Best way to set up 2 different HDs?

[xpuser100]

I added an additional, identical Western Digital 40GB HD to my XP rig. The two drives are on the IDE same chain. The master drive is currently the C: drive with Windows XP and apps and games installed on it. The slave drive is currently the D: drive and it holds all my media files. Both drives are NTFS, each as one primary partition.

Since I've got two different drives, I am not sure as to how I should best set my computer up. Is this set up ideal for performance, or is there a better way to have this set up? For example, should I make the D: drive a logical drive with the C: as the only primary drive? And should I even use NTFS or go with Fat32? Thank you for the advice in advance, and ANYTHING is appreciated.

-XPUSER

 

[jmatt]

The way I do it is by having my operating system on C & multi partitions for other uses .

The 2nd drive is a clone ( backup ) of the 1st HD .

Both are fat32 .

FAT and NTFS performance

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/index3.html

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/columns/russel/october01.asp

http://www.thundercloud.net/information-avenue/ntfs-vs-fat32/

http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm

http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/tech/storage/ntfs-preinstall.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/...oc/en/choosing_between_NTFS_FAT_and_FAT32.asp

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314463

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;310525

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/en/server/help/choosing_between_NTFS_FAT_and_FAT32.htm

 

[bcastner]

You cannot revert NTFS to FAT32 without losing the contents of the drives.

You need do nothing concerning the partition descriptions. See if you can find a reasonably priced ATA add-in PCI controller board, so that both drives can be on seperate ID chains, and both drives are not on the same chain with CD-Rom or other optical devices.

You do not say, but look elsewhere after these steps for possible improvements. If this is a media-intensive use of the PC, and we are talking about visual media, then bump your RAM to 512 megs and look at a good AGP graphics board.

 

[xpuser100]

After reading the helpful articles pointed out by jmatt, I'm going to stick with NTFS. Thanks guys!

 

[edemiere]

The one major drag about using NTFS in a home ennvironment is in the unlikely event that you have a major hardware crash and cannot boot your PC up to windows, you just can't simply use a boot disk to quickly and cleanly get files off the drive you might want to save before a reinstall.

I tried using NTFS at home once, got burned pretty bad by the above example and will never use it again...

Good luck and may the luck of the God's shine on NTFS partitions

 

[wolluf]

edemiere - if you've access to another machine, its easy enough to slave the drive & get data off that way. Or if its just a software problem, you can do a parallel install (to another folder) and get access to data that way. There's also a freeware (ntfsdos at

http://www.sysinternals.com)

which allows you to read ntfs filestore from a win9x boot floppy. So, its not that bad using ntfs.

PS. Copying data off via a floppy is no fun anyway!

 

[edemiere]

Wolluf: Yeah, you are correct, there are tools available to do things, but I am looking from the perspective of time spent trying to recover files and such. IMHO, it's just silly to spend a lot of time trying to get some important files out of an NTFS partition (or worse if it's something encrypted by that filesystem), whereas using FAT32 you can get what you want in a matter of minutes. hehe

It's all a matter of preference and contingency planning I guess. I shoot for worse case and look for best solution for recovery in the longterm.

Hasta!