Legit Reviews

I ask this here since it has to do with HDDs and sofware. I read in the storage section something about using a swap file or something to have your programs and OS on one HDD and your data/ backups on another.

1. Can someone explain to me how this is done and what hardware settup you need for it?

My current settup is 2 ATA 133 drives...one is 30GB the other is 120GB both Maxtor with 8mb caches. I have the 30GB one settup as the boot drive right now with a new clean instal of Win XP home, the other is settup as storage right now but it has all the data and programs I use all the time the Win xp install on it is partially corrupt and crashes a lot.

One problem I have is that the 30GB isnt large enough ( I think) to hold all the programs and data I use a lot so I can't transfer them to it to "clean up" the 120GB one. I don't want to loose any data so I am not sure what my next step should be. I have tried 4 times to repair the windows installation but the same 3 files always stay corrupt.

2. What is my best course of action here without buying new hard drive if I can avoid it

Backup to DVD? It's slow, but cheap!

unless you have huge games you'll be able to get Windows only on the 30GB. I have Office, Visual Studio, Nero, McAfee, Oracle Database (which is like 10gB) one a 35GB partion no problem.

Basically what you want to do is move the pagefile to the fastest drive. Swapfile you have no control over.

I would vote to use the 120 as your main drive with windows and all your programs on it, then use the 30gb to have your swap file and maybe a backup of your my documents folder, and some data.

Even on a slow drive, moving the swap file to a different disc will improve performance!

I would also replace to 30gb down the road ;)

As to how to do this...

In Windows XP.....

Start --> Settings -->Control Panel --> System ( or right click on my computer and left click on properties )


click the Advanced tab

Click the SETTINGS button in the PERFORMANCE box ( first one )

Click the ADVANCED tab at the top

Down at the very bottom click the CHANGE button in the Vitual Memory box

then set the d drive to System Managed Size, and the c drive to No paging file

Then just Apply and OK about a thousand times to get back out and restart - might auto tell you to restart without having to back all the way out, I cant remember - been a while since I redid this system

Let me know if you need any more help.

Now like dicecca said - if you dont have 30gb of Windows and your programs, then use the 30gb as your main and the 1220 as the swap and backup and data drive.

I know I have more than 30gb worth of programs installed, so I could never do it damn video editing stuff

Mike

Now my fingers are tired :p

Even better,
reformat the 30gb and create the first partition at 2 times (but not more than 10 Megs) the size of your swap file.
the first partition on a drive on the first third of the drive has by far, the fastest access read/write times, making it 2X allows room for defragging and expansion.
to keep the heads over the Swap partition only, use the rest (if at all) ONLY for "deep" archived backup (ie last five years of tax returns, or rarely used data images (like a image of boot drive, in perfect just installed condition) That way the disk (on a seperate IDE or SATA port) does nothing but the SWAP file.
You will like the results.

Totally agree.. I used to have the swap on a different hd on a kinda big partition and 64k alloc size. Since though i upgraded and i could only use one IDE hd i had to rearrange all these.
So i moved the swap back to another partition of the hd the os is on...
Its definately much slower. I'll change it as it used to be when i can.