configurations

whr wrote on 3/18/2004, 10:40 AM
Thanks to all of your expert advice out there I am assembling my own new PC this weekend. I am still a little confused about some configuration issues.

my new Hardware is
ASUS K8V mobo with Athlon 64 bit proc
2 160 gig HDs
ATI 9800 pro Video card
DVD Rom and DVD burner
XP Pro

Questions:
1, My second hardrive will be primarily for backup and temp AV fiiles. My plan is to use my primary drive for the OS and main AV files. I'm inclined to partition 20 gigs of the main drive for the OS so it could be easily reformatted without data loss. Is this going to effect my AV performance?

2. Do I make my DVD burner a slave to the ROM?

Thanks for all the help guys.

Comments

Cold wrote on 3/19/2004, 5:50 AM
Get a smaller 3rd harddrive for the os and apps. Yes a partition will slow it down. Do not slave the dvd burner to the dvd rom, especially if your going to make duplicates off of the dvd rom with the burner.
Steve S.
Rednroll wrote on 3/19/2004, 7:41 AM
I usually, Partition one of my drives and put the OS on one partition and my installed programs on the other. Then on a seperate drive I put all my data and audio. This has worked nice for me, because like you said if you want to reformat with a fresh system, it's pretty simple and your data doesn't get lost.

I see you listed the size of your hardrives, the more important part is what EIDE speed, and what RPM rate?
GlennChan wrote on 3/19/2004, 5:43 PM
Hard drives:
Bigger drives are faster, and for your OS+applications go for the 8MB buffer drives. 8MB buffer doesn't do much for video as far as I know.

>>> ATI 9800 pro Video card <<<
You don't really need it except for games, Boris Red, After FX, etc.

>>> DVD Rom and DVD burner <<<
master/slave doesn't matter. You should be able to leave the drives on cable select and set jumpers if that doesn't work. The drive on the end of the cable should automatically be master.

1- It is ok to partition a hard drive, it doesn't really slow it down. Things will slow down if your partition gets full (lost time cleaning space out and fragmentation), so I suggest making it 20-40GBs (probably 20-30GBs). It's nice to leave 15% empty to avoid fragmentation.

It might make more sense to dual boot and/or have lots of system restore points instead of reformatting a drive. For dual boot you will need another partition. I haven't tried dual boot, but I did setup my HD for ghosting and ghosting takes a lot of preparation since you have to get data off. I also made my system partition too small (10GB is not enough.... damn games :P).

whr wrote on 3/20/2004, 8:21 AM
I don't load any games on this PC so I assume I will avoid some problems. My hard drives are seagaite baracudas 160 gig 7200 rpm SATA. My plan right now is to make two partitions on one for the system and apps and leave the rest for back up files. I'll use my second one for a work drive. I figure if I ever need more back up space I can hook up a firewire drive.

The other option is to put one partition on the main drive for the OS and put all my apps on my second (work) drive. I wasn't sure what that would do for performance.
GlennChan wrote on 3/21/2004, 4:37 PM
If you don't load games on your PC then you might want to go for a different video card that's fanless (less noise) but still does dual monitors well (Matrox, Nvidia, etc.).

Partitioning: I'd keep applications on the first drive probably on the OS partition. This way your applications won't fragment your media drive. Settings files for applications tend to grow and shrink, which would cause fragmentation.