New HDD

[garryash]

4 months ago I built new desktop but used 4 year old HDD as main drive. It threw a wobbly a few days ago and refuses to boot. I ran HD TUNE PRO a few days before and it showed 5 bad sectors so I ahve bought a WD Caviar Blue 1TB 7200 64mb cache to replace it. Would I get better performance from the new drive if I split it into 2 x 500gb partitions, with win 7 and most used software on main partition and used 2nd for storage of photos and videos and poss pagefile - although I have 2 other drives and have photo/video backed up on both and page file set up on them (Also external backups of pics and vids - not that I' neurotic about it) . Or will it not make much difference ????

 

[mouse24]

It won't make any difference. Might make your life easier when formatting but thats it.

The upgrade from a 4 year old hdd should be quite noticeable for most people. Just don't put page file on both partitions. Stick it on the main one and leave it at that. 2 reasons for this.
1) the main partition is the one closest to the edge of the drive and its head so it would take less time to get at that data. It won't really help that much but every little bit helps.
2) having it on both partitions reduces performance as it has to get at both page files from the same drive and causes head thrashing(I think thats the proper term.). Not only is it unnecessary wear on the drive it slows everything down.

Edit: Oh and whats a wobbly and are they hard/heavy to throw?

 

[garryash]

thanks mouse 24
a wobbly ??? message said summiy about registry corrupt and as drive was suspect decided a new "faster" one was needed. Struggling on "old" win xp with 1gb ram at moment - seems rrrrreally slow after win7 with 8gb !

 

[garryash]

should have said that at the moment I have pagefile set up on internal 320GB 16MB cached 5400rpm hard drive, as I read somewhere on "TOMS" that if its on a seperate HDD it speeds things up

 

[garryash]

new HDD installed and running well - average time of 148m/bts - more than double what I had before. Partitioned 500gb to win 7 and basic operations/programmes and other bit to store photos/videos and all the games I could get to load into it (only had 2 xp games that would only run from main "C" drive - so thats where they are. Have moved everything off old 500GB C drive via caddy and will reformat it and swap it with the 250GB internal and use it for back-ups and page files.
Thanks for help