SATA Raptor

[Don Soriano]

I have two WD 80G PATAs. The primary has the OS (WINxp). I added a WD 36G SATA Raptor primarily for use with flight similulator and other games. Question is, is it necessary to transfer the OS to the SATA drive in order to maximize on it's performance for gaming?

Don

[Dark Nova]

NO its not

[blue60007]

No, but what I would do is transfer the OS to the raptor (and any other apps, like photoshop) and put games and such on the other two IDE drives. The raptor isn't really going to give you any better performance in gaming. It will, however, give you a little bit better performance in Windows (loading times, etc) and other apps (again, loading times, etc).

[Don Soriano]

Seems like two conflicting responses. I'm no expert but it appears that there should be a noticeable improvement in gaming performance with the Raptor (10K RPM speed, 5.2 ms ave. seek time) since games are more graphically intensive than the operating system or other programs. But then perhaps both the OS and the games should be on the same drive. Then I can remove the OS from the old drive. Does this make sense?

Don

[blue60007]

The only time the game should be accessing the hard drive is when the level/map/game is loading. Then it goes into your RAM. So, it would actually speed up loading times, but not in-game performance.

[Digitalic]

I`m a big time raptor fan but in this case I think to speed up your games I`d focus on RAM and vid card instead of hardrive.

[Don Soriano]

I tried loading the OS using the disk but there was a warning that stated that I will be unable to load the OS because the one I have on my old hard drive was an updated version while the disk was not. Bummer! Guess I really have just to transfer the OS from the old drive to the new SATA drive.

Don

[Don Soriano]

Come to think of it, what was the advantage of installing a Raptor. What kind/types of programs can I load in it that will benefit from it's performance. If none, heck, I'd just leave the OS in the old drive and save me the headache of tranferring the OS unnecessarily. What do youse think?

Don

[glc]

If you want to use the Raptor for the OS, either clone the old drive to it with the appropriate 3rd party utility or disconnect the old drive when you install Windows fresh.

[Don Soriano]

glc

My old drive is the Primary Master. I also have a Primary Slave. If I remove the Primary Master, will I have to reconfigure (pins) the Primary Slave? That is, set the slave temporarily as a single drive. Since there will be no OS in the system after removing the old drive, will the computer boot using the WINxp install disk?
One last thing, obviously the OS disk will not contain all the upgrades particularly the SP2, do I just start from the scratch?

Thanks for the help.

Don

[Dark Nova]

My old drive is the Primary Master. I also have a Primary Slave. If I remove the Primary Master, will I have to reconfigure (pins) the Primary Slave?


Yes


Since there will be no OS in the system after removing the old drive, will the computer boot using the WINxp install disk?


yes, that is if you set your CD Rom as your primary boot in the bios


One last thing, obviously the OS disk will not contain all the upgrades particularly the SP2, do I just start from the scratch?


yes

[glc]

Disconnect ALL hard drives except the new drive to install an OS on it fresh. No need to mess with jumpers. Disconnect any external drives and card readers too.

If you are using an 80 wire Ultra ATA cable, you should be using Cable Select jumpering anyway, not master/slave/single.

[Don Soriano]

I presume that the cables that come along with the drive kits are 80 wire Ultra cables. Good idea to use Cable Select. Any ID to make sure I have the right wire?

Also after a clean load, can I hook my other two drives as is? Can I transfer updates from the OS in the old drive to the SATA drive.

And thanks for the input. I've learned a lot more from this forum.

Don

[macko72]

No you can't transfer updates you have to download them again and yes just hook rest of your drives and it's best to use CS(cable selection)!!!