One hard drive or two?

[Walter R.]

Running Win XP SP2.

Right now I am using 2 drives in my computer. A SATA 300GB for all routine
computing and manipulating some images, nothing very CPU intensive. The
other drive is an 80 GB IDE drive, which I use for 50 GB worth of classical
background music mp3's (active constantly all day).

The IDE drive is seven years old and may be failing. Can I just make a new
partition on the SATA drive and transfer my music to that partition, or
should I buy a new, separate drive for my music?

IOW, Will the constant background activity for the background music slow
down the SATA drive while I am processing images?

Thanks

 

[Gerry]

Walter

Another way to investigate your hard drive is to use HD Tune.

Try HD Tune only gives information and does not fix any
problems.

Download and run it and see what it turns up. You want HD Tune
(freeware) version 2.55 not HD Tune Pro (not Freeware) version 3.00.
http://www.hdtune.com/

Select the Info tabs and place the cursor on the drive under Drive
letter and then double click the two page icon ( copy to Clipboard )
and copy into a further message.

Select the Health tab and then double click the two page icon ( copy to
Clipboard ) and copy into a further message. Make sure you do a full
surface scan with HD Tune.

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[JS]

Windows has no built in utility to create an additional partition one the
all drive space has been partitioned, you need third party software like
Partition Magic or Disk Director to do that.

As Gerry said: Try HD Tune.
I've use it to identify more than drive that's on it's way out.
If you know the manufacture of the IDE drive you can also go to their web
site and download the diagnostic utilities, but I would copy those music
files over to the SATA drive ASAP and as a safeguard before you run the
diagnostic utility.

I would replace the IDE drive with a larger one, create two partitions, one
for your music and the second partition for other uses such as creating and
storing Image Backups of your Windows partition.

JS
http://www.pagestart.com

 

[Big_Al]

Windows has no built in utility to create an additional partition one the
all drive space has been partitioned, you need third party software like
Partition Magic or Disk Director to do that.

As Gerry said: Try HD Tune.
I've use it to identify more than drive that's on it's way out.
If you know the manufacture of the IDE drive you can also go to their web
site and download the diagnostic utilities, but I would copy those music
files over to the SATA drive ASAP and as a safeguard before you run the
diagnostic utility.

I would replace the IDE drive with a larger one, create two partitions, one
for your music and the second partition for other uses such as creating and
storing Image Backups of your Windows partition.

JS
http://www.pagestart.com

If the 80 gig is dieing, at the price of drives, I like JS's suggestion too.

 

[JS]

Thanks Big_Al;
If I can spell correctly, meant to say:
"Windows has no built in utility to create an additional partition
once all the drive space has been partitioned"

JS

 

[Gerry]

Walter did not say the drive was dying! He said "the IDE drive is seven
years old and may be failing"!


--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Bill Ridgeway]

Just a thought which may be useful. If you get a USB SATA / PATA combi hard
disk caddy you'll not have to physically install the hard disk into the
computer and you will also have it to plug into and play your music on other
computers.

Regards.

Bill Ridgeway