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Best way to install WinXP with 2 harddrives?

W

WinkOsmosis

Banned
I posted this in General Hardware, but haven't had any responses for 21 minutes. I'd like to reinstall Windows now 🙁.

I have two hard drives, a 200gb WD SE that came with a Promise PCI controller card, and an 80gb Seagate that is on the motherboard controller. When I got the new drive I installed Windows on a 42gb partition and formated the rest, about 140gb, for storage. The swap file is on the 200gb drive. My Windows XP install is acting wierd so I'm going to reinstall... but I'm wondering if I should install Windows on a partition on the old Seagate and use the whole WD for storage and the swap file. What do you guys think? I know that the Seagate is slower from reviews and such, but I don't have HDTach registered so I can't determine exactly what the difference is..

Edit: New question. Is it okay to install Windows when it only sees 131gb? The partitions show up as full size in the installer, but WinXP only sees 131gb technically. I'm not planning to format the installation partition.
 
I'd guess the buffer size on the 80gig is plenty big, but would be more efficient than the 200 gig so I'd use it for your primary and use other drive for storage space. If you're worried about hard drive failure, use your 200 gig drive as your primary and setup software RAID (RAID 1) between your drive partitions. (maybe run a 80 Gig partition on your 200Gig drive and use 120Gigs for storage.... Just find out what you think will work best for you....
 
I'd be interested in knowing how much, if any, the penalty is for installing the OS on the drive connected via the PCI controller. Any PCI bus limitations? Boot issues? I have a couple of drives hanging off a PCI IDE controller, but they're for storage.
 
Originally posted by: Scarpozzi
I'd guess the buffer size on the 80gig is plenty big, but would be more efficient than the 200 gig so I'd use it for your primary and use other drive for storage space. If you're worried about hard drive failure, use your 200 gig drive as your primary and setup software RAID (RAID 1) between your drive partitions. (maybe run a 80 Gig partition on your 200Gig drive and use 120Gigs for storage.... Just find out what you think will work best for you....
Click to expand...

Right now I have it set up as 42gb for Windows and programs and 140gb for storage, with about 4gb left over for a future Linux install. The older Seagate is also partitioned into about 25gb, which I used for Windows, and about 50gb storage.

Software RAID... Hmm I like that idea. I could set up a 25gb partition on the new drive and mirror it on the old drive (I don't think I really need 42gb for Windows and software)... So is software RAID good? Too bad I can't RAID partitions with my motherboard RAID controller. It doesn't support a 200gb drive anyway.

Edit: Btw, the cache on the Seagate is 2mb. The WD has 8mb.
 
Originally posted by: Astaroth33
I'd be interested in knowing how much, if any, the penalty is for installing the OS on the drive connected via the PCI controller. Any PCI bus limitations? Boot issues? I have a couple of drives hanging off a PCI IDE controller, but they're for storage.
Click to expand...

No boot issues with my motherboard, Asus A7V333. Somehow the BIOS adds the drives attached through the PCI card to the boot selection.
 
Motherboard RAID controllers can be pricey if you really want a good one. RAID 1 is mirroring and that's about all you could do if you wanted to...I was just thinking about the failure rate of IDE drives being a little higher than I like and how easy it would be to lose 200 or 80 gigs of data in one quick crash... Software RAID can be setup by configuring dynamic disks in Windows 2000 Server, but I don't know if you can do that with XP or Professional.... I may be suggesting something that you'd have to do through some other means.... All my important data is uploaded to a half-TB data cluster that I have at work... 😀 The cool part about that is that each SCSI array is RAID 5 with 12 stripes.
 
The Promise RAID controller that is on my motherboard is EVIL. It corrupted my Seagate once, something I've read that it's known for, so I moved it to normal IDE. Even if I could do some kind of partition RAID with it, I wouldn't.
 
Originally posted by: Scarpozzi
Motherboard RAID controllers can be pricey if you really want a good one. RAID 1 is mirroring and that's about all you could do if you wanted to...I was just thinking about the failure rate of IDE drives being a little higher than I like and how easy it would be to lose 200 or 80 gigs of data in one quick crash... Software RAID can be setup by configuring dynamic disks in Windows 2000 Server, but I don't know if you can do that with XP or Professional.... I may be suggesting something that you'd have to do through some other means.... All my important data is uploaded to a half-TB data cluster that I have at work... 😀 The cool part about that is that each SCSI array is RAID 5 with 12 stripes.
Click to expand...

I searched the WinXP help file from management console, and found nothing with "raid" or "software raid". I have Win2k though so I guess I could install that instead... Hmmm... I remember seeing an option for software RAID in the Win2k computer management console.
 
