Confusion on a second hard drive

[HamAndEggs]

I am currently running a Athlon AMDxp2000 (512meg ram) Windows XP pro and have a full 20gig HDD. I built the pc myself but carried the HDD from my old system. Is it possible to keep my current HDD for my operating system and buy and fit a 100Gig HDD purely for storing my data files (ie MP3s and graphics) As I am an online gamer, idealy I would prefer to keep the 20gig HDD as my C:/ drive and just use it for my online gaming requirements.
Alterintvly would it be easyer to just fit an new 100gig HDD and reinstall everything?

 

[wolluf]

Should be no problem mounting the 100GB drive as a slave to the 20GB. Set jumpers correctly, set bios to autodetect it, XP should detect it and you can use disk management to partition/format it (run diskmgmt.msc).

 

[docmeizie]

Seems like it would be easier to partition that 100 Gig-er into different drives and change the file size to match what type of files you would put on that drive for faster access. Install the OS files on one of the drives on the 100 gig-er, repartition the 20 gig-er to your liking and put your games files there (if thats the faster drive 5400 rpm vs. 7200 rpm).

Computers are like an array of randoms, ya never know what ya gonna get!!!

 

[HamAndEggs]

As an afterthought (more like an afterquestion) What is the beat way to hook up my ide cables with a second HDD. I have 2 IDE slots on my motherboard, a CD-R and a CD-DVD. At the moment I have My HDD as primary master with my CD-R as the slave. My DVD is on its own cable?
Many thanks in advance.

 

[wolluf]

Second question covered many times here - you can search to see if you wish. Personally I'd put the 2 hard drives on same controller. Your hard drives will both be at least ATA66, which means they will not restrict each other's speed if on same cable. If the CD or DVD are both at least ATA33, they'd be ok too - but if PIO, the device coupled with PIO device will be restricted to PIO speed. As CD/DVDs are inherently slower devices than hard drives, I prefer to not pair them with Hard drives.

 

[docmeizie]

Would like to know the speeds of the cd-r and cd-dvd. Maybe find a place where you can trade both of those in and get a cd-r(w)/dvd in one bundle. I won't dare imagine you would be trying to write a cd and watch a movie at the same time. With this method you can have the hard drives on the same IDE and open yourself up for another Harddrive or DVD-R(w).

Computers are like an array of randoms, ya never know what ya gonna get!!!