Just a preformance tip from a friend.

[Edward]

I was talking with the comp lab director at my school about my recent upgrade to a bigger but slower Hd and wanted to pass on a tip. Have the OS on a small fast HD and everything elce on another drive. This will increase the speed of ALL computer operations and will allow the computer to access OS files without inerupting other HD related tasks. It will reduce conflits and gliches due to seeking an OS file and another file.

[5614]

 

That is exactly what I do, or almost so anyway.

 

I have two HDDs.

 

A small fast one and a bigger fast (or same speed as the smaller one) one.

 

Bigger HDDs will run slower (assuming all factors other than the size are constant) because there's more data for the disk to search through to find a single file. Even if the disk is empty this still applies, although not as much.

 

So using some basic logic I decided to store my OS and the MS office on the faster HDD and all games/other programs/files on my 2nd HDD. This will allow the OS (and thus the computer) and MS office to run faster (fractionally, but possibly noticeable).

[Edward]

Ok no a quick question how big is windows xp pro approx min max?

[Dave]

A full install would probably fit inside a couple of gig. Doesn't allow much leeway for programs to be installed though (you could argue that programs can be installed elsewhere I suppose).

[Klaynos]

The way I understand it, the best option is to have all of XP and ALL program installations on one hard disk + at least a gig for windows to mess about with, it doesn't like being cramped.

 

My computer came with a 20 gig partician for the windows install (I know it's not the same thing just drawing parallels in terms of space required) and I've got a few games installed but not that many, and I am running out of space on it ....

[Sayonara]

A full install would probably fit inside a couple of gig. Doesn't allow much leeway for programs to be installed though (you could argue that programs can be installed elsewhere I suppose).

A ~10gig SCSI ought to do the trick for most ppl.

[1veedo]

I have all my operating systems on a 40G, a (shared) swap at the begining of my 80G, and the rest of that is designated for my files. Althoguh I do have a couple oddball partitions. One I think is an old /usr partition I'm about to format and try longhorn (10G). I'm also putting an FAT where my current SWAP is (1G) because I found an old 3G laying around the house. I don't know how fast it is, but I might make a gig swap.

 

So on top of storing the OS and other files on diferent HDs, also put your swap on another one