hd buffer question... (1 Viewer)

[Ted Lee]

hi all -

i have an opportunity to install a western digital 200gb drive, but it only has a 2mb buffer.

my other two drives (also both wd's) have 8mb buffers.

what i'm thinking about doing is swapping out my primary c-drive (80g) with this 200g model. but i'm concerned about the buffer. it seems to me i should try to stick with 8mb, because if i understand correctly, it's a significant improvement?

i don't really need this 200g model, so it won't kill me if i don't install it.

thx!

 

[Mike Fassler]

you prolly wont notice much difference, yes the 8mb models are faster but unless your play games all the time or anything similar you wont notice any difference. why not just add the 200 gig as another slave drive for storage? its better to use a smaller drive as the boot drive.

 

[Ted Lee]

thx mike, i was wondering if that's the case about me noticing any performance decrease.

i already have the 80g as master, and the 160g as slave on my primary (?) eide channel. (plus an external 80g i use for backup). so, i didn't think i could add anything else since i have two optical drives on my secondary channel???

(hope i'm using the right terms..it's been a while since i built this thing...)

on a side note, you mention it's better to boot from a smaller drive...so would using a 200g be a bad idea? what if i partitioned it?

 

[Christ Reynolds]

reinstallation could be tricky, as you have to enable 137+ gb drive support from within windows. unless you have a windows disk that has sp1 or sp2 included, i'd say just use the large drive as storage.

CJ

 

[Ted Lee]

eh - never heard of this. what's this all about? i thought all current bios could recognize any capacity hd?

if not, and i want to reinstall xp on this 200g model, what exactly do i need to do? my xp (home) doesn't have any of the sp's on it (though i do have them on separate cd's that i ordered from ms) -- does that mean the install won't recognize the drive as bigger then 137?

 

[DaveJJ]

That's right Ted. I was expecting XP would recognized my new Maxtor 250GB Diamond + 10 with 16MB of buffer HD. I was totally surprised that it only saw 137GB. I had friend that advised me to go to Maxtor Website and download a utility called Maxblast that helped install my Maxtor with no problems.
Go to Western Digital's Website and download Data lifeguard Tools for Windows and your all set! I hope this helps Ted.


DaveJJ

 

[Mike Fassler]

yeah winxp doesnt recognize over 137 gb without SP1 or later without a registery hack, but if you have the software that usually comes with the drive, it will take care of that for you. I have a 250 gig drive that im using for my current boot drive but I have it in 2 partitions currently. but when I format my system next ill just use my xp cd with SP2 slistreamed in it and *poof* I wont have multiple partitions.
yeah datalife guard and maxblst are handy little utils to have around, they will set up the partitions and format for you, but if you already have windows installed and just installit as a second drive it will recognize the full drive. if you out of room on your mobo ide slots, you can always get a pci ide controller to add more room, currently I have 4 hardrives a cd burner and a dvdrom in this pc. Also if you partition the drive to say two 100 gig partitions, you wouldnt even have to worry about the 137 gig limit. you would just go into the drive manage and format the second partition from within windows.

 

[Ted Lee]

heh..learn somethin' new every day. thanks guys!

so, i think i'm gonna try the following:

1. install the 200g (formatted into two partitions)
2. install xp, etc on one of the partitions
3. see if i notice any performance difference
4. if i do, i'll just put my old hd back in.

oh..another thought. if i do format the 200g into two partitions, i know i'll (obviously) have to format one of them to put xp on. do i format the other half at that point (during the xp install) or can i wait till later and use disk mgmt to format it?

 

[Mike Fassler]

nah just format the boot partition with your windows disc, then go into drive management which is in administrative tools, select the partition and make it an extended partition, then make it a logical drive and format it and you will be good to go when you are done.
if you need anymore help just holler

 

[Ted Lee]

will do mike...mahalo!

 

[Ted Lee]

hey all, a (probably stupid) question, but goes.

i read the faq from the western digital site. if i understand it correctly, this is what i need to do?

1. hookup the hd (master on primary channel)
2. boot the pc from the lifeguard tools cd rom (which i already have from my other retail hd kits)
3. go through the software to format my hd to 200g
4. then i can just pop in my xp install cd and it will recognize that the hd is 200g?

i think i'm confused somewhere around step 3 and 4. it seems like the lifeguard tools will "prep" my hd so that the xp install will recognize it as a 200g?

it seems that this would be easier then going with mike's other suggestion?

[edit] - i read somewhere that if the xp install includes sp1, then this whole thing is a non-issue. well i have the xp install software, but how do i get it with sp1? is there a way to "create" my own?

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

Yes, there is a way to integrate SP1, or even SP2, into the Windows XP install files and then burn a new CD with the service pack already in it. It's called slipstreaming.

There's a program called nLite available at http://nuhi.msfn.org/ which will help you go through the process of doing it. There are also some websites that help also, some of them describing the steps of using nLite. One is http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=8493

The only catch to burning a new XP install CD with the service pack slipstreamed is dealing with the boot file image to make sure the new CD is still bootable. I think nLite takes care of that step as well.

 

[Ted Lee]

very cool wayne...thx! guess i've got some reading to do later tonight.

 

[Ted Lee]

wayne, thanks for the info on slipstreaming. i had some problems extracting the sp2 file (i don't think my hd could handle how fast it was extracting ), and the nlite didn't work out for me (some error about missing something or other) -- but i did some googling and came up with some alternate solutions that worked.

bottom line, i now have a xp install slipstreamed with sp2 -- ready to go.