Windows 7 New to the forum and going to be installing 7, have some questions

[stevenz]

Hello everyone and thanks for reading.

I have looked through the discussions and thus far not seen anything related to what I am about to ask but if this has come up before I apologize.

I'm looking to do a new clean install of Windows 7 on my work PC which doubles as a mild gaming machine for the occasional break or after hours. (Family business so I get to play when I can) haha....

Currently: XP 32bit, 2 WD 160gig drives, 8meg buffers, 1st drive partitioned 45gigs for OS, the second part of the drive I have my most used applications, Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Quark, Office, and just about anything else I need to run my day to day operations. Second physical drive has a 20 gig partition just for the page file and I have a min/max page file of 8gigs. The rest of that drive is partitioned off and on it I have my games I like to play, World of Warcraft, CoD4 and a few others. Now I have realized that I probably did not do a good thing installing my games which require HD reads to the same drive that has the pagefile but I dont think I am accessing the pagefile all that much when playing those games since all other apps are off when I am gaming.

I would like to buy Windows 7 and 2 new drives, Probably WD 500gig 32 meg buffers.
If I do then my plan is to run the OS on the first drive with a 75-100 gig in the first partition (C: drive) and then this is where my questions come in:

Would I see more performance if I installed my Apps to the second physical drive? Or could I install them on the second partition of the C drive. Will the reads/writes from the OS interfere with my Adobe and Quark programs?

Should I install my Games to one partition of second physical drive and the apps on the other part of that drive and then use the second partition of the OS drive as storage for music and pictures, and then use one of my older WD 160 gig drives as a 3rd drive for the Pagefile? and storage?

I'm trying very hard to minimize reads/writes but I dont know how effective the other WD 160gig drives will be with only an 8meg buffer as a pagefile drive.

All drives are 7,200rpm.

Does any of this make sense?

I was also thinking that down the road I would install the last of my old WD 160 drives to use as a scratch file drive for my adobe apps. Again this would be a 7,200 rpm with 8 meg buffer

 

[Radenight]

Hello and Welcome to Windows7forums!

Hello everyone and thanks for reading.

I have looked through the discussions and thus far not seen anything related to what I am about to ask but if this has come up before I apologize.

I'm looking to do a new clean install of Windows 7 on my work PC which doubles as a mild gaming machine for the occasional break or after hours. (Family business so I get to play when I can) haha....

Currently: XP 32bit, 2 WD 160gig drives, 8meg buffers, 1st drive partitioned 45gigs for OS, the second part of the drive I have my most used applications, Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Quark, Office, and just about anything else I need to run my day to day operations. Second physical drive has a 20 gig partition just for the page file and I have a min/max page file of 8gigs. The rest of that drive is partitioned off and on it I have my games I like to play, World of Warcraft, CoD4 and a few others. Now I have realized that I probably did not do a good thing installing my games which require HD reads to the same drive that has the pagefile but I dont think I am accessing the pagefile all that much when playing those games since all other apps are off when I am gaming.

I would like to buy Windows 7 and 2 new drives, Probably WD 500gig 32 meg buffers.
If I do then my plan is to run the OS on the first drive with a 75-100 gig in the first partition (C: drive) and then this is where my questions come in:

Would I see more performance if I installed my Apps to the second physical drive? Or could I install them on the second partition of the C drive. Will the reads/writes from the OS interfere with my Adobe and Quark programs?

You might see a slight performance difference if you did this however it would be marginal at best so I would suggest just installing you're apps on the second partition of the c:

Should I install my Games to one partition of second physical drive and the apps on the other part of that drive and then use the second partition of the OS drive as storage for music and pictures, and then use one of my older WD 160 gig drives as a 3rd drive for the Pagefile? and storage?

I would suggest using the first partition of the second physical drive for you're games and the second partition of this drive could be for all you're data (pics, music, movies, etc) The 3rd physical drive being used for a pagefile isn't a bad idea, though in my opinion with Windows 7's performance being extremely better than previous versions of Windows I don't think it's even neccessary to create a seperate partition for the pagefile.. Though that is of course entirely up to you. And yes, if you wanted to set that up the way you have suggested I can't see any reason why it wouldn't work properly or well...

I'm trying very hard to minimize reads/writes but I dont know how effective the other WD 160gig drives will be with only an 8meg buffer as a pagefile drive.

One of my pc's has a couple WD 160GB drives with the 8MB buffers and honestly they don't work that bad.. Of course this all comes back to what you will be doing with the pc but I mean in general these drives work pretty well.. I would suggest putting the Adobe apps on the drive (s) that have the 32MB buffer.. You won't get a massive performance boost but there will be one none the less..

All drives are 7,200rpm.

Does any of this make sense?

I was also thinking that down the road I would install the last of my old WD 160 drives to use as a scratch file drive for my adobe apps. Again this would be a 7,200 rpm with 8 meg buffer

This sounds like a very good idea! I could see that working to your benefit..

That all being said, remember it all depends on which task you'll be doing the most really.. If you will be using Adobe apps more than gaming it could be more to your benefit to put those on the first partition of the second physical drive and put the games on the second partition of that drive.. or even put the games on the 3rd WD 160GB drive.. Not to be conflicting or confusing but you see how many different ways you could set this up.. The point is as far as gaining performance goes, the boosts you will gain based on where you install things will be marginal for the most part.. Of course there are ways to counteract that (things like a RAID setup, etc) but simply placing games here and apps there isn't going to hurt or gain a massive amount of performance in the end...

If I missed a question please let me know.. Hopefully this has at least shed some light on the subject if nothing else.. Let me know what setup you end up going with.. I always like to hear how people have their drives partitioned..

 

[stevenz]

Hello and Welcome to Windows7forums!




That all being said, remember it all depends on which task you'll be doing the most really.. If you will be using Adobe apps more than gaming it could be more to your benefit to put those on the first partition of the second physical drive and put the games on the second partition of that drive.. or even put the games on the 3rd WD 160GB drive.. Not to be conflicting or confusing but you see how many different ways you could set this up.. The point is as far as gaining performance goes, the boosts you will gain based on where you install things will be marginal for the most part.. Of course there are ways to counteract that (things like a RAID setup, etc) but simply placing games here and apps there isn't going to hurt or gain a massive amount of performance in the end...

If I missed a question please let me know.. Hopefully this has at least shed some light on the subject if nothing else.. Let me know what setup you end up going with.. I always like to hear how people have their drives partitioned..

Hey thanks for the info! I had to edit my post, I missed a portion of what you replied and you actually covered all my points!