[WishBone]

Greetings,

Recently, I bought a 1TB hard drive from a friend. I already have a 160GB installed on my own machine. This is a huge upgrade for me and I'd like to ask for advice on how I properly do this.

I have been used to partitioning my current 160GB drive into C and D. Giving more room on D for storage purposes but enough room on C for my OS alone and temporary files. I'd like to turn my 160GB drive into C and the new 1TB drive to D. I know it's possible but would it be recommended? Or maybe I should partition my 1TB drive into two making it C, D and E where C is the separate 160GB drive.

Another thing is that this new 1TB drive is used. I'd like to test it for any malfunctions. The previous owner said it wasn't a year old yet. I plugged it in and my machine immediately detected two more drives. Now that I know it works, I'd like to make sure there aren't any malfunctions. Can I get tips on how to do this?

And for whatever it's worth, my new 1TB drive is a 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black (WD1002FAEX) and my 160GB drive is a 160GB Seagate (Barracuda 7200.10).

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So basically you want to merge the C: and D: Partions you have on now to make a full 160GB right? And then you want to create a new D: Partion?

[NKGuy]

So basically you want to merge the C: and D: Partions you have on now to make a full 160GB right? And then you want to create a new D: Partion?

[WishBone]

I'm going to do a full re-install of WinXP so that's not a problem. What i'm looking for is good advice from tech experts on what to do with my 160GB and 1TB drives. I included the brand and models of each on my first post just in case one is better than the other for whatever purpose.

[Digerati]

Well, if me, and since you plan on reinstalling Windows anyway, I would make the 160 a single partition and install the OS and all hardware drivers on it as C drive and I would use this drive just the OS and HW drivers. That's about 100Gb more than you need for that but with 1Tb coming, who cares?

Then with the 2nd drive, I would partition it into about 970Gb and 30Gb partitions. The 970Gb will be for everything but the OS and HW drivers - all my installed programs, all my data files, etc. And the 30Gb (or what ever is left after the 970Gb) would be for the Page File only (and maybe very temporary stuff - but primarily for the PF).

You could also make a third partition on the big drive and use it for backing up C drive.

[WishBone]

I intend on using them both together. But considering performance, the 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black (WD1002FAEX) is better than the 160GB Seagate (Barracuda 7200.10). I don't want to stop using my current 160GB drive.

[NKGuy]

Are you looking to gain speed in your HDDs? If so a Raid setup would be ideal. If not you could just do as Digerati suggested.

[WishBone]

I already have the drive and i'm just trying to get it to work in the best way possible. I plugged it in and it already works anyway. Also, this is a 6GB/s drive and my MOBO supports SATA 2.0 which I believe is 3GB/s. I googled a bit and it says its backwards compatible but I won't get the full speed of this 6GB/s drive.

[Digerati]

It is not likely RAID will provide any significant improvement when using two dissimilar drives - assuming any RAID controller exists here and is even able to support different size drives. So I would not suggest using a RAID here. In fact, RAID's popularity and advantages have diminished over that last view years with faster drives with large buffers, and cheap RAM.

[WishBone]

Your both going off topic here. I'm not looking for a solution at all. I'm only looking for advice on what's the best I can do with my two drives and how to reach their full potential. I've already decided to install my OS on my 1TB drive with a partition of probably 80/920 or so. My other drive will be used for backups and storage.

Thank you so much for the advice. It helped me decide what to do.

[Digerati]

Actually, I am trying to keep in topic as RAID is not a solution. I my previous post was my recommendation.

If you going to use the 1Tb drive as your primary (boot) drive, then I see little reason to use the smaller drive at all. It is just wasting electricity.

[iammykyl]

No mechanical HDD can saturate the potential throughput speed of SATA 3gb/s

Using a partitioned HDD for the OS will give you degraded performance, (your existing C drive)> The same thing will happen if you use the 1TB drive for the OS and another partition.

Post #4 from Digerati is the best solution and I would use 3 partitions, 3rd being for backups including an image of the C drive.

[WishBone]

Are you suggesting I use my 160GB drive for my OS and the 1TB drive for everything else? I'm including a link to my MOBO's specifications. I'm not sure how compatible my new 1TB drive is at all.

MOBO: http://www.emaxxtech...ducts.php?id=10

[iammykyl]

Are you suggesting I use my 160GB drive for my OS and the 1TB drive for everything else?

Yes.

. I'm not sure how compatible my new 1TB drive is at all

Your Mobo has 2 SATA 2.0 connections, so is comparable. I am unable to download a manual where I can see where the optical drive is connected.

If one of your SATA connections is free you will be able to connect the new HDD.

This from your original post.

I'd like to turn my 160GB drive into C and the new 1TB drive to D. I know it's possible but would it be recommended?

So what you proposed is what is recommended with the addition of partitioning the new HDD.

I would add the new drive, partition it, backup any date you want to save from C, do a clean install of the OS during which you will have the option to delete all partitions and format the drive..

[WishBone]

Yes but considering the specs on both drives, will my machine run a bit faster with my OS installed on the 1TB drive? Or will I get the same performance due to my MOBO's 3GB/s SATA ports and my 1TB drive being 6GB/s?

[iammykyl]

If both drives are connected to SATA 3gb/s ports they would both achieve about the same throughput speed and in benchmarks the 1Tb would perform slightly better. in most applications and in everyday use you would not tell the diference (the same would be true connecting to SATA 6gb/s ports)

To use the 1TB for the C drive, unpartitioned, would be wasteful and achieve very little.
If you partition the 1TB drive you would get degradation of performance. If you try to read/write/ and read/write to two or more partitions at the same time, something, somewhere has to wait.

By using the smaller drive, unpartitioned, you would get a boost in performance from it's original configuration.

The 1TB, correctly set up, will give you overall system performance and the added bonus of a good backup solution.