utilizing second hard drive

my system has two hard drives. is it possible to improve performance by
utilizing second (D) drive. there are times when the (C) drives seems to be
working overtime what with all the background features in Vista. I'm not a
techie, so would appreciate if somebody could explain what I need to do.. I
do know that they are set up as master/slave.
--
Bressler

On Sat, 14 Jun 2008 11:16:00 -0700, Bressler
<Bressler@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

>my system has two hard drives. is it possible to improve performance by
>utilizing second (D) drive.

Two things you can do...

Move your page file there.

It's simple to do... Control Panel (Classic View) - System - Advanced
System Settings - Performance Settings - Advanced tab - Change virtual
memory.

Move your temporary internet files and cookies there.

In IE: Tools - Internet Options - Settings (under browsing history) -
Move Folder



>there are times when the (C) drives seems to be
>working overtime what with all the background features in Vista. I'm not a
>techie, so would appreciate if somebody could explain what I need to do.. I
>do know that they are set up as master/slave.

Bressler wrote:
> my system has two hard drives. is it possible to improve performance by
> utilizing second (D) drive. there are times when the (C) drives seems to be
> working overtime what with all the background features in Vista. I'm not a
> techie, so would appreciate if somebody could explain what I need to do.. I
> do know that they are set up as master/slave.


Well it gets complex sometimes.

Master / Slave implies they are connected to the same IDE bus. There are
usually two IDE buses, and the ideal situation is to spread the load
since however many drives are on the bus the speed of the bus is the
limiting factor. To copy from hard drive to hard drive your best speed
would likely be to have them on separate buses, to copy from CD to hard
drive then you would want them on separate buses, but unless you are
doing a lot of that then the master / slave configuration doesn't matter
too much.

Where it might help is if you wanted to use the one drive for your swap
file or virtual memory. However you may get an even better improvement
by adding more real memory. What does your system have?

>>my system has two hard drives. is it possible to improve performance by
>>utilizing second (D) drive.
>
> Two things you can do...
>
> Move your page file there.
>
Yes, just be aware that you still need a small pagefile on C: - Vista will
complain if you set it for less than 200 megs.

Not if they are on the same IDE Bus it won't.

Nonny wrote:
> On Sat, 14 Jun 2008 11:16:00 -0700, Bressler
> <Bressler@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
>
>> my system has two hard drives. is it possible to improve performance by
>> utilizing second (D) drive.
>
> Two things you can do...
>
> Move your page file there.
>
> It's simple to do... Control Panel (Classic View) - System - Advanced
> System Settings - Performance Settings - Advanced tab - Change virtual
> memory.
>
> Move your temporary internet files and cookies there.
>
> In IE: Tools - Internet Options - Settings (under browsing history) -
> Move Folder
>
>
>
>> there are times when the (C) drives seems to be
>> working overtime what with all the background features in Vista. I'm not a
>> techie, so would appreciate if somebody could explain what I need to do.. I
>> do know that they are set up as master/slave.
>

If you are not a techie are you sure you have 2 hd's and not 2 partitions,
and are you also sure the second isnt your recovery partition?

"Bressler" <Bressler@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:72488B3E-1670-43EB-9E75-0DA20C4D0395@microsoft.com...
> my system has two hard drives. is it possible to improve performance by
> utilizing second (D) drive. there are times when the (C) drives seems to
> be
> working overtime what with all the background features in Vista. I'm not
> a
> techie, so would appreciate if somebody could explain what I need to do..
> I
> do know that they are set up as master/slave.
> --
> Bressler

On Sat, 14 Jun 2008 13:00:57 -0700, "Victek" <Victek@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

>>>my system has two hard drives. is it possible to improve performance by
>>>utilizing second (D) drive.
>>
>> Two things you can do...
>>
>> Move your page file there.
>>
>Yes, just be aware that you still need a small pagefile on C: - Vista will
>complain if you set it for less than 200 megs.

No it won't.

I have a 2gig page file on another drive and none on my C... no
complaints. No errors in any event logs.

>>>>my system has two hard drives. is it possible to improve performance by
>>>>utilizing second (D) drive.
>>>
>>> Two things you can do...
>>>
>>> Move your page file there.
>>>
>>Yes, just be aware that you still need a small pagefile on C: - Vista will
>>complain if you set it for less than 200 megs.
>
> No it won't.
>
> I have a 2gig page file on another drive and none on my C... no
> complaints. No errors in any event logs.
>
Let me be more specific. Multiple sources say that a small pagefile is
necessary on C: for crash memory dumps. If you don't have the pagefile then
you don't get that information in the event of a crash. When I was
resetting the pagefile on C: Vista gave a warning basically saying this in
non-technical terms. I'm not aware of any other issues. Regarding
performance, whatever benefit is gained by moving most of the total paging
space to a different hard drive will not be lost by having a small file on
C: