utilizing second hard drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bressler
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Bressler

my system has two hard drives. is it possible to improve performance by
utilizing second (D) drive. there are times when the (C) drives seems to be
working overtime what with all the background features in Vista. I'm not a
techie, so would appreciate if somebody could explain what I need to do.. I
do know that they are set up as master/slave.
 
my system has two hard drives. is it possible to improve performance by
utilizing second (D) drive.
Click to expand...

Two things you can do...

Move your page file there.

It's simple to do... Control Panel (Classic View) - System - Advanced
System Settings - Performance Settings - Advanced tab - Change virtual
memory.

Move your temporary internet files and cookies there.

In IE: Tools - Internet Options - Settings (under browsing history) -
Move Folder
 
Bressler said:
my system has two hard drives. is it possible to improve performance by
utilizing second (D) drive. there are times when the (C) drives seems to be
working overtime what with all the background features in Vista. I'm not a
techie, so would appreciate if somebody could explain what I need to do.. I
do know that they are set up as master/slave.
Click to expand...


Well it gets complex sometimes.

Master / Slave implies they are connected to the same IDE bus. There are
usually two IDE buses, and the ideal situation is to spread the load
since however many drives are on the bus the speed of the bus is the
limiting factor. To copy from hard drive to hard drive your best speed
would likely be to have them on separate buses, to copy from CD to hard
drive then you would want them on separate buses, but unless you are
doing a lot of that then the master / slave configuration doesn't matter
too much.

Where it might help is if you wanted to use the one drive for your swap
file or virtual memory. However you may get an even better improvement
by adding more real memory. What does your system have?
 
my system has two hard drives. is it possible to improve performance by
Two things you can do...

Move your page file there.
Click to expand...
Yes, just be aware that you still need a small pagefile on C: - Vista will
complain if you set it for less than 200 megs.
 
Not if they are on the same IDE Bus it won't.
Two things you can do...

Move your page file there.

It's simple to do... Control Panel (Classic View) - System - Advanced
System Settings - Performance Settings - Advanced tab - Change virtual
memory.

Move your temporary internet files and cookies there.

In IE: Tools - Internet Options - Settings (under browsing history) -
Move Folder
Click to expand...
 
If you are not a techie are you sure you have 2 hd's and not 2 partitions,
and are you also sure the second isnt your recovery partition?
 
Yes, just be aware that you still need a small pagefile on C: - Vista will
complain if you set it for less than 200 megs.
Click to expand...

No it won't.

I have a 2gig page file on another drive and none on my C... no
complaints. No errors in any event logs.
 
my system has two hard drives. is it possible to improve performance by
No it won't.

I have a 2gig page file on another drive and none on my C... no
complaints. No errors in any event logs.
Click to expand...
Let me be more specific. Multiple sources say that a small pagefile is
necessary on C: for crash memory dumps. If you don't have the pagefile then
you don't get that information in the event of a crash. When I was
resetting the pagefile on C: Vista gave a warning basically saying this in
non-technical terms. I'm not aware of any other issues. Regarding
performance, whatever benefit is gained by moving most of the total paging
space to a different hard drive will not be lost by having a small file on
C:
 
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