Member Avatar for computer_freak2

I have in my computer a P4 2.8 GHz 800Mhz FSB with HyperThreading Technology, 512 DDR PC 3200, ATI Radeon 7500 64MB DDR, 32-10-40 CD-RW, 16x DVD Rom,160 GB WD Hard Drive IDE, Dual Channel DDR Motherboard (Gigabyte) running on one channel.


Im wondering what is the best way to hook up the drives, and also should i have seperate partions, for like music programs and even have the Windows XP Pro on its own septerate hard drive or partion??????I want to know what is the best configuration for my PC for best performance...???????

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by dcc
Member Avatar for Paladine

With your existing hardware, and not additional purchases. I would split the drive in two. Main Partition for Windows and Software, and the second partion for data/my documents/downloads/music.

Otherwise, unless you want to spend some cash or have an equally fast HD sitting around for the swap file to be on, I would just go with what I stated.

Does the MBR support RAID? If so, I would consider that.

I would like to point out, that you should have no issues of performance in anyway with the specs you gave. Not much reguires a P4 2.8 right now....

Member Avatar for alc6379

Here are a couple of tips, at least, these are ones I've been told.

Put your DVD and your hard drive on the same Primary ide channel. Make the hard drive the master, and the DVD the slave. Put the CD-RW on your secondary master position, and leave secondary slave empty.

The reason I suggest that is because when you're burning a CD, extra data on the IDE channel can interfere with the CD burning properly. My wife has a Zip drive and a CDRW on one channel, but she never uses them both at the same time. If you can do that, then you'll be okay, too.

Also, I'd have to agree with Paladine. Make a partition for Applications and system files, and one for data. That way, if your system install goes nutty, then you'll still have all of your data. 2.8 ghz is pretty darn fast, and 512MB is a lot of memory, so putting your swap file on a fast disk would, IMHO, not do that much for your performance.

Aside from that, the only other speed increases I could see is using a RAID 0 configuration. Your hard drive reads would be faster, but if one drive in the RAID setup failed, you'd lose all of your data. Either that, or I'd look into using SCSI or Serial ATA disks for data storage. Both formats are way faster than regular ATA disks.

Member Avatar for facknfa

Well, ok. i have this huge question. My computer is a load of crap. I have another one that completly dont work and i dont know what to do, and i cant figure out whats wrong with it. can anyone tell me how to rebuild it?

Member Avatar for dcc

alc6379...I have to disagree with placing the DVD and the hdd on the same IDE calbe, this means that the slower drive is going to dictate the speed for both devices. I would place the CD and DVD on the same IDE cable and leave the hdd one a cable by itself.

I also agree with having a second partition for the OS, this way if you ever have to reformat and install the OS you won't have to bother with your other files. I would suggest limiting you partition for the OS and up dates to 20GB or 30GB, you won't need half of that capacity.

RAID with a PATA hdd is only going to give you at most a 20% increase, and at 100kbps transfer rate that isn't going to be significant, besides CF2 is only indicating the purchase of one hdd. If your motherboard supports SATA go with a SATA hdd, it will be faster than two PATA drives in RAID. The SATA starts at 150kbps transfer rate, a pair in RAID would could well be worth it depending you you applications.

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