File allocation

  • Thread starter Thread starter perrera
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perrera

This might not be the right group for this so sorry in advance (suggestions
welcome for more appropriate group).

I have two internal scsi hard drives. My system and all programs are on the
fastest (15K from Seagate) which has 8 g capacity. I have another SCSI drive (15
G) that is slower (10k Seagate) which I do not really use. The fast drive with
the system is getting full. I'd like to distribute some files to the second
drive. I was thinking about moving the program files. XP Tweak has an option to
do this easily (hopefully).

1. Will freeing up space on the drive with the system make for noticable
improvement in performance? Currently the drive with the system is about 80
percent used.

2. Will moving the program files to a slower drive will have noticable slow down
in perofrmance?

3. Do complications arise for the system by moving program files to another
drive?

Thanks for any advice/reaction.
 
1. Will freeing up space on the drive with the system make for noticable
improvement in performance? Currently the drive with the system is about 80
percent used.
Click to expand...

In my experience at 80% capacity it won't make much difference if any...(at
15 K anyway bloody fast access times.. only how far the heads have to travel
in a read/write causes slow downs hence the lovely defrag... :)

Tip: try putting the swap file on the second disk (if not already) and set
it to fixed size, should free up space on the first HD and improve
performance.
2. Will moving the program files to a slower drive will have noticable slow down
in perofrmance?
Click to expand...

Unlikely.. 10K is a rapid drive... although the real bottleneck will be the
SCSI adapter throughput.
3. Do complications arise for the system by moving program files to another
drive?
Click to expand...

If the file descriptors/links from shortcuts etc are not rewrote properly
then a big YES... The best/safest although slow way it to uninstall and
reinstall to the second drive. :(
Thanks for any advice/reaction.
Click to expand...

Hope my 1 pence worth is helpful..
 
You might be able to free up enough space by moving big data directories and the paging file to the second drive. You would have to make changes in the application to tell them to look on the other drive for data. You could also uninstall a few large applications e.g. over 500 MB and reinstall them on the second drive.
You can't simply copy applications to another drive and expect them to work because of the hundreds of entries in the registry that refer to drive C (assuming C is the drive letter of your OS/application directory). One solution could be to move all applications and data to the second drive and change the second drive to C, making the OS partition some other letter.
Moving files to the second drive would increase speed, especially starting applications, because you will be spreading the load between 2 drives.
 
Thanks for this. My biggest program files are games (UT 2003, HL, RTCWolf). I
suppose I could just uninstall them and reinstall them on the second drive;
Still even though I don't really use these games much anymore I hate to lose the
saved games and my user set up. I might want to go back and play a level or two
at some point. TweakXP has an option to move such files but I'm not sure I have
the courage to try it. I guess I could experiment a bit. For the time being I've
compressed these games to save on space until I decide what to do.
 
I compressed my biggest program files (games I rarely use anymore) on the c
drive and put the swap file on the second drive as you suggested. Seems to have
improved performance.

Thanks.
 
You might be able to reinstall and not lose anything. Backup the game directory, uninstall from the old drive, and reinstall on the new drive. Then copy the backup files to the new directory. This could cause problems if there are e.g. .ini or some other configuration files that would have the incorrect settings. The only backup files that you really need are the save files.
 
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