Which drive should by my master?

i have a 20gb 7200rpm wd, and a 40gb i believe its a 5400rpm i got from school for free. it says wd400eb-00cpf0, which i think is the 5400rpm model.

anyways, my system has some missing files i need to recover, and i want to get a clean install etc for some other games. i thought i might as well add my 40gb from school while im on break.

what should i use for master? i don't have much on my 20gb now, about half full, on 1 years use. im running ntfs win2kpro corp. edition.

also, would it be better to have apps on one, and games on other? i only have one game hehe...operation flashpoint.

thanks,
brandon

If you put both hard drives on one IDE channel, the 7200 will only go as fast as the 5400 RPM, you don't want that. Put them on separate channels if you are able to.

so how would i go about doing that? i have asus a7v133.

Pouey said:

If you put both hard drives on one IDE channel, the 7200 will only go as fast as the 5400 RPM, you don't want that. Put them on separate channels if you are able to.

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out of 6yrs of computers........ i have NEVER heard that.... ive used a 7200 and 5400 and using sisoft, the 7200 was higher then the 5400. They were on the same cable. The cable WILL not affect the drives motor speed, only the IDE speed, if ones U66, they will both do u66, but if they are 100 they will do 100 (the lowest on the chain determins the speed of the cable)
humm.....
merry xmas

The Spyder said:

out of 6yrs of computers........ i have NEVER heard that

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...Ahh, but that is because you have become blinded from the truth.
Life is not real; life is an illusion and you are not who you think you are.

Remember- there is no spoon.

The Spyder said:

out of 6yrs of computers........ i have NEVER heard that.... ive used a 7200 and 5400 and using sisoft, the 7200 was higher then the 5400. They were on the same cable. The cable WILL not affect the drives motor speed, only the IDE speed, if ones U66, they will both do u66, but if they are 100 they will do 100 (the lowest on the chain determins the speed of the cable)
humm.....
merry xmas

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out of my years in computing, i haven't either lol. well i guess i will do it the old fashion way then.

thanks

Maybe i was wrong lol. I don't want to be giving away misinformation, but I always thought that the speed of the IDE device would only go as fast as the slowest device.

Pouey said:

If you put both hard drives on one IDE channel, the 7200 will only go as fast as the 5400 RPM, you don't want that. Put them on separate channels if you are able to.

Click to expand...

I have heard that many times, and its simply not true. One of the biggest myths of computing. The only time they will be slowed down is if you are copying from one to the other. Reading from the 7200rpm drive to ram will not be effected. Its the same with CD drives, you can put a cd drive and a hard drive on the same channel and you wont lose performance. Same with putting a slow (ATA33 or ATA660) device along with an ATA100 device. It makes no difference except when working between the two devices.

WyrmMaster said:

I have heard that many times, and its simply not true. One of the biggest myths of computing. The only time they will be slowed down is if you are copying from one to the other. Reading from the 7200rpm drive to ram will not be effected. Its the same with CD drives, you can put a cd drive and a hard drive on the same channel and you wont lose performance. Same with putting a slow (ATA33 or ATA660) device along with an ATA100 device. It makes no difference except when working between the two devices.

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exactally....

If you transffer from an ata33 hard drive to an ata66 hard drive, it will only go at ata33 speeds because the ata33 hard drive can only receive at ata33 speeds, therefore the ata66 can only GIVE at ata33 speeds.

I would have the 7200rpm drive as my master with my OS and games/apps on it. I would use the other drive as backup.

Also.. I would make a seperate partition for your swap file and temporary internet files to reduce fragmentation. I don't know if it would be better to have this partition on the 7200rpm drive or on the 5200 rpm drive. You may see a slight increase in performance if it was on the 5200 rpm drive because the other drive is accessing OS / game / app files. I'm not sure about this though. The speed of the 7200 rpm drive may just offset this. Anyhow, the difference in speed is probably very small.

Actually, i believe that if you split the swap file between the two drives you will get even better performance because it can access it two times simultaneously.

WyrmMaster said:

Actually, i believe that if you split the swap file between the two drives you will get even better performance because it can access it two times simultaneously.

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ah... yes... this makes the most sense.