HD partition / cabling advice sought

[Guest]

Archived from groups: uk.comp.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

All, have new Seagate Barracuda 160Gb SATA drive to add to current system
.......
XP2500 Barton, MSI KT6 motherboard, 512Mb PC2700, 80Gb Seagate IDE.

160Gb will be new boot HD, partitioned 80Gb System - 80Gb Apps/Games
Current 80Gb IDE will be 1 partition for software/patches/mp3 etc.
Any pobs / better config than above ??

IDE Config ......
Want 3 x optical drives (DVDROM, DVDRW, CDRW) & intend using each for
intended purpose only to prolong life of writers.
CDRW & DVDRW on one IDE channel, 80GB HD & DVDROM on other iDE channel.
Sound OK ??

Thanks JonMaC

 

[Apollo]

Archived from groups: uk.comp.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

JonMaC wrote:
> All, have new Seagate Barracuda 160Gb SATA drive to add to current
> system ......
> XP2500 Barton, MSI KT6 motherboard, 512Mb PC2700, 80Gb Seagate IDE.
>
> 160Gb will be new boot HD, partitioned 80Gb System - 80Gb Apps/Games
> Current 80Gb IDE will be 1 partition for software/patches/mp3 etc.
> Any pobs / better config than above ??
>

I'd say no more than 25GB for the OS partition, the rest of the 160 as
one or two partitions (games / apps) and the 80 for software/patches and
backup. XP pro will never need more than 25GB if you install your apps
and games onto another partition.

The smaller OS partition can then be easilly 'Ghosted' onto your 80GB
drive a couple of times with different configs perhaps and still leave
room for mp3 and other media, patches etc.

> IDE Config ......
> Want 3 x optical drives (DVDROM, DVDRW, CDRW) & intend using each for
> intended purpose only to prolong life of writers.
> CDRW & DVDRW on one IDE channel, 80GB HD & DVDROM on other iDE
> channel. Sound OK ??
>

That will work fine but your 80GB hdd interface will only operate at the
speed of the other device on that ide channel, i.e. if the DVDROM is
only ata33 your ata100 hdd will only operate at ata33.

I really don't see the point in having seperate optical drives, they are
quite reliable now and you can pick up a decent DVD/CD burner for £45
that will do the job of your 3 drives.

I was forced (for space reasons - water cooling), to remove my dvdrom
and just have a dvd/cw burner, I thought I would miss the other drive
but I haven't at all.

Personally I would run the 80GB as primary master and the dvd burner as
secondary master, and sell the other drives on ebay for a few £/$.

HTH

--
Apollo

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: uk.comp.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

In message <clnslc$gco$1@sparta.btinternet.com>
"JonMaC" <john.mccarthy@services.fujitsu.com> wrote:
> All, have new Seagate Barracuda 160Gb SATA drive to add to current system
> ......
> XP2500 Barton, MSI KT6 motherboard, 512Mb PC2700, 80Gb Seagate IDE.
>
> 160Gb will be new boot HD, partitioned 80Gb System - 80Gb Apps/Games
> Current 80Gb IDE will be 1 partition for software/patches/mp3 etc.
> Any pobs / better config than above ??
>
> IDE Config ......
> Want 3 x optical drives (DVDROM, DVDRW, CDRW) & intend using each for
> intended purpose only to prolong life of writers.
> CDRW & DVDRW on one IDE channel, 80GB HD & DVDROM on other iDE channel.
> Sound OK ??

Hi,

First off, DVDR and CDRW drives are cheap enough that it is really not
worth the inconvenience of seperating them (holes in case, cabling
issues etc). These are old enough technology now that there lifetime is
limited by built quality.

Second, on the cabling setup. It mainly depends on how old your drives
are. If they all support UDMA there will be, in theory, no differnce.
In practice (as always) this may not be the case, but most likely
would. It depends on which devices you will use most. Put these devices
on seperate channels. For example, if you read a lot of DVD's and copy
them to the 80GB HDD you would want the DVDROM on one channel and the
80GB HDD on the other.

Hope thats clear,

-- Chris

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: uk.comp.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

"JonMaC" <john.mccarthy@services.fujitsu.com> wrote in message
news:clnslc$gco$1@sparta.btinternet.com...
> All, have new Seagate Barracuda 160Gb SATA drive to add to current system
> ......
> XP2500 Barton, MSI KT6 motherboard, 512Mb PC2700, 80Gb Seagate IDE.
>
> 160Gb will be new boot HD, partitioned 80Gb System - 80Gb Apps/Games
> Current 80Gb IDE will be 1 partition for software/patches/mp3 etc.
> Any pobs / better config than above ??

I have an 80GB SATA drive and a 40GB PATA drive. I boot from an 8GB
partition on the SATA drive on which I also install applications, and put
games on another partition along with all my frequently accessed data. The
40GB drive houses all my less frequently accessed data, and is occasionally
used as source or destination for large stream processing jobs (making them
nearly an order of magnitude faster than using a single drive). I find this
works well for me (but everyone's different).

The main difference is using a much smaller boot partition. The more
partitions you have, the less flexibility you have; since OS plus
applications I use require a relatively predictable amount of space, the way
I do it means almost no loss of flexibility.

