best configeration of two harddrives

[prm]

Hi,
I have a new machine with two hard drives and 1gig of ram. I'd like to know
what's the best way to configure this setup.
Drive 2 drive will hold my documents and images (most of my work is in
Photoshop, Illustrator, etc, this save configuration saved me several times
in many years.)
Drive 1 will hold win XP.
My questions is this;
Should I and can I put the all my programs on the second drive? I know that
in a Windows enivornment some programs can ONLY be installed on the C: drive
and the common files are stored on the C: drive.
Will preformance or stability increase if the programs are on one drive and
the OS on the other?
Page filing system put it on the 2nd drive? I heard if you have 2nd drive
this aids in preformance.

thanks
Pete

 

[Michael]

Depends what you are looking for - speed or safety. If you need speed, you
can Raid0 the two drives while for security you can Raid1 the drives (one
drive will be an identical copy of the other one. You need the appropriate
hardware, though. Since your board is new, you might have a Raid chip
already installed (ICH5/6R for Intel).
For a tech savvy setup, use the old IDE Master and Slave scheme.
Partition you drives as you see fit:
XP plus installed programs are OK on a dedicated (c partition of 15GB to
20GB because you need 15% of the drive free for defrag, 2GB or so for the
page file if you choose to run it on the Master drive. The rest of the
drive(s) can be partitioned as you see fit; for ex, a small partition for
another OS, another partition for media files, another one for personal
files, yet another for the image of c: (should be large enough but not more
than the c: partition), backups etc.
The advantage of a small system (c partition is faster defrags, virus
scans, format/reinstalls, searches and so forth. Just plan ahead the sizes
and partition with XP utilities.
Michael

 

[prm]

Thanks Michael,
but because I work in Photoshop I need safety first speed second. My
motherboard is new, an assus p4p800 so it supports RAID, however I read that
Raid 1 does slow your machine down. As for Partitioning did that before and
work really well. But I come back to my orginal question. Can I put my
programs on a physically separate drive and will they run ok in that manner?
Thanks again
Pete

 

[Malke]

Thanks Michael,
but because I work in Photoshop I need safety first speed second. My
motherboard is new, an assus p4p800 so it supports RAID, however I
read that Raid 1 does slow your machine down. As for Partitioning did
that before and work really well. But I come back to my orginal
question. Can I put my programs on a physically separate drive and
will they run ok in that manner? Thanks again
Pete

You should put XP and programs on one drive and your data and
Photoshop's scratch disk on the second drive. Yes, you could put your
programs on the second drive, but Photoshop optimally likes its scratch
disk on a drive different from the one where the program is installed.
Since Photoshop is your main deal, you should set up your machine
optimized for Photoshop.

Malke

 

[\\\\\\]

Thank you one and all for your answers.
Pete

 

[Alex Nichol]

I have a new machine with two hard drives and 1gig of ram. I'd like to know
what's the best way to configure this setup.
Drive 2 drive will hold my documents and images (most of my work is in
Photoshop, Illustrator, etc, this save configuration saved me several times
in many years.)
Drive 1 will hold win XP.
My questions is this;
Should I and can I put the all my programs on the second drive? I know that
in a Windows enivornment some programs can ONLY be installed on the C: drive
and the common files are stored on the C: drive.
Will preformance or stability increase if the programs are on one drive and
the OS on the other?
Page filing system put it on the 2nd drive? I heard if you have 2nd drive
this aids in preformance.

I would put installed programs on the same physical drive as the OS;
whether you make a second partition to have them in depends on your
backup strategies; you might want to keep C as tight as you can so as to
make an Image backup into a small space (eg one DVD disk). Most
programs will allow you to choose a different drive when installing.
Keep data and OS separate

I Would put the page file on the second drive, with the data. On such a
large RAM there is likely to be very little true paging traffic on it;
but unless Adobe have mended their ways, PhotoShop is liable to grab a
chunk of the same file to manipulate itself as work space - it *ought*
to make its own separate work file