New use for the "smaller" harddrives

[mrstatzer]

I ran across a tip recently, that I thought I would pass along. To keep the smaller old harddrive from becoming a doorstop. Slave it and put your windows swap file (or Page file as win xp calls it) on it. I have a 4 gb that I probably spent a mint on some years back, even though I currently have over 170 gb of diskspace, I can't part without putting it to good use. It would free up space on your main drive, and since it's the only file on the drive, it won't become fragmented, etc.

[David]

Just one question. If the master is ATA100 and the slave - the older drive is - ATA33 then will they both not run at ATA33 speed?

[RED Hot Machine]

Each drive will run at its spec, no higher. ata100 can't run ata133

If you have an ata100 and an ata 133 on the same ide interface then they will run at 100 and 133 respectively. Same goes for mixing ata33 and ata66.

[mrstatzer]

yes, that is true, my tip was assuming the same ata speed.

[greenring7]

Well, currently I have 3 hard drives with 4gb between all of them.

The first 2 (c and d partitions, respectivly) both run PIO4
The last 1 (partition e, master on the secondary ide channel) has my 256mb swap file. It runs umda/33.

Is this an efficient setup? Or should I swap the 1st and 3rd hard drives and place my windows98se install on the fastest hard drive?

And last but not least... if you think your old 4gb is smaller, I'll gladly take it off your hands ;)

-Robert

[DarkArctic]

Originally posted by greenring7
Well, currently I have 3 hard drives with 4gb between all of them.

The first 2 (c and d partitions, respectivly) both run PIO4
The last 1 (partition e, master on the secondary ide channel) has my 256mb swap file. It runs umda/33.

Is this an efficient setup? Or should I swap the 1st and 3rd hard drives and place my windows98se install on the fastest hard drive?

And last but not least... if you think your old 4gb is smaller, I'll gladly take it off your hands ;)

-Robert

If you have a small amount of RAM and Windows requires the use of the Swap alot then put it on the faster one.

-DarkArctic

[greenring7]

Well...

My system config is as follows:

Celeron 300a (still at 300mhz because of no voltage mods & crap heatsink)
128mb cas2 ram
Voodoo3 3000 pci
Ensoniq Sound blaster 64 pci
Some Realtek NIC
a 56k isa winmodem
the hard drives mentioned above.
Annoying monitor that I hope to replace soon.
12x cd-rom (running pio3 or 4, can't remember...)
floppy and the other normal crap.

So... right now I have my 256mb swap file set on the udma/33 drive (the secondary master).

Sound about right?

-Robert

[mrstatzer]

yes, that sounds like the best option for your setup.

[Bmxpunk86pl]

Why would u want a ata33 for a swap file, isint it preety slow? I would use it for mp3s.

[flounder43]

Here is a suggestion, go to the classifieds, some people are looking for some smaller HD's...

[Gresyth]

find 7 more 4 gig dives and build a killer raid.

[XWRed1]

Why would u want a ata33 for a swap file, isint it preety slow? I would use it for mp3s.

Way better than PIO4. Anything would be good for MP3s, as long as it uses DMA at all. There aren't any MP3s out there encoded at a high enough data rate to push any but the oldest of the old hard drives.