> IDE Config ......
> Want 3 x optical drives (DVDROM, DVDRW, CDRW) & intend using each for
> intended purpose only to prolong life of writers.
> CDRW & DVDRW on one IDE channel, 80GB HD & DVDROM on other iDE channel.
> Sound OK ??

It depends what and how much you do with the writers, and the CD writing
speeds. I don't think there's much reason to use a CD writer over a DVD
writer (for CDs, obviously) just to prolong the life of the latter.

For CDs, my DVD writer is equivalent to the CD writer I had, so when I got
the DVD writer, I removed my CD writer. I have 40GB HDD mentioned above on
one cable, and the DVD writer and a reader on another cable. This means I
can't duplicate discs "on the fly", but I very rarely have a need to, and it
gives the simplest cabling.

Alex

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: uk.comp.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

"Apollo" <ian_dunbar6@hot[un-munge-me]mail.com> wrote in message
news:2u9codF26v5jtU1@uni-berlin.de...
[snip]
> XP pro will never need more than 25GB if you install your apps
> and games onto another partition.

It will never need anything like 25GB if you install your apps and games
onto another partition.

[snip]
> That will work fine but your 80GB hdd interface will only operate at the
> speed of the other device on that ide channel, i.e. if the DVDROM is
> only ata33 your ata100 hdd will only operate at ata33.

This is a common myth. If you are only using the HDD, you will get full
performance from it. At all times (presuming the host controller supports
it), the HDD will operate at ATA100.

Alex

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: uk.comp.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Alex Fraser wrote:
> "Apollo" <ian_dunbar6@hot[un-munge-me]mail.com> wrote in message
> news:2u9codF26v5jtU1@uni-berlin.de...
> [snip]
>
>>XP pro will never need more than 25GB if you install your apps
>>and games onto another partition.
>
>
> It will never need anything like 25GB if you install your apps and games
> onto another partition.
>

I can attest to this; I set aside 10GB for apps/utils and XP Home, and
currently still have 4GB free after 1 year and have well over 50+
apps/utils installed such as MS Office, text editors, AV & adware
removers & other cleanup tools, burning sofware, media players, download
managers, compression tools, bechmarking & sysinfo tools and so on and
so on. XP itself is currently using under 2GB.

--
[ste]

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: uk.comp.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

[ste parker] wrote:
> Alex Fraser wrote:
>> "Apollo" <ian_dunbar6@hot[un-munge-me]mail.com> wrote in message
>> news:2u9codF26v5jtU1@uni-berlin.de...
>> [snip]
>>
>>> XP pro will never need more than 25GB if you install your apps
>>> and games onto another partition.
>>
>>
>> It will never need anything like 25GB if you install your apps and
>> games onto another partition.
>>
>
> I can attest to this; I set aside 10GB for apps/utils and XP Home, and
> currently still have 4GB free after 1 year and have well over 50+
> apps/utils installed such as MS Office, text editors, AV & adware
> removers & other cleanup tools, burning sofware, media players,
> download managers, compression tools, bechmarking & sysinfo tools and
> so on and so on. XP itself is currently using under 2GB.

I run XP Pro and Office 2003 Pro plus plenty of other apps including video
and photo editors and bags of utilities quite happily in a 5GB partition on
my 30GB laptop. As it happens, I've just tweaked it up to 6GB because I was
playing with some huge .rar files and .iso files that needed a fair bit od
temp storage. I'm also running XP Pro and Office 2003 Pro on a laptop with
just 4GB total storage and still have over 1GB free.

Don't forget that XP reserves insanely huge quantities of disk for the
recycle bin and system restore space, and allocates a hiberfile and
excessively large pagefile by default. These can all be cut back to more
realistic sizes.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: uk.comp.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

In article <clnslc$gco$1@sparta.btinternet.com>, JonMaC says...

> IDE Config ......
> Want 3 x optical drives (DVDROM, DVDRW, CDRW) & intend using each for
> intended purpose only to prolong life of writers.

WHAT THE HECK FOR?

Cost of DVDRW = £50.

Cost of CDROM drive £10
Cost of CDRW £20.

By the time you need to replace the DVDRW if it fails, they'll be about
£20. Save your money, its more aggro than its worth.


--
Conor

Opinions personal, facts suspect.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: uk.comp.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 10:18:20 +0000 (UTC), "JonMaC"
<john.mccarthy@services.fujitsu.com> wrote:

>All, have new Seagate Barracuda 160Gb SATA drive to add to current system
>......
>XP2500 Barton, MSI KT6 motherboard, 512Mb PC2700, 80Gb Seagate IDE.
>
>160Gb will be new boot HD, partitioned 80Gb System - 80Gb Apps/Games
>Current 80Gb IDE will be 1 partition for software/patches/mp3 etc.
>Any pobs / better config than above ??
>
>IDE Config ......
>Want 3 x optical drives (DVDROM, DVDRW, CDRW) & intend using each for
>intended purpose only to prolong life of writers.
>CDRW & DVDRW on one IDE channel, 80GB HD & DVDROM on other iDE channel.
>Sound OK ??
>
>Thanks JonMaC
>

OK!