XP Pro Software rebuild help

[ironwarrior]

Hello,

I just finishing building a brand new E8500 computer. I installed (2) new 640 gig wd drives and a dvd burner. I had initially planned to just take the XP pro hard disk out of my old machine and pop it in this one. It is IDE and I had an ide header on my new motherboard.
I attempted to boot from it and got a "Windows did not Start Normally" message. Well at that point I tried to reload windows xp, but would not give me the option to repair. I figured at this point I would just use partition magic or Hirens Boot CD to try partition, format and reload windows XP pro from scratch.

Do you guys have any better recommendation?
I'm thinking is is probably my best bet.
Can you guys give me a recommendation on how I should partition my (2) 640 gig drives.
I was thinking doing the following..

640gb drive 1
c partition 30 gig for windows
d 300 or so
e 300 or so

640gb drive2
f 320
g 320

Does this sound like a good plan to you? Do you have any recommendations to make this process more painless?

Appreciate your help...
Really want to fire up my new machine so I can start gaming..

Oh and one more question.. Am I ok to stay with windows xp, or do you really notice
a difference by using vista 32 with direct x 10. I don't have vista, so was hoping I would be ok with xp pro.

 

[IlllI]

what about raid configuration?
also, i dont understand why you want/need all those partitions

if you just built a new computer and got a new video card, seems like a waste to stick with xp. xp only supports dx9 so you wont have access to all the 'goodies' dx10 provides, which would seem to be something you'd be interested in since this is primarily a gaming rig

 

[ironwarrior]

This is why I asked if it was to my best interest to stick with XP pro or add vista with direct x10.

Not planning on doing raid now, maybe in the future. Right now I just want to get my system running as quickly as possible so I can enjoy it.

Also regarding partitioning, I read where you get more performance making a small partition for the OS like 20 or 30gig
and copying the paging file to another partition or drive. In the past I partitioned my drives into 2-3 partitions for added performance.

How do you recommend I partition the (2) 640gb drives that I have?
I appreciate any advice.

Thanks

 

[IlllI]

you'd get the best performance going raid.
i think raid 0 gives the best performance.. not sure about multi-partitions. maybe someone else knows

oh and what video card did you get?

 

[ironwarrior]

Yeah, I will more than likely experiment with Raid down the road, but feel that my backup requirements aren't that extensive that requires it right now.

This was my build:


*Antec 1200 case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...043&Tpk=antec%20twelve

*Corsair 750TX power supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...E16817139006&Tpk=750tx

* Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...28358&Tpk=GA-EP45-UD3P

* G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1000 (PC2 8000) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820231145

* Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80570E8500
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16819115036]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115036

* 4870 1gb Saphire Radeon 1GB 256-bit DDR5 http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814102801

* Western Digital Black Caviar 640GB (primary)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822136319

* Western Digital Black Caviar 640GB (secondary)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822136319

* XIGMATEK HDT-S1283 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16835233003

* XIGMATEK ACK-I7751 Retention Bracket - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16835233019

* LG Blu-ray/HD DVD Burner Model GGC-H20L
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...827136133&Tpk=GGC-H20L

* Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16835100007

 

[IlllI]

4870 i'd definitely switch to vista then. even though i personally dont like vista, it would be a shame not to take advantage of dx10 with that video card.
raid 0 isnt really about backing up data, in that it doesnt create a copy of your data. theres several different raid setups but 0 is the 'performance' one. instead of seeing 2x 640 gb drives it would see one and data would be shared between the two. supposidly thats how you get better performance http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd...ls/singleLevel0-c.html the downside to raid 0 is if one hd dies then you lose all your data

 

[ironwarrior]

I believe it is raid 5 that does striping with parity. That is the one I would use.
Redundancy kind of goes out the window if you were to lose a drive and then lose all your data .
As for the OS, I think I will wait till Windows 7 is released and buy that. Maybe I can hunt down a copy of Vista in the meantime (Licensed copy of course)

Is it that huge of a difference between direct x10 and 9?

 

[IlllI]

i'm holding off for 7 too theres a public beta for windows 7 that just came out http://www.wincert.net/news/11...first-impressions.html
but not sure if theres any driver support for it yet or not

 

[ironwarrior]

That article of Windows 7 didn't sound that intriguing. But there wasn't much mentioned.
Will be interesting to see how it turns out.

 

[BlueAcolyte]

Too many partitions... You do know you can only have 4 per drive? I'd just keep the drives as two separate drives with one partition each and keep the swap file on the system partition. Weird things happen when you don't. Also, the first system partition thing is over-rated, as is the speed of RAID. You will have a better experience with two separate drives.

 

[ironwarrior]

Thanks BlueAcolyte,

I decided to do just that. I wanted to make things as simple as possible so I set up my drives like this...

DRIVE 1
* Drive C (Windows XP Pro) 650 gig 1 partition

DRIVE 2
* Drive D (Windows Vista 64) 650 gig 1 partition

I'm going to try vista 64 for awhile and see how my games react with it and direct x 10.
I later plan to try Windows 7 beta next .

I am just getting into gaming after contending with my old as dirt previous PC that wouldn't play tic tac toe... lol. Now I am very happy with my new machine. I just bought Call of Duty 4 today and am anxious to try it out. I read where it is a direct x 9 game so will run it on the windows xp side.

After burning in my machine and getting finalizing all the wiring and stuff I want to try overclocking... That will be a whole new thing for me. If you have any reference to some good newbie docs on that would love to have them.