Setting up Hard Drive

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 6:57 pm

O.K. So I got the WD 160g HD and win xp pro. I'm going to slave/master with another WD 40g HD. So kiddies a few (to you guys)very basic questions. The 40 g drive will be may main internet/porn drive running 98se. The 160g will be for the newest games and backup storage. So:

1) Any criteria for which is master or slave?

2)Since the 160g drive will have winxp pro, should I make one large partition or break it down into smaller ones?

3) I suppose I will have to enter all the same drivers as the 40 g has (like vid, via and sound card drivers?

I'm hoping win xp will give me a more stable platform for the newer games as they seem to be locking up, though how much may be due to the ATI catylist drivers and hom much to 98se I don't know.

Vander · Post by **Vander** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 7:07 pm

1. Your old drive should be primary master, if you still wish to boot off of it.

2. It's up to you and how you want to keep your stuff organized.

3. For XP, you will need different drivers than for 98.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 7:25 pm

The 40 GB drive doesnt absolutely have to be the C: drive for the computer to still boot 98, but the 160 would HAVE to be a NTFS partition for that to work. It should be a single NTFS anyway, fat32 over 40 GB is a massive waste of space. Then 98 would see itself on the 40 GB as the C: drive and the only drive in the system, XP would see the 40 as the D: drive.

Additionally, Fat32 has a 127 GB partition limit IIRC, so Windows 98 will not be able use more then that on a single partition. Your just plain better off to completely toss windows 98 and use XP only. Do a fresh install of XP on to that 40 GB drive, and use the 160 for storage/games/program files.

My system has dual 120 GB hard drives configured in 3 partitions.
Partition 0 Drive 0 is the C: drive and is 5.99 GB, Windows XP boots from this partiton (1.4 GB free).
Partition 1 Drive 0 is the D: drive and is 105 GB, games, downloads, stuff I am working on, anything that doesnt need to be on C: is here (22 GB free).
Partition 0 Drive 1 is the E: drive, and is 111 GB, this is mass storage, I keep anime, movies, the FTP server mirror and all my MP3s here (1.06 GB free).

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 7:26 pm

Thanks Jeff, On partition size I was just wondering as to the efficiency factor of one large drive over 3 or 4 smaller partitions. I may be thinking in terms of win 98 being limited to a single partition of 37g.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 7:52 pm

Krom, my 40g drive is divided into three partitions C,D & E. I use my D drive for a dos based cad program (yeah, I know...sooo 80's) and I would rather not screw around with win XP on that drive. Unless of course I will run into major problems switching from one drive to the other or running the 98 drive and trying to store data to the xp drive.

Flatlander · Post by **Flatlander** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 9:30 pm

Note: Win XP SP1 required to utilize full capacity of hard drives greater than 130GB.

Vander · Post by **Vander** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 12:55 am

"On partition size I was just wondering as to the efficiency factor of one large drive over 3 or 4 smaller partitions."

If you use NTFS, there is no benefit to limiting the drive size. NTFS reaches it's maximum cluster size (4k) at 2gb, so everything above 2gb will have the same efficiency. FAT32 reaches it's maximum cluster size (32k) at 32gb. I don't know what the size limit of a FAT32 volume is.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 6:11 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Xciter:
 You should make the fastest drive the one you use more often... put the slower drive as the master on the second IDE channel and not a master/slave.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Doing that, then I'd put my cd rom drive as a slave to one of the HD's and and the dvd player as slave to the second HD?

MD-2389 · Post by **MD-2389** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 9:15 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Vander:
I don't know what the size limit of a FAT32 volume is.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

127GB, as Krom said earlier in this thread.

Woodchip: Since you're putting XP Pro on the 160 gigger, I'd make atleast 3 partitions on it. One for the OS, one for general data, and one for the swap file. How much you give each partition is up to you, however on my system I did it like this:

1. XP Pro - ~20GB
2. Data - 133GB
3. Swap - 984MB

Vander · Post by **Vander** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 12:43 pm

"127GB, as Krom said earlier in this thread."

It's actually 8 terabytes. 127gb is the maximum size that win9x scandisk can deal with which would make that the practical limit for 9x use. Windows XP will let you format a FAT32 volume up to 32gb, but can mount volumes larger than that.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -US;184006

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 3:16 pm

32KB Cluster size, bleh not for me!

If we are just gonna toss meaningless numbers around, Go with NTFS, its maximum volume size is 232 -1 clusters (256 terrabytes) implimented, but in theory it can do 264 -1 clusters.

-Krom

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 3:52 pm

Thanks guys...though the terabite info got my head spinning

Honest Bob · Post by **Honest Bob** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 5:04 pm

What is the point of having the page file on its own partition?

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 6:22 pm

Makes it rather hard to have a fragmented page file dont you think?

Vindicator · Post by **Vindicator** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 8:10 pm

Of course if you have a ton of RAM you wont notice that much of a performance increase by dickin with the pagefile.

MD-2389 · Post by **MD-2389** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 8:13 pm

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Honest Bob:
What is the point of having the page file on its own partition?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

So it won't fragment the drive. You can tell it to fill up X ammount of the partition and let it be.

Jeff250 · Post by **Jeff250** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 8:39 pm

Generally, the earlier the swap file (any file) occurs on the drive, the more closer to the edge it is located, hence more rotational velocity, ergo more speed.