I currently have just the OS on the C: drive and all other programs and games are on their own partition. Does it slow things down having it set up this way? Should I put the OS and all programs and games on the same partiton for best performance?

 

[DougLite]

My other major quesiton is what to do with partitions. I currently have just the OS on the C: drive and all other programs and games are on their own partition. Does it slow things down having it set up this way? Should I put the OS and all programs and games on the same partiton for best performance?

Mechanically, the fatest part of a hard drive is the outer zones, because more indivdual sectors pass underneath the drive heads in a rotation at the outside of the disk than the inside. I am not 100% sure if they start or end numbering sectors at the outside or inside, but I'm reasonably sure it's the outside, as all linear transfer rate tests start high and decay as they go on. However, having a separate partition does give you a crucial benefit - If you decide that your comp is riddled with spyware, has too many jacked up drivers to clean, etc and reformatting is the best solution, then you simply use the setup program to format the C: partition, and all of the jacked up Windows stuff is instantly gone without affecting what's on the D: partition. That's a luxury I wouldn't throw away, and it's something I do on all of my systems. Reformatting is so much easier then. Glad I could help.

 

[CRXican]

In that case, what should and should not be installed on the C: partition?

 

[CRXican]

H E L P

 

[DougLite]

H E L P

Alright, alright. I usually go with security and utility software, hardware programs, any programs that will get broken if not on the exact same version of 'Doze as well as any Microsoft products that are integrated into Windows (WMP, IE, etc) on C:, everything else goes on D: Here's my exact method:

Install WinXP. During the setup program, I create one 8192 MB partition on my boot drive. After install finishes, and I get to desktop, Windows Update as needed, then I install any security, utility, hardware programs in C:\Program Files\. This next step is optional - convert your boot drive to a dynamic disk. That way, if you screw up and don't make one of your volumes big enough, you can extend it. I then create volumes on the disk for whatever the box's mission will be. This particular unit I'm typing on, with a 160GB Barracuda 7200.7 looks like this (thanks to ImageShack, and sorry for the poor cropping job):


Of course, the sizes of the volumes you will create will vary depending on your requirements. Now, you have a programs volume, how do you make it home to all of the programs you will install later? First, copy everything in your existing C:\Program Files\ folder to where you want your new Programs directory to be on your other volume/partition (make sure you get hidden files and folders). "But DougLite, how do I tell my setup programs to use this new folder? It will still say C:\Program Files\ right?" A little registry magic works here. Open regedit and navigate to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion. In that key are values for 'ProgramFilesDir' and 'CommonFilesDir' and their default values are 'C:\Program Files' and 'C:\Program Files\Common Files' respectively. I make them 'D:\Programs' and D:\Programs\Common Files' but you will use values appropriate to what you have setup. Now, when an install program asks Windows where the ProgramFilesDir is, it will return the value you have set, and automatically default to installing there. Isn't that slick?

Now, in my picture, you will notice two volumes that don't have drive letters, Games and CD Images. That's because they are mounted to NTFS folders. I like to keep my games separate from my apps, so I have a folder D:\Games and a separate 40GB volume for them. This is how you mount. Create the folder you want to have a separate volume point to, and leave it empty. Then create the volume/partition (you can do this on basic or dynamic disks), and in the new partition/volume wizard, you will have the option to create a drive letter or path. Instead of picking a drive letter, point to the empty folder you made using 'the mount in the following empty NTFS folder' option. I now have 20GB for apps on D: but 40GB for games in D:\Games. I did the same thing to hold lots of CD Images in E:\CD Images without taking away from the 20GB I had allocated for music in E:\ Brilliant! "But DougLite, I want to install UT2004 on my programs volume, and it takes up 5.5GB, but I only have 2GB left - what do I do?" If you made the disk dynamic before you created the programs volume, you can extend your programs volume with free space you may have left on the disk. In my picture, I have just over 40GB left. If I decide to install all of my games, I can extend Games. If somebody hooks me up with 20GB of MP3s, I can extend Media, etc.

