What would you do

[NADIAZIPPER]

I have a XP pro machine, 2.4 P4 and 768mb of memory with an 80GB and 60GB hard drives. My 80 is full with movie files and I have noticed when accessing a movie it takes longer to load it now that it is full (before I had it split 40 and 40 on each of my drives). I can’t add anymore drives with out some work and want some thoughts as what would work best. Here is what I am thinking.

1. Buy a lager power supply and a controller card and add another drive or
2. Buy an external case to move my 80 and install another drive internally, but if this option which would be better USB 2.0 or Firewire

My 80 is ata133, but my 60 is ata100 so I know my 80 isn’t working to full potential(maybe using an external case will run it at full potential) since the 60 is slowing the chain down. What would you do?

 

[bcastner]

A power supply is a non-issue.

You may be happier moving your video files to a fast connection with a PCI adapter or an external device, but I suspect you should deal with the realities of Windows and searching files first.

1. If some, many or whatever of your video files have an .avi file extension, then you should make a registry edit. Open up regedit:

Go to: HEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.avi\shellex\PropertyHandler

Delete the "Default" value which should be "{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}"

Please note: you will no longer show the windows properties displaying the AVI file information such as width, height, bitrate etc. But its a heck of a lot faster.

2. Be sensible about creating folders for your files. A directory listing of 1,000 files is going to be slow.

3. Create shortcuts. A shortcut to a folder is a bizillion times faster than just an Explorer directory display. Hint: this is easiest done by My Computer, <drive>, and hitting enter to see the folder display. Right-click a folder, New, Create a shortcut, and create the shortcut and drag it to your desktop. I could give you a hundred reasons why this is a hundred times faster than opening the same folder in Explorer, but just try it and see for yourself.

4. Watch/change your file associations. Do not let huge software programs be the default viewers associated with your video files. Best overall bet: Windows Media Player. You want that as the formal file association. It does not affect why you actually use to see the video file.

Start with this hints. Do not worry about your power supply, it is ample. When this is sorted you can think about faster drives internally or externally.

Best.

 

[NADIAZIPPER]

Thanks for the ideas, but I have done most already. Default player is media player, I access all the videos through the media player via the search function and then once all the files are listed in media player, I just choose it from there. I have also don the registry edit already to try and speed things up. My power supply is a 350 watts. I have a dvd, cdrw, two drives, one floppy and three fans. If I start adding additional drives on top of what I currenty have I think it might be a good idea to add a little more power. I have over 900 video files(avi, mpg, wmv)and shortcuts are not neccessary. I used to have quick accesstime when they were split onto two drives, but once I moved all videos onto one drive the speed to which I can now access has dropped(already defragged with Diskeeper). It costs about the same to buy a power supply and controller card versus an external case and firewire card. So which would give me faster access to my files?

 

[bcastner]

It is a little hard to make sense of the options you have proposed.

One doesn't just decide to make an existing drive firewire. I will repeat again: your power supply is a non-issue.

Better management of your disk drives by using folders, shortcuts and reducing associated file attachments is likely to benefit you at the moment more than a new power supply or PCI controller for IDE or firewire.

But I have said my piece. I will let others in the Forum suggest alternatives for you.

 

[G0AOZ]

As I see it drive space is one of your problems... Assuming money isn't an issue, how about swapping out the 60Gb drive for a 120Gb?

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[mainegeek]

Hello Nadia,
Why not consider buying a DVD Burner and start cleaning up your existing drives.

 

[nlm9802]

buy a 200GB drive, disconnect one of your cd drives and connect the hdd in it's place. copy all files to that drive, format the non-OS drive, ebay it, reconnect the cd drive. now you have 280 (or 260)GB. By the time you fill that up there should be terabyte drives out there

Nick
Computer Support, no not just hardware.. I support everything

 

[Bobg1]

Which is the boot drive?
Where is xp allocating space for virtual memory?
If these are on the 80, you may have restricted xp to much by putting everything on there. You might try just removing a few of the files to give it more space and see if it helps.

 

[NADIAZIPPER]

My 60gb is partitioned to 15gb and 40gb. The OS and every other program are on the 15gb. I currently have a 20gb, and two 40gb drives in my possession, and will not spend $200 for a 200gb drive(I will wait till the price drops more). There are several products out there that are an empty case that you can connect a hard drive to that will make it an external drive:

http://www.allstarshop.com/shop/pro...pid=5651&sid=NET46UMSCA469JWALXDC9XQLAJGL1R28

Because access time is already slow on the 80gb, I thought that my making it an external drive mike speed it up since everything else on my system runs at ata100, and the 80gb drive is ata133. So by making it external it could run at full ata133 speed and increasing access speed.

 

[bcastner]

Nadia,

The changes you are contemplating will make a difference. But the biggest differnce for you would come with a better library scheme for the video files.

There are lots of freeware and modest shareware options to manage video collections. The advantage you may gain from placing the ATA133 device externally or through a PCI ATA133 adapter solution is relatively a small gain compared to what would be possible by managing the video files in folders right now without any hardware modifications.

Because of XP's demand for information about a file, the Explorer in XP is quite slow with large video files. Either give it a hand by reducing the overload required through a folder management approach; make registry patches to make it stop searching for property information on .avi or other video format files; or quite seriously consider running Win98 SE.

I do not want you to think that throwing hardware at this will not make a differnce; it will. But the larger issue of how to manage folder browsing is likely to make a substantially bigger difference for you.

 

[pavNell]

Invest in a external firewire case and card. You've got a ton of video right? External devices are great simply because they're portable. You can take 'em with you wherever you go. And don't let anyone tell you that USB 2.0 is faster than firewire. That's a marketing scheme. Research the benchmark tests online for proof. Firewire is easy and FAST!! Combine my opinion with bcasterns advice and I think you'll be very satisfied.

 

[NADIAZIPPER]

Thanks alot, thats what I was looking for

 

[jhlee99]

NADIAZIPPER,

If your having speed issues, I wouldn't goto an external drive. USB2.0 or Fireware is not going to solve the problem, actually, it'll make it worse.

You wrote that you have two another 40GB HDDs, right? I recommend you buy a cheapo RAID card ($20~$40) and setup those two HDDs in RAID 0. Also, RAID the 60GB & 80GB together to form a RAID 0 120GB drive. Ideally, the drive should identical, but in this case, it doesn't make sense to spend all that extra money to buy new HDDs when you already have them. That will increase your performance dramatically. Only bad thing is you may need to replace your PS if you do this since you now have 6 IDE devices.

Good luck!

jhlee

jhlee

 

[dpw1432]

Buy a bigger drive to store your movies on or even better burn them off to dvd media since dvdrw +/- drives are only about $250 now.

 

[dementg]

I agree with jhlee. But I would also use your 20GB drive as the OS drive. Get an IDE raid card, set the 2 40GB drives as an 80GB raid 0 drive, and the 80 and 60 drives as a 120GB raid 0. Use those 2 drives for your video files, and throw in your mp3s etc. if you want. Hook the 20GB drive to your existing, normal IDE controller and use it to store the OS and your programs. The downsides of this are you'd have to reinstall the OS, and you'd definitely need to come up with a backup plan for your video files. Those 2-drive raid0 arrays would be twice as likely to fail as a single independent drive.

I wouldn't be too concerned about the ATA133 vs. ATA100 thing. Everything I've read indicates that ATA133 is not very effective, and is only used by Maxtor.