Best way to put 120 gig HD to use?

[Barry OGrady]

I succumbed to an impulse buy at the local computer fair and I now have a WD1200
which is a Western Digital 120 gig HD. First off, are there any known problems with
that particular model? I intend to install it as a boot drive in a system running Windows 98SE.
Should I partition it, or leave it as one? Will it work with my system if I use an overlay? My
bios tops out at 32 gigs. I currently have a 60 gig HD in there using the overlay.


-Barry
========
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[Rod Speed]

I succumbed to an impulse buy at the local computer fair and
I now have a WD1200 which is a Western Digital 120 gig HD.
First off, are there any known problems with that particular model?

Nope, just a couple of minor quirks.

Those WD drives have a different jumper config when its the
only drive on a ribbon cable and when its the master of a pair,
if you dont use cable select. That catches some people, just
because that is different to most of the other modern drives.

There is no SMART temperature sensor either.

I intend to install it as a boot drive in a system running
Windows 98SE. Should I partition it, or leave it as one?

Its generally best to have just one partition unless you want
to run multiple OSs or want to ghost the boot partition before
you install anything so you can step back gracefully when things
go pear shaped, and only have a single physical drive in the system.

Will it work with my system if I use an
overlay? My bios tops out at 32 gigs.

You may well be able to flash the motherboard bios to fix that.

I currently have a 60 gig HD in there using the overlay.

Yes, you can use the overlay with the 120GB drive too.
Can get a little tricky using a different overlay for each
drive tho if the 60GB isnt a WD,

 

[Timothy Daniels]

"Papa" answered:

"Barry OGrady" asked:

I succumbed to an impulse buy at the local computer fair
and I now have a WD1200 which is a Western Digital 120
gig HD.... Should I partition it, or leave it as one? [...]

As for what you should do regarding the number of partitions,
that depends on what you want to do. For example, if you do
a lot of work with video clips and other storage hogs, I think
a single partition is called for. That will provide the necessary
"elbow room" as you go through the editing process prior to
copying the finished product to CD disks.

I have a similar situation. I bought two 120GB HDs at a
"last of the parallel ATA hard drives" sale, and I'm trying
to decide how to configure them. I'm considering using
one for WinXP and the other for Linux, with one using
a partition on the other for its pagefile (virtual memory).

Does putting the pagefile on another HD really speed
up processing of large files?

What would be an appropriate size for the partition to be
used for the pagefile? (I have 384GB of DRAM, and I might
go to 768GB.)


*TimDaniels*

 

[Barry OGrady]

Why are you using an overlay? Can't your BIOS handle it? IMO an overlay is
just one more "middleman" getting in the way and should not be used unless
the BIOS is an old version with outdated capability. If that is the case,
I'd look for an update to flash.

As I said, " My bios tops out at 32 gigs."

As for what you should do regarding the number of partitions, that depends
on what you want to do. For example, if you do a lot of work with video
clips and other storage hogs, I think a single partition is called for. That
will provide the necessary "elbow room" as you go through the editing
process prior to copying the finished product to CD disks.

I have a capture card which can require a lot of temporary space.
Windows 98 is limited to 4 gigs file size and a lot of Windows programs can't
use a file size greater than 2 gigs. The capture program I use can create multiple
files of 2 gigs each.


-Barry
========
Web page: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~barry.og
Atheist, radio scanner, LIPD information.
Voicemail/fax number +14136227640

 

[Rod Speed]

"Papa" answered:

"Barry OGrady" asked:

I succumbed to an impulse buy at the local computer fair
and I now have a WD1200 which is a Western Digital 120
gig HD.... Should I partition it, or leave it as one? [...]

As for what you should do regarding the number of partitions,
that depends on what you want to do. For example, if you do
a lot of work with video clips and other storage hogs, I think
a single partition is called for. That will provide the necessary
"elbow room" as you go through the editing process prior to
copying the finished product to CD disks.

