[DSM4Life]

Ok i am building new rig , stuff in the mail , now instead of my backing up al my old crap on my stocker crappy cpmpaq HD should i just run two hardrives in my new computer ? I see alot of people do this i am guessing for performace , like for example put all your mp3 and such on the second harddrive to save room ??? If thats the case how could i set it up so it runs correctly. I have a WD 250gig drive 7200rpm 8 catch going in as main one then the compaq 60gig (doesnt say speed)but its a Seagate name brand.


So worth putting two in there or just keep the one ?

[JTanczos]

If you do use both drives make sure to run the older drive on its own channel as it will likely slow the new drive down. If its not critical and you have no where else to put it you can put it on with the CD/DVD drives. If you bought a board that supports raid then you are in luck. Connect the new drive to a bootable primary controller (I usually connect my main OS drive to the Raid primary). The old drive gets connected to the normal Primary IDE. In this setup you could actually set your computer to do hardware dual booting.

JT

[DSM4Life]

the board is a K8N Neo2 Platinum yes it does have RAID but i still dont fully understand it all. Ok i see it as you have 2controllers for the drives and HD right ? so one (primary)needs to hook up my main HD then the second (secondary) hooks up my DVDRW/CDRW, other HD and my A Drive ?

i think i am confused when you say bootable prim controller, normaly prim controller. If i am WAY off if you could explain where i am going wrong or paste me a link that would be awesome. I am still learning....... thanks in advance

[dreIU]

You have at least 2 IDE channels. Put your primary HD on channel 1, then put your other HD with your CDrw drive. You will need an IDE cable for ch1, then another (probabily a longer one to go from the 2nd HD to the CDRW drive). That's what I would do.

[OnDborder]

WD on IDE 1 and partition up that baby.

[DSM4Life]

ok i think i got you guys so far. The other thing when you say partition a drive you are splitting the drive up into two seprate drives correct ? So for example say that with my 250gig i could partition it to two 125gig "spaces"
This way i should put all the data that i use all the time on the one 125gig and then dump all my song or big files on the other partition ?




man i am still trying to keep my head afloat with all this info, google has been my friend in all this , lol thanks guys

[OnDborder]

Oh ya.. If I were you I'd partition it. I use around 25-35gigs for the "c" drive, it makes so much faster to defrag. The rest you can do how much you like. Just find yourself some software like Partition Magic.
You might want to check into a thing called a "swap file" or paging file. Here's a good site for learning and tweaking http://www.rojakpot.com/..

[DSM4Life]

i will look into that site , thank you

[DSM4Life]

ok guys i have another question . I am understanding how partitioning works and i wasn’t far from it. Dividing OS and exra files, all my Mp3's and DVD files (junk that slows down windows) Now if i have 250gig i am thinking of just splitting it into two 125 /125 partition or MAYBE 3 one for windows / one for most of my extra apps (p2p programs and extra program/junk i download) / then for document files etc. Come to think of it will all the room i have i guess 3 partitions will be fine, which leads me to my question. Ummm i am starting from scratch so should i first when i put the computer together install windows and all updates then partition ?



While I have you guys here , I asked this before but didn’t get a straight answer, well cant find my post either due to all my newbie questions.

Ok I have my Compaq windowsXP cd that came with my computer , Will I have probems using the Compaq provided winXP CD that came with my computer to install windowsXP home on my new built machine ? Correct me if I am wrong but with windows when it registers it will check my hardware and see that there are many differences and in an attempt to stop me from giving out the CD it will lock me out ! Is there a way around this so I don’t have to purchase WindowsXP HOME ? I don’t think its fair considering that I already paid for it and its not like I want to give it out but I just want to reuse it for me only????


Thanks so much guys
(im so excited while waiting for parts to come in [end of week])

[YoMatta]

I need to learn more on partitioning myself, so I'll answer your second question.

MS won't keep track of your hardware, you probably won't have any issues when you're activating your second account. If I'm correct you can activate one windows account 3 times a year w/o questions asked. However, if something does happen, it will tell you to call Microsoft to have them activate it. Technically, you're not supposed to have it on more than one computer. You've paid for it and that's great, but they want you to uninstall it off of the first computer if you're going to be putting it on a second. Now you can either tell the truth in this matter, and uninstall it off the first, or you can tell them that you had a hard drive crash or something and are having to reinstall it on the first computer, either way they'll activate it. They want you to use their product, they're not going to give you a hugely hard time on getting you activated.

Just my $0.02

[DSM4Life]

guys quick thing. I got all my parts in, now when i first turn the computer on i amguessing it will just load to the BIOS for settings then ask me to install windows right ? Now will it ask me if i want to partition it then ? cause the drive is new and has nothing on it.

[DSM4Life]

i got it guys AWESOME link i found http://www.pcmech.com/byopc/index.htm