hard disc advise

[nobby375]

im after some advise pls on how best to set up my new hard drive, got a new core i7 system incomming in the next few days with a 750 GB Samsung HD753LJ Spinpoint F1, SATA 300, 7200 rpm, 32MB Cache, 8.9 ms, NCQ. the pc will be mainly used for gaming, so i want the best set up.
my old cowboy method was just to stick xp on the disc n go from there

whats the advantages of partitioning off the drive?
what sort of size partitions are best?
would there be any advantage in using my 4yr old 80gb hitachi deathstars also in the new build or would this slow things down?

system specs : i7 920, asus p6t deluxe, 3gb corsair ddr3 1600mhz, radeon 4870.

cheers

[shbris]

if ur doing photo editing or any such like could use the 80gb for scratch files, but otherwise sounds like your old method of wacking the disk in should be fine. unless you wanna buy a ssd for you main drive and use the 750gb for storage

also, i love xp and everything, but still, xp instead of vista on a brand new i7 system? hardcore!

[format]

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...on-theory.html

[nobby375]

cheers for the replys guys

i love xp and everything, but still, xp instead of vista on a brand new i7 system? hardcore!

well im not prepared to pay £100 + for vista when windows 7 is round the corner... xp's fine for me atm.

@ format

so your saying make a small partition for the OS, is 30gb ok? then a bigger 1 for games, ?100gb and the rest for storage?

sos for the noob questions but this partition malarkey is new to me

[shbris]

what he posted is good for a two hard drive system. in his example there's a wd raptor for the os and a 400gb drive split into games (outer sector - faster) and storage (inner sector - slower)

problem is with your set up is that ur 80gb would probably just slow things down if it was os, so your forced to used your new drive as your main drive. if you then partitioned it up you'd either see problems or very little increase in speed:
eg

1. create a small partition for os (ie 30gb) then the rest for games etc.
that partition would be nice and fast, but with any games installed on other partition would require lots of moving from outer (os) to inner (games/storage) causing noise and slowing things down

2. create a large outer partition for os AND games:
probably best idea for partitioning, buuuut the increased size of the outer partition would mean the performance increase would severely drop, only about 5 or 10 mb/s difference between outer and inner which would be almost pointless

so basically what format said is best for someone with two new fast disks, but in your situation with one new disk and one old disk, probably best to do a straight install or do option 2 if you fancy experimenting with things OR if you have higher storage:games(high io intensive applications etc.) than most people, ie you only play one game so would be 30GB:370GB which would reap some benefits

discuss

[nobby375]

well i think i'll just use the new disc and keep the old 1 in my old system then.

im guessing if its a 750 gb drive then a small partition for the os(30gb) and a bigger 1 for gamming (150gb) then the rest for storage should in theory help with speed.

soon find out as it all arrived yesterday so here goes

cheers for the advice guys

[shbris]

keep us posted!

[nobby375]

well i didnt even get to the partitioning stage, my new palit 4870 graphics card doesnt want to work

im mad as a wasp atm, ordered it from overclock with 2 right angled UV blue sata cables, only 1 arrived, so i emailed em and they sent 1 the next day which was wrong, and now the frikkin card they sent doesnt work!!
fans are working so the powers ok, tried reseating it several times to no effect. dunno what else to try apart from sending it back. they way they have been i think i'll just get a refund and go to scan.

sorry for the rant but venting helps sometimes