I have a similar situation. I bought two 120GB HDs at a
"last of the parallel ATA hard drives" sale, and I'm trying
to decide how to configure them. I'm considering using
one for WinXP and the other for Linux, with one using
a partition on the other for its pagefile (virtual memory).

Does putting the pagefile on another HD
really speed up processing of large files?

I doubt that most would be able to pick between
those two configs in a proper double blind trial.

And if you can, you need more physical ram anyway.

What would be an appropriate size for
the partition to be used for the pagefile?

It needs to be bigger than it will ever need to be.

And that depends on how much physical ram you
have, and what apps you run, particularly those
with lousy memory management like Photoshop.

(I have 384GB of DRAM, and I might go to 768GB.)

The page file size should drop as you increase physical ram that much.

 

[Lil' Dave]

Have a similar setup on one of my PCs, but no bios size problem with such a
HD. Works fine, except chipset is limited to 512MB RAM, so that's what I
use.

Divided an 80GB into 3 partitions. 8GB for the OS, 8GB for the
applications, remaining partition for the video application's swapfile and
temp save locations. Final product goes to a removable HD.

An overlay can slow the system down. What motherboard?
Dave

 

[Barry OGrady]

Have a similar setup on one of my PCs, but no bios size problem with such a
HD. Works fine, except chipset is limited to 512MB RAM, so that's what I
use.

Divided an 80GB into 3 partitions. 8GB for the OS, 8GB for the
applications, remaining partition for the video application's swapfile and
temp save locations. Final product goes to a removable HD.

I understand that smaller partitions can result in smaller allocation units,
and that having a separate partition for the O/S can make reinstalling easier.

An overlay can slow the system down. What motherboard?

It's a PCChips M585LMR.
It locks up when trying to auto detect my 60 gig drive, but if I set the link to 32 gig
limit it detects the drive as 32 gigs OK.

Dave

-Barry
========
Web page: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~barry.og
Atheist, radio scanner, LIPD information.
Voicemail/fax number +14136227640

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Have a similar setup on one of my PCs, but no bios size problem with such a
HD. Works fine, except chipset is limited to 512MB RAM, so that's what I
use.

Divided an 80GB into 3 partitions. 8GB for the OS, 8GB for the
applications, remaining partition for the video application's swapfile and
temp save locations. Final product goes to a removable HD.

An overlay can slow the system down.

No, it does not.

 

[Rod Speed]

I understand that smaller partitions can result in smaller allocation units,
and that having a separate partition for the O/S can make reinstalling easier.


It's a PCChips M585LMR.

http://www.bios-drivers.com/drivers/54/54262.htm
has an updated bios for large hard drive support.

 

[Barry OGrady]

Nope, just a couple of minor quirks.

Those WD drives have a different jumper config when its the
only drive on a ribbon cable and when its the master of a pair,
if you dont use cable select. That catches some people, just
because that is different to most of the other modern drives.

It will likely have a DVD ROM drive as slave.

There is no SMART temperature sensor either.

Such a thing would be handy.
Apparently that model had 3 disks and now has 2. The 2 disk version
is said to run cooler.

Its generally best to have just one partition unless you want
to run multiple OSs or want to ghost the boot partition before
you install anything so you can step back gracefully when things
go pear shaped, and only have a single physical drive in the system.
OK.


You may well be able to flash the motherboard bios to fix that.

How safe is that?

Yes, you can use the overlay with the 120GB drive too.
Can get a little tricky using a different overlay for each
drive tho if the 60GB isnt a WD,

The other drive is a Seagate. The overlay program I downloaded
for the WD drive won't work with a non WD drive but the Seagate
overlay should.


-Barry
========
Web page: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~barry.og
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Voicemail/fax number +14136227640

 

[Barry OGrady]

Based on simple prejudice, I've avoided using overlays.

My preference is to use a PCI ATA controller card. This gets past any
mainboard BIOS limitations.

Would you believe my stupid MB has only one PCI slot, and it has a TV
card in it.

Bob Knowlden

-Barry
========
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