MS says:
You cannot create mirrored volumes or RAID-5 volumes on Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional, or Windows XP 64-Bit Edition-based computers. However, you can use a Windows XP Professional-based computer to create a mirrored or RAID-5 volume on remote computers that are running Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, or Windows 2000 Datacenter Server.

But they say nothing about Win2k Pro!

Text
 
I'm thinking about installing Win2k and using 20gb from each drive in RAID-0, then 50gb RAID-whatever-mirrored-is, and the rest of the 200gb drive for general storage. Does this sound like a good idea? Will there be problems using RAID on two somewhat different speed drives?

Edit: Nevermind.. software RAID is only for Win2k Server I think...
 
I'd be interested in knowing how much, if any, the penalty is for installing the OS on the drive connected via the PCI controller. Any PCI bus limitations? Boot issues? I have a couple of drives hanging off a PCI IDE controller, but they're for storage.
Click to expand...

Take the seagate out completely if you can. Partition the other hard drive into two and load XP on the C: drive. I am not sure how it works with two controllers, but generally you are only going to be able to move data at the rate of the slowest hard drive.
 
IIRC you can't use two differant size drives for a raid setup.
Well you CAN, but the larger one will default to the smaller ones size.
 
Originally posted by: 3L33T32003
I'd be interested in knowing how much, if any, the penalty is for installing the OS on the drive connected via the PCI controller. Any PCI bus limitations? Boot issues? I have a couple of drives hanging off a PCI IDE controller, but they're for storage.
Click to expand...

Take the seagate out completely if you can. Partition the other hard drive into two and load XP on the C: drive. I am not sure how it works with two controllers, but generally you are only going to be able to move data at the rate of the slowest hard drive.
Click to expand...

It can't be limited to the slowest drive if they are on different controllers, or CD drives would slow hard drives down. Right now I have both drives on my motherboard controller. I thought the PCI controller was required for full 200gb support, but my Asus A7V333's IDE controller supports it. The DVD and CDRW are on the PCI controller. It is noticeably faster.
 
Originally posted by: Jellomancer
Originally posted by: 3L33T32003
I'd be interested in knowing how much, if any, the penalty is for installing the OS on the drive connected via the PCI controller. Any PCI bus limitations? Boot issues? I have a couple of drives hanging off a PCI IDE controller, but they're for storage.
Click to expand...
Take the seagate out completely if you can. Partition the other hard drive into two and load XP on the C: drive. I am not sure how it works with two controllers, but generally you are only going to be able to move data at the rate of the slowest hard drive.
Click to expand...
It can't be limited to the slowest drive if they are on different controllers, or CD drives would slow hard drives down. Right now I have both drives on my motherboard controller. I thought the PCI controller was required for full 200gb support, but my Asus A7V333's IDE controller supports it. The DVD and CDRW are on the PCI controller. It is noticeably faster.
Click to expand...

the pci card is for pcs whose bios can not see 200gb; it looks like your mobo can, so you can just install the os on the 200gb and use the free space/other hdd for storage. have the cdroms run off the pci card. it's all good... 🙂
 
Originally posted by: m2kewl
Originally posted by: Jellomancer
Originally posted by: 3L33T32003
I'd be interested in knowing how much, if any, the penalty is for installing the OS on the drive connected via the PCI controller. Any PCI bus limitations? Boot issues? I have a couple of drives hanging off a PCI IDE controller, but they're for storage.
Click to expand...
Take the seagate out completely if you can. Partition the other hard drive into two and load XP on the C: drive. I am not sure how it works with two controllers, but generally you are only going to be able to move data at the rate of the slowest hard drive.
Click to expand...
It can't be limited to the slowest drive if they are on different controllers, or CD drives would slow hard drives down. Right now I have both drives on my motherboard controller. I thought the PCI controller was required for full 200gb support, but my Asus A7V333's IDE controller supports it. The DVD and CDRW are on the PCI controller. It is noticeably faster.
Click to expand...

the pci card is for pcs whose bios can not see 200gb; it looks like your mobo can, so you can just install the os on the 200gb and use the free space/other hdd for storage. have the cdroms run off the pci card. it's all good... 🙂
Click to expand...

The thing is, I believe newer Via drivers than the ones that come with WinXP are required. Am I supposed to put them on a floppy and press F6 to use SCSI drivers like I had to do with the PCI card?
 
Is there a way I can make a floppy disk that I can insert during WinXP setup to install the VIA IDE filter driver? I tried copying the files to a floppy but WinXP setup searches for txtsetup.oem...
 
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