"But DougLite, this was supposed to make reformatting easier...won't my new install be dumb and not no where my stuff is?" You can save the knowledge for a future install if you export the registry keys (in HKLM\Software\) for your programs and copy their start menu folders to a backup. I used this method to reinstall Windows XP, World of Warcraft, Warhammer 40K : Dawn of War, and UT2004 from boot to CD to playing in 30 minutes. You'd be amazed how quickly I can recover from a reformat. Takes a little effort, but I can reformat at will. There's also a key, HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall that holds all of the Uninstall infor for the programs in the Add/Remove Programs Control Panel applet. You'll want to back that up too if you want to preserve the uninstall information. I realize that this may be a little complex/too much effort for what you think it's worth. But I tell you, it makes reformatting SOOO much easier.

 

[CRXican]

Riiight, I'll pretend I know what you just said. Thanks anyway.

 

[Ice Czar]

without affecting what's on the D: partition.

doing strictly what Douglite said, reformatting not deleting the partition

for deleting a partition
as long as the D: partition is another primary partition youd be OK*
if however its a logical drive on an extended partition
its important to remember its parent primary can be reformatted, but not deleted
as you then have an orphaned extended partition

(you see everthing in here, Ive seen that one about a couple of dozen times )

* (you could recreate it make it active and reinstall, with a CD)

 

[Ice Czar]

CRXican as a note

Douglite is employing Dynamic Disks
(how youd get that lovely shade of puke yellow which is a simple volume)
as opposed to basic disks, there are special rules for dynamic disks and I generally dont advise their use,
as I feel there are better ways to accomplish those goals
and Dynamic Disks cant be employed on a USB drive

In basic disks your limited to 4 primary partitions
or 3 primary partitions and an extended partition with it own logical drives)

a few links Id adivse anyone to read before adopting DDs

Dynamic Disks
Description of Disk Groups in Windows Disk Management
Dynamic vs. Basic Storage in Windows 2000
Basic and Dynamic Disks @ Windows & .net Magazine
HOW TO: Recover an Accidentally Deleted NTFS or FAT32 Dynamic Volume
Dynamic Disk Hardware Limitations (No firewire, USB, removable or laptop)
HOW TO: Set Up Fault-Tolerant Sets on Dynamic Disks in Windows 2000
Dynamic Disk Numbering and the DmDiag.exe Tool
HOW TO: Regenerate a Dynamic Mirrored Volume in Windows 2000
Restrictions on Extending or Spanning Simple Volumes on Dynamic Disks

and the Partitioning Strategy that Douglite is using
http://zapwizard.com/Guides/Partitioning/index.html
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307889&sd=tech

which does considerably complicate recovery and the ability to dynamically configure drives

a more common recovery strategy in here is using ghost
partiotioning strategies are a very personal thing largely dependent on how you use your box

http://partition.radified.com/
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=741512

 

[DougLite]

CRXican as a note

Douglite is employing Dynamic Disks
(how youd get that lovely shade of puke yellow which is a simple volume)
as opposed to basic disks, there are special rules for dynamic disks and I generally dont advise their use,
as I feel there are better ways to accomplish those goals
and Dynamic Disks cant be employed on a USB drive

I said that making the disk dynamic was optional And you can still do the multi partition tricks, registry tweaks, and mount to NTFS folders on basic disks. The only thing I talked about that you can only do on a dynamic disk is extend volumes. (except if the volumes were originally created as partitions on a basic disk). I realize that dynamic disks are more trouble than what they're worth in most situations, and using the Windows XP CD to create a partition on a dynamic disk is bad, very bad, but I like being able to extend volumes I also know most of the limitations that you linked to MS KB articles about, but you were wise to throw them out there for everyone else's benefit. I agree with IceCzar - you need to have a thorough understanding of the mechanics, gotchas and limitations of storage implementation in Windows before attempting any of the things I talked about in my last post in this thread - in other words, "Kids, don't try this at home." Complicates recovery? Makes it easier for me, but maybe I'm just too used to M$'s storage model.

 

[tommo]

Riiight, I'll pretend I know what you just said. Thanks anyway.

...wow, how could that not make sense? I wouldn't waste another minute on someone so obnoxious.