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[Freddy]

Hi guys,

Need some points of view here.

My current Hard Drive is getting a bit full.  There's only 127GB to begin with,not the advertised 140GB, but anyway.  Just removed a lot of junk and defragged and that leaves me with about 40GB free.   Not much.

So I was wondering.  Can you install games and things to a separate drive to the OS ?  Or does that cause problems.  I was thinking transfer all my games to a new drive and free up the space for other stuff.

Or would it be better to get a new bigger drive and re-install Windows on that ?

The new drive will likely be one of those Sansung Spinpoints...

[Data]

I have my games on another drive Freddy, it doesn’t really cause any problems, I think I have had one game out of all of them that insisted on being on the same drive as windows.

Doing it this way many of your games will still work after a windows install too, no need to re-install, not for all of them all but many of them are fine that way, steam for instance works great on another drive after a windows install.

Saying that, its best to have windows installed onto your fastest drive, so if you have the time I would re-install windows onto the new drive, but would probably partition it and put my games on the partition that doesn’t have windows on. 

The same goes for programs they too can be installed onto another drive no problem.

[Snowcrash]

I agree.

Only point I would make is make sure steam is on another drive so any game installing under steam will also go onto that drive. I have had a bit of a nightmare with steam on my main Win drive under XP. I now run Win7 and that is my games drive also so no prob.

[Freddy]

OK Thanks.  Looks like I will get the Samsung one then :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-HD103SJ-internal-SATAII-7200RPM/dp/B002MQC0P8/ref=wl_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=I30FV8IUD6MG2C&colid=O3LJM63KH1I0

It should be faster than my current drive anyway, so that will be a bonus.

I'll wipe the current OS drive and take that out.  Then plug in the Samsung and put W7 on that.  Not sure about partitions, but I will give it a go.  And then I can use my old drive to store programs I don't use much but are handy to have installed.

Sound like a plan ?


Cheers 

[Data]

Sounds like a wise choice to me, speed is nice but with a price like that for 1TB you can’t go wrong.

You really don’t want Windows on a 1TB drive though, to make it easy you can install W7 onto the drive, and then once it’s in create the partition in windows.

Right click My computer, Manage, Disk management.

From there you can create and delete partitions and volumes.

I would say have 100GB for windows drive and them 900GB, or what’s ever left for work, games ect. 

Oh and don’t forget to put in all your drivers after installing Windows, starting with the motherboard chip-set driver first.

You could always put in your old drive too, I used to do that but now I just look at them as taking up space and power for very little reward. Your 1TB drive will be huge. 

[Freddy]

Ok I think I see what you mean.  In Disk Management it looks like they call partitions 'volumes' ?  So once W7 is installed I reduce the volume to 100GB.  And then the remaining unallocated space into a new volume.

So will they work like different drives then ?

[Data]

Yes that’s it, part of the process is assigning a drive letter, so it could be D: drive and you could change your DVD to E: drive, would have to change the DVD drive letter first, if you see what I mean.

You should change the DVD drive letter before you start installing any programs or games from DVD, if you don’t it can cause problems down the line.

For me I like having the DVD as the last drive but you could leave it to whatever windows calls it after install if you like.

[Freddy]

Okey doke, that makes sense.

Oddly I just found my current drive has about 20GB unallocated for some reason.  It's actually a 160GB drive.  Don't know why it did that.

Thanks !

[Freddy]

Ps.  Does having windows on a separate partition improve performance then ?

[Data]

I wouldn’t say it improves performance, other than defragging and generally keeping the drive clean, if you start using the same drive for games for instance things can get messy, best to keep windows on a drive that doesn’t have too much other stuff on it.

[Freddy]

I get you, sounds sensible then.  I'll stop picking your brains now 

Thanks mate 

[Data]

No problem Freddy, so when you going to get the drive?

[Freddy]

Probably tomorrow now, I'm going to sleep on it.

[Carl2]

Freddy,
  I have two spinpoints, haven't used them much because thay didn't speed up boot time even in raid 0.  Tested them with some software and got good read and write numbers but the boot time remained the same.
  I agree with the advice given, about the same as I do, windows on it's own partition and the rest on the other partition.  I very rarely put games in but the other software is on the other partition without problems.  In my last case Norton my antivirus insisted on going on the C drive.
  Something to think about is putting the OS on a small SSD, 60 to 100 gb, could easily be done in the future.
Carl2

[Freddy]

Thanks Carl

That's good about the SpinPoints then.   My computer is on pretty much all day so I am not too worried about boot times.  I boot up in the morning and have enough time to feed the fish before I get the login screen.  So boot time is not a major concern for me.

I'll certainly use the partitions like you and the guys have said.  Then like you say maybe when SSDs become reasonable in price think about upgrading.

Thanks pal

Google visited last this page May 16, 2012, 12:35:22 PM