computer upgrade

[rockinroger]

Helllo I need a little help from some computer experts. Im just a carpenter but I like to build my own computers. I like the Civ series 3, and 4, so I have CIv 3 Gold, PTW, and both CIV4. Needless to say thats a lot of space on my hard drive. Its a 80 gb. I just rebuilt my computer with a new motherboard and video card. I was thinking of installing a new hard drive. Would it be better to have 2 hard drives one master and one slave? Or just go for some of the large hard drives. Or perhaps have a external hard drive thats just dedicated to civ series. I also play around with alot mods, which is even more space on hard drive. Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated.

 

[BlueLikeYou]

Having two drives is a really good idea, because you can install the operating system on one drive, then install you games and store files on the other drive. Then if you ever need to re-install windows or upgrade, you can just format the OS drive and still keep all your saved games and other files.

Though with windows, you'd probably have to reinstall games anyway just to make sure the registry was set up right. But in the event of a major problem that forces you to reinstall the OS, you would still have your saved games, mods, etc.

If you just get one large HD, you can also partition it to create multiple drives and do the same thing.

 

[rockinroger]

Thanks for the info Blue, Im thinking of leaning towards 2 drives. Would it be better to get a large drive for all the civ games and files and store it there, making the large drive the slave? Forgive my ignorance but when you reference os drive are you refering to operating system drive? Im self taught on all this computer stuff. So sometimes i am a little shaking on terminology. I am about to build a computer for my brother, hes getting ready to go back to college. So I was thinking that since hard drives are not very expensive right now, that i might use my 80 gb for his computer and go for a large SATA drive for my computer. I had 2 hard drives b4, I think I had a 20 and 40 gb but it seemed like I had a hard time using info from the slave. Is there perhaps some info on this that would help me learn how to do this? I appreciate your time and effort responding to this?

 

[BlueLikeYou]

Yeah, I mean the drive with the operating system. That's not really official terminology as far as I know...that's just what I'm calling it

I would put the OS on the smaller drive and then make the larger drive the slave and use that for most of your software and other files. I would also put anything that starts up with windows (such as firewall or anti-virus software) on the same drive as windows. It's been my experience that Windows can have trouble starting up if for some reason it can't access a drive with a program that it launches at startup. Something like MS office should probably be put on the OS drive as well.

I never had much trouble accessing data on a slave drive unless the master/slave setup was not right. SATA drives are the way to go if you can. With SATA, you don't have to worry about master/slave anymore, so you can just plug in the drives and go. SATA does use different connections than the old IDE drives, so your motherboard will need to support SATA drives (I think there are converters available, but I don't have any experience with using them). Also, Windows doesn't come with SATA drivers, so you need to have those ready on a floppy disk. The newest versions of Windows might have those drivers included, but I couldn't say for sure. I know when I installed the Vista beta, it needed some drivers, but I don't remember if it was SATA or just the SATA RAID drivers it needed.

If you go with one large drive, then I would still recommend creating a separate partition for the OS.

 

[Artosoft]

IIRC, put your faster hardisk on primary master, and put your slowest hardisk on secondary master. If you have dvd/cd-rom, put it on secondary slave.

Regards,
Arto

 

[rockinroger]

yes i will switch to sata drives. The new motherboard i installed a ASUS a8n5x handles sata drives. so i need drivers for it for windows xp?

 

[rockinroger]

ok, i bought a western digital sataII drive. 350 gb. i currently have a 80 gb ide seagate drive. How would i go about transfering my photos and music from the 80 to the 350. i guess what the best way to transfer is what im asking

 

[Artosoft]

ok, i bought a western digital sataII drive. 350 gb. i currently have a 80 gb ide seagate drive. How would i go about transfering my photos and music from the 80 to the 350. i guess what the best way to transfer is what im asking

You can install both hardisk and transfer data from 80GB to 350GB.

Or, buy external usb hardisk casing, put the 80GB hardisk on it, plug in to PC, transfer data from external hardisk to your 350GB hardisk.

Regards,
Arto.

 

[rockinroger]

thanks artosoft, that second option sounds like what i want to do. appreciate the advice!