Gaming Hard drive?

Question

So I have a primary HD and a secondary gaming HD. Do I install my OS on the primary (320gb) then only use my gaming to install games (37gb)? Do I play the games while logged on my first HD or are dual hardrives just like extra space that use one OS to run both?

Answer 1

If the specifications for the disk are the same, you can run with either drive as your primary disk with no significant advantages to either configuration.. If you go with the 37 GB as your primary, be sure to install most of the applications to the 320 GB disk or you will find that you will run out of space pretty quickly.

If one of the drives is faster than the other, consider placing the OS on that disk. Place your pagefile and applications on the other disk. If possible, connect the drives to separate controllers on your motherboard too to eliminate a bottleneck there too.

Also, you aren't "logging" in to a particular hard drive. The only way you would essentially do that is if you have a dual boot system (i.e. Windows on one disk, Linux on the other). Having multiple disk on the system doesn't mean you log in to one or the other. Microsoft multi-disk setups provide access to each disk volume through a drive letter so in your case you'll have both a C and D drive (if you go with the typical configuration....you can force other drive letters but not much point in doing that). Now if you are installing a non-Microsoft operating system, you could get really advanced and split out portions of the operating system between file systems and potentially on different disk controllers to maximize performance. Unfortunately Microsoft hasn't made that an option as they install everything into one volume.

Answer 2

Is 37Gb a typo?

If it isn't the 37Gb drive is likely to be much slower than the 320Gb one... it's going to be a year older at least I guess.

If you run XP on one disk drive and format the second drive as well, then XP will run with both drives accessible. You can install your drives on the 37Gb disk if you want... and use them while booted off the 320Gb disk. The second disk drive will probably be E: ... if your DVD is D: - or the other way round. You can reallocate drive letters if you want, but it's best if the drive letter of your DVD doesn't change after building because it's stored in the registry as the install path and will default to this letter every time you add or remoe Windows components.

Answer 3

I would put the operating system on the 37gb and put all my games and everything else (word documents, other applications, everything) on the 320gb. Not only will you have more space for games, but if for whatever reason your games have any sort of problems and screw up the drive, the Operating System is unaffected, and vise versa. I would not place much else on the 37gb.

Answer 4

os will only use 2 drives if you tell it to, i.e. if you have the operating system on one drive and tell the OS to put it's swap file on the other. As far as gaming it's not a bad idea to use the 2 drive setup so to reduce the load delay caused when the swap file in windows and the game itself tries to load.