Building a new system - SATA hardrive setup ?

[_Nathan_]

Hi all

Ging to be putting together a new shuttle-esque system tommorow and wondering what will I need to do to make my (only) 160 gig SATA hardrive to work since my XP CD is only SP1.

Its a Maxtor hardrive(Maxtor 6B160M0 Diamondmax) - will I just need to use max blast on a floppy or what ? I hope one of you could help me !?

I'm also aware of the small download to help XP SP1 to recognise a HDD of more than 137 GB - will this need to be ran once I have installed XP ?

Additionally, whats the most efficient way to partition it, just leave it as one huge one and have separate folders for media or split it ?

Thanks in advance

[aldi]

I'm not aware of a patch for XPSP1 and large drives, sounds interesting though.

If you get 'no hard disk found' during the install of XP then you might have to use a floppy supplied with the motherboard during the install. When you first boot off the CD you'l see a message saying 'press F6 to install a third party driver' at the bottom of the screen. Just hit F6 - nothing will happen immediatley but it'l prompt you for a disk about 30 seconds later. That should be it. I'd SP2 it asap after the install regardless.

Re: partitioning, one way is to make a small (10-20gig?) partition for programs, and the rest for data - that way if you need to format & reinstall XP you don't loose your data. Plus if you fill your data partition to the brim it won't bugger XP up. The downside is that two small chunks of free space are not as usefull as one big chunk of free space.

[_Nathan_]

OK, that doesn't sound to intimidating.

Cheers for your help !

[rameshuk]

Hard Disk Partions.
I have two hard disks setup as follows

C: - for windows and system files + anti-virus + firewall software.
D: Programs

E: Data (Documents /music /digital photos
f: small partion used for temporary files.

Most people agree that the windows drive needs to be kept as simple as possible.

Also if you've got broadband/internet access create
a second user and use that as your main user.

Keep the admin account for when you need to install programs/house keeping.

This is effective against malicous programs/spyware in quite a few cases.
(They download files and run when you restart-if hey have no priviges they cannot run/access the files later).

Have fun with your new toy !

[_Nathan_]

Cheers rameshuk - just one question, how do I get temp files into that forth partition ?

Also - with a 160 gig hard drive I want to have 80 gig for the media, so what do you recommend I have the partitions set at for all the others ?

>> Edited by _Nathan_ on Friday 28th October 10:18

[puggit]

Unfortunately with hard drives, bigger is not better, except in terms of £ per GB.

You're best to have smaller, faster, and redundant drives for performance and reliability

[rameshuk]

puggit said:

Unfortunately with hard drives, bigger is not better, except in terms of £ per GB. You're best to have smaller, faster, and redundant drives for performance and reliability

agreed, but since his case is small he cannot have multiple hard drives.

In your applications (Like Internet Explorer / Photoshop) you have to choose the location of the temp files. Usually via preferences or options.

Also right click the recycle bin and set the size
to something reasonable. Usually its a percentage of the drive and with a large hard disk the size can be
GBs.

[aldi]

_Nathan_ said:

Cheers rameshuk - just one question, how do I get temp files into that forth partition ?

My Computer - Right click - Properties - Advanced - Enviroment Variables. Set the temp variables in both the upper and lower sections to point to some folders you create on the other partition.

Unless you're running short of space on the c: drive though I wouldn't bother - theres sometimes a speed advantage to be had by having them on a different physical disk but not on a different partition on the same disk.