second drive

[mandugi23]

i've finally decided to try raptor hard drives, as i heard its really fast, and you can use fraps while playing game.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136054

currently i have 120gb hitachi harddrive.

i dont really know how having 2nd drive works so could somebody plz explain it to me?
1. im guessing im gonna have to mess with slave,master option on hard-drive. which one should be which? raptor, hatachi
2. would i need bigger power supply i have 350w right now.
3.do i need to install xp on both hard drive?
4. should i install games in raptor drive, and would that help with the ingame performance.

thx in advance

[Ob1]

you will have to install xp and all applications on the raptor drive unless you have a imaging program like ghost or acronis, if you have that software then you can clone your old drive to your new raptor. once the raptor is up and running, then backup your data you want to save on it and wipe the drive, reformat it as ntfs and put all your data back on it.then turn your 120gb drive into your data drive where you store all your mp3's. pics, movies, documents, etc.

[TwoRails]

First, Raptors have pretty much had their hayday. Many modern drives are dang near as fast, and some even beat the Raptor in some benchmark tests. And that is not to mention you'd get roughly 10 trimes more storage space...

1) No, no need to mess with Master/Slave as the raptor is a SATA drive. Does your motherboard support SATA drives?

2) That PS should be OK, drives don't take all that much power.

3) No, you'd still boot off the drive you boot from now

4) Putting games on a fast drive helps, but it may not blow your hair back....

[mandugi23]

http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/products.php?categories=1&model=4
above is link to my motherboard

does sata stand for serial ATA? if so yes my motherboard supports it.

just found a neat little article about adding a 2nd drive.
http://www.dansdata.com/sbs27.htm
wat do you guys think?

well on newegg, i looked at the raptors average latency,seektime, etc, they are twice as faster than normal drives.

[TwoRails]

Yes, SATA is serial ATA.

I only glanced at that article, but got the impresson it kinda doesn't cover what you want. You want to *add* a second drive, yes? If so, then you just plug the drive in, hook up the power, and that should take care of that end. If you running XP, and have either SATA motherboard drivers installed (if that board doesn't do it natively), then you simply go into Disk Management and format and partition the drive as you want.

Don't be fooled by the manufacture's simple spec listing, as that doesn't cover real life use. Read some benchmarks and compare for youself. Maxor (no longer made) actually beat Raptors in a number of benches, and was pretty close in others. Segate's 10 series is suppose to be even faster.