Doubts about 2nd hard drive install

Hello to you all.
I was hoping someone could clear me some doubts regarding the installation of a second hard drive that I just acquired.
The old drive is an 80Gb ATA-100, set as master on one IDE channel, with the other channel occupied by a DVD drive, also set as master. The new drive is a 320Gb ATA-133.

I have several questions regarding how exactly to install it. I've read somewhere that optical drives work best with a channel of their own, set as master, like I have. But if I install the new drive as slave to the older hard drive, will its performance be extremely hampered? (not only because of it being ATA-133, but also because of being set as slave)

I really didn't want to install the operative system on the new one, since it takes ages to install all the stuff I need (and you all surely know how exaustive that can be), and this new drive's purpose is basically to have all my "leisure stuff" nicely installed, like games, music and other things like that, with the older one serving for other kind of software (programming, design tools, etc.).

I'd appreciate any help you can give me regarding this, thanks in advance.

 

Welcome to Major Geeks old fruit.

First and most important, Windows xp needs service pack 1 or 2 and Windows 2K needs service pack 4 to recognise drives bigger than 137 GB. Vista has no such problems.

You also need a bios which is capable of handling the drive, if you run it from one of the two channels on your motherboard. Since your motherboard is only ata100 it is quite likely that the bios will need upgrading to recognise the larger drive. Try it and see.
The alternative is to buy a pci to ata133 interface card, they are quite cheap. This would allow the max speed on your new drive.
If you set it as slave on the existing it will only run as fast as the ata100 drive. The master / slave setting is immaterial to speed of access, it is just a way of differentiating between the drives.

Incidentally its a good idea to separate your data from the system (windows) drive. In fact you have the space (and sense) for window and programs; permanent data; temporary data/working space; games.
This makes housekeeping much easier as some partitions are much busier than others and need more active cleaning/defragging etc.


Studio T

 

Thank you for your welcoming!

I actually had no idea about that Windows limitation, but since I have Windows XP with SP2 installed I guess it won't be a problem.
Now in what concerns the bios I don't have a clue about its hard drive support, I'll have to check the manual, but it does have the latest bios installed.
I have no problem with it running at the same speed as the other one since I consider it fast enough and well.. the computer itself is old and having a super-fast drive wouldn't help the fact that the other components aren't exactly up-to-date, hehe.

I'll try to install it as slave, and if it's not recognized then I guess I'll have to take into account your suggestion to buy that card.

Many thanks for your prompt answer.