Hello all,

Well, my plans for buying a new computer have fallen apart,so now I'm looking at upgrading my memory and hard drives. I'm thinking about turning my computer into sort of my media center, so I'm needing some more storage space. My original plan was to buy a 320GB hard drive with at least 16MB of cache, but then I've been reading here on the forums, and else where that I can see better performance if I put my OS on a partition on HD 1, and a Swap-file partition on HD 2 along with a partition for Temporary files on HD2. Now, is this considered the "standard" or just a bunch of hoopla? If I go with splitting everything up, I was just going to buy a cheap 40GB HD for my OS and programs, and a 250GB for everything else. (Both SATA, and 8MB of cache)

Thanks everyone,
WVSteelers22

P.S. My budget for upgrades now is around $78 dollars after purchasing memory.

Edit: If I do create a swap-file partition, is it okay to put it on the same hard drive as the OS or is this just defeating the point?

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If your old hdd is still working, then I would partition it for OS/program, 8 - 10GB for swap files as FAT32, and the rest for data backup and use the new drive for storage. Backup the irreplaceable stuff like photos and most important stuff. You could put the swap files on the first partition of the second drive, which would increase the speed a bit but I use the 2nd partition because it doesn't matter if I swap or add drives or have to reinstall Windows Yes it's good to create a partition for swap files

Hi once again.

Thanks for the reply. So you are recommending this setup:

HD 1: OS and Swap-file
HD 2: Everything else

My question about this, would I see any type of improvement if I had my OS on a SATA II drive apposed to a IDE drive?

The SATA would be faster than the ATA but not sure it would be that noticeable, e.g., it wouldn't be like adding RAM but some improvement. If you would use the the SATA for OS, suggest you create 3 partitions, one OS/programs, 2nd swap, 3rd data and use the old drive as a backup.