what to do with a 1.6gig HDDD

[rudeboymcc]

anyone? i have this drive from an old pc. my compueter isnt great. amd 800 384sdram. i was hoping there's something i could do to improve performance. i currently have one 60 gig hdd.

maybe i could put the swap file on it?? i'm not sure how though. i'm suing winxp sp1.

[cult]

Why you dont create a ghost image of your os and put it there?

[rudeboymcc]

do you mean put it on mirror RAID?

i've got a RAID motherboard, but surely mirror RAID puts everything on both harddisks, not jsut the os.

if you don't mean that, then what do you mean? and what will it do?

[jeremymacmull]

TIP 1

Id say set the swap file to the other hdd


to do this go to control panel system enviroment and then there is a setting in there somewhere forgotten where. Set the swap file size to the same max and min values and set it high as u might as well use the drive fully

you should notice a difference in everything if you one hdd does not have to keep searching for the swap file back and forth

TIP 2

I dont know if you can do this but can u partition the 60 gb so u have a 1.6 gb and the rest 58 gb odd and then raid 0 (striping NOT mirroring) the 1.6 gb partition with the other 1.6 gb drive put your OS on the raid partition and voila

hope any of this helps

JEREMY

[rudeboymcc]

TIP 1
as i said i've looked for the setting to move the swap and i can't find it. (winxp)

TIP 2,

that means reformatting my harddrive which is LLOOOONNNG>

[Zhnujm]

TIP 1: Control Panel->System->Advanced->Performance->Advanced->Virtual Memory->Change

TIP 2: this is a joke (the 1.6GB raid mirror), is it ?

[rudeboymcc]

well it wasn't my joke.

yes i'm aware of the settings there but they dont' let you set which hard drvie to put it on.

[Ramirez]

TIP 1
Id say set the swap file to the other hdd

I'd say do not.
how old your 1.6 GB drive is? Probably crapy ATA66 5400rpm drive The whole point of moving the swap file to another physical drive is to decrease Disk access times,however the speed of that drive must be taken into consideration too.IMHO by moving the swap file onto that drive you'll hurt swapfile access quite allot.

TIP 2
I think it just ain't worth the hassle involved in creation of such cripple RAID array.

TIP 3
Already being given to you by cult,IMHO this is the best Advice you'll ever get,use it.

[Zhnujm]

Originally posted by rudeboymcc
yes i'm aware of the settings there but they dont' let you set which hard drvie to put it on.

strange, for me there is a box where all drives are listed and where i can select any drive.
(not that it would speed up your system)

[gabest]

My tip: Put it on the shelf behind the books and forget about it for a few decades. Advantages: 1. your head won't hurt because of not knowing what to do with it, 2. in 2050 it will worth a fortune for a museum.

[rudeboymcc]

good point. yeah it's old. ok so i don't have anything to do with it, i'll jsut keep it as a spare jsut in case something happens.

btw, does anyone know how to install a generic version of windows? i was think maybe if i install a windows on it that will adapt itself to any system, that way if i go to someone's house and their windows doesn't start, i can still access the files. anyone?

i could put a secon win xp on it jsut in case mine fails.

but i'l forget the pagefile idea. thanks guys.

[Xayd]

That won't work with NT/2000/XP because the OS requires boot sector files to start, and with a different hard drive controller on a different mobo it'll fail to boot every time.

It will work with 95 or 98, though. Find a copy of Win95B to use would be my recommendation.

The only minor problem you'll have is it redetecting devices every time you put it in a new machine, but with 95/98 that can be overcome pretty easily. Search the registry for the key named "ENUM" and delete it after each shutdown, that wipes the device manager clean.

[jeremymacmull]

oh well i guess my tips (:P) were rubbish then but come on i did not want to tell the guy to just waste it

but seriously tho i do agree with Zhnujm he is right put a ghost on it

anyway sorry could not be of help

JEREMY

:P

[rudeboymcc]

don't worry about it jez ,turns out my idea was pretty useless as well. i have my main partiiton as ntfs, so win 98 wonb't be able to read it. why can't i put the boot sectors on each drive? i could just copy them on to the 1.6gig, but tell my bios to start from the main hard disk.

btw, about hte win98 thing, i stil want to be able to access the cd rom and other devices on the pc i put it in. there must be a way, if win98 boot disk load any cd rom.

[rudeboymcc]

turns out this hard disk is in very bad condition. i went to install windows 98 on it becuase i've had many problems with winxp and sometimes i need 98 to use some programs.

while installing, it said there's an error with the drive,adnt he other drive is ntfs so it didn't find it.

did a error checking in win xp, said it can't continue .

tried a chkdsk /f in the command prompt, said everything was bad but didn' fix it

only way to do it is to use scan disk from the 98 setup cd and i started it, very loooooong process.

why can;t winxp fix it?

[ravenone_2000]

If you running into problems, I wouldn't risk it, nor spend the time to try and work around it. Just not worth it, nor the potential headaches later.

I too have a hard time getting rid of HD's and such. I soooo want to find uses for them, but never do.

[REECYCUP]

tear it apart take out the magnets
they are very strong for being small:)

[rybread]

put linux on it 4 giggles

[21up]

Format it do a scandisk put win 95/98 on it ,put it in another puter
set it up***** and give it to grandson or daughter to xperiment with
cheers Peter:D :mad: :confused:

[kaitsuburi]

I say put DOS on it and fill it up with all DOS games. You know, all this GUI and stuff, sometimes I miss my old 286. Strictly sometimes, but still... I did own a Pentium 122/1G HDD laptop for a while...

[Buddy]

I have an old 1,2 gig hdd. It is working fine in a router I build from an old pentium2 board. Installed windows xp pro and it works fine. I have 6 computers on it. Maybe an idea. Putting it on a shelf is an other good idea. I have some of those to.:D