Installing OS on smaller HD?

B

Bwangster12

New Member
I had to reformat my computer because I did something stupid... but now Windows XP Home is on the 40 GB HD I had added from an old computer (6 or so years old) instead of the 120 GB HD (3 years old) that came with the computer. The 120 GB HD is completely clean/reformated. Is there any problem with me having the OS on the 40 GB HD? Will I notice a slowdown or anything? Also... will I run out of room to install programs? I noticed the My Documents folder and everything is aimed at the smaller 40gb drive. Is there anyway for me to make the 120gb drive the drive that stores all the data?
 
I'd say its better to have the os on the bigger on because im guessing you have your 40 set as master and it would be better if the 120 is master.
 
Bwangster12 said:
I had to reformat my computer because I did something stupid... but now Windows XP Home is on the 40 GB HD I had added from an old computer (6 or so years old) instead of the 120 GB HD (3 years old) that came with the computer. The 120 GB HD is completely clean/reformated. Is there any problem with me having the OS on the 40 GB HD? Will I notice a slowdown or anything? Also... will I run out of room to install programs? I noticed the My Documents folder and everything is aimed at the smaller 40gb drive. Is there anyway for me to make the 120gb drive the drive that stores all the data?
Click to expand...
This is almost exactly what I plan on doing to my PC in the next couple weeks: I'm going to swap my slave 20GB drive to be Master and the 80GB drive to be Slave, for data storage. Even with XP and all the program files and other data needed, I never used more than about 10GB of the 80GB drive, and always ended up filling the 20GB drive with data nearly to bursting. Swapping them, reformatting, freshly installing everything, and restoring my data from backups will fix this. I just cannot stand putting stored data on the Master drive. If I ever need to reformat it, I'd lose all my data. Not good.

Will the 20GB as Master run slower? Probably, yeah. It's an older drive, with an older controller. And if I ever do run out of room on it for programs, I can always make a "Program Files" folder on the 80GB Slave drive. I've done that before and everything worked just fine.

Will YOURS run slower? Probably, yeah. It's a six year old drive, after all. Chances are you have a smaller buffer compared to a new HD, and rotational speed may be lower as well. That means slower data transfer.

Tom
 
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Both of my computers are set up with smaller HD's for the OS and a larger drive for storage and backup. So far, I have not run out of space on the OS drives. I also think it makes it easier having all your files saved on another drive.
 
I spoke with HP tech support online this morning and the guy recommended I put the OS back on my 120gb harddrive. He said with the programs and the drivers it would be better to have more room. The other thing is that my computer can (I plan to) partition the drive the OS is on and make it a recovery partition (so I don't have to use the recovery disks to reformat). That takes up from 5-10gbs. I think there is about 29gbs left before the partition. So lets say I'm down to 19gbs for future programs/drivers and whatever else I need. Is that enough room? It just seems neater and more organized to have my OS on the small drive and having a 120gb Internal HD and a seperate (not yet mentioned) 200gb portable external drive as my backups.

If my smaller drive was 60gbs, for example. Would that be better?
 
The HD's speed will affect the overall performance of the OS. A while back I had a 40gb HD which froze up on my Mac. It was the original OS HD, which came with the computer and is about 5-6 years old (I'm not sure about the Drive specs). I reformatted and installed the OS on a newer 40gb HD and have noticed a vast improvement in performance. The OS will perform better on a newer drive with a better speed.
It just depends on if you want performance or organization.
 
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