Two hard drives - SATA and IDE

[Peter J Newman]

Hi,

I'm in the process of installing WinXP Pro on a 120G SATA drive, and want to
utilise my original ATA drive for data storage by formatting it into 3
partitions using FDISK.

What would be the bestway to do this, i.e. Primary partition of 33% of the
capacity with an extended partition in the remaining 67% split into two
logical drives?

Also, do I need to ensure the primary partition is NOT active to prevent
conflict with the operating sstem on the SATA drive?

Any advice wouldbe appreciated.

Peter

 

[John R Weiss]

I'm in the process of installing WinXP Pro on a 120G SATA drive, and want to
utilise my original ATA drive for data storage by formatting it into 3
partitions using FDISK.

What would be the bestway to do this, i.e. Primary partition of 33% of the
capacity with an extended partition in the remaining 67% split into two
logical drives?

There are several ways to do it, and your way is reasonable.

Another way, assuming the ATA drive is of comparable performance to the SATA
drive, is to make the first partition of the ATA drive just big enough for
your pagefile (e.g., 2 or 3 GB if you have 1 GB RAM). Put a fixed-size
pagefile (min size = max size = space available) on that partition and
delete the default pagefile on C:.

Also, do I need to ensure the primary partition is NOT active to prevent
conflict with the operating sstem on the SATA drive?

No. Assuming you can set the BIOS to boot from SATA first, it should not
matter. However, to prevent any problem or confusion in the first place,
install the OS before connecting the ATA drive. The OS should then boot
from the SATA regardless.

 

[Peter J Newman]

Thanks John,

I've done as you suggested, except for the pagefile bit - the drive isn't
veryfast.

Thanks again,

Peter