Installing windows + pagefile on seperate hd query

salami1212 · 26 Feb 2006 at 21:53

Well, if i install windows and my pagefile on a completely seperate hard drive with nothing else, not related to windows installed on it, would that give me a lot of extra speed or a noticeable improvement in speed?
thanks

smids · 26 Feb 2006 at 23:53

It would improve speed yes, but only for things that pagefile obviously and this is dependent on the amount of RAM you have. The speed increase won't be that noticeable unless you are a heavy pagefiler.

salami1212 · 27 Feb 2006 at 01:14

so installing windows on a different drive wouldnt affect the speed then

cheers

smids · 27 Feb 2006 at 01:23

No, it would beneficially affect the speed, but the amount which it does depends on RAM.

(Unless you were wondering whether it would slow it down, which it won't).

techmonkey · 27 Feb 2006 at 09:38

I haven't noticed any difference when I moved my pagefile to my second HDD.

I currently have two HDD's. One for Windows, programs and games and the other for all my installers, videos, music and bumpf.

chex · 27 Feb 2006 at 10:22

it depends on the software you use

If you used photoshop before and after you would have seen a difference.

Jeff Crawly · 27 Feb 2006 at 12:32

Also for an improvement the separate Hd that you are placing the pagefile on must be as fast or faster than the OS drive. (ie you will get a performance decrease if you were to place the page file on a 7.2k or 5.4k hd when your OS is on either a 15k scsi or 10k raptor or even simply a faster hd of the same spindle speed!)

Also for MAX performance place the separate hd with the pagefile on, onto a different IDE channel if your using IDE, that way it will have it's own controller.

smids · 27 Feb 2006 at 14:26

Jeff Crawly said:
Also for an improvement the separate Hd that you are placing the pagefile on must be as fast or faster than the OS drive. (ie you will get a performance decrease if you were to place the page file on a 7.2k or 5.4k hd when your OS is on either a 15k scsi or 10k raptor or even simply a faster hd of the same spindle speed!)

Also for MAX performance place the separate hd with the pagefile on, onto a different IDE channel if your using IDE, that way it will have it's own controller.

And at the very beginning of the drive...

Jeff Crawly · 27 Feb 2006 at 15:46

smids said:
And at the very beginning of the drive...

Yes, unlike CD/DVD's HD's work from the outside inwards.
This means that the first bits of data wrote to a Hd (normally your OS) are placed on the outside of the platter which is faster than the inside for obvious reasons.

salami1212 · 27 Feb 2006 at 16:40

so i wouldnt gain any speed from installing windows on sata 80gb hard drive. and installing everything else on a 160gb sata 2 hard drive

smids · 27 Feb 2006 at 16:48

salami1212 said:
so i wouldnt gain any speed from installing windows on sata 80gb hard drive. and installing everything else on a 160gb sata 2 hard drive

You would - there is no speed difference really between SATA1 and SATA-II - see my sticky for more info.

An 80GB drive is slightly slower than a 160GB drive due to platter densities but this shouldn't be noticeable.

darreny · 27 Feb 2006 at 17:05

also you may benefit from keeping things you use together on seperate drives ie- os and games, music and office and such. i saw a big increase keeping my music on a seperate drive

Jeff Crawly · 27 Feb 2006 at 18:54

You would be better off partitioning the 160Gb and using that for the OS as it's physcially a faster drive than the 80Gb one. Also if it has a larger cache than the 80Gb drive you would notice an even bigger performance boost

salami1212 · 27 Feb 2006 at 20:38

would installing everything on a single sata 2 160gb spinpoint hard drive decrease performance or not as that would be the cheaper option form me?

Jeff Crawly · 27 Feb 2006 at 21:44

salami1212 said:
would installing everything on a single sata 2 160gb spinpoint hard drive decrease performance or not as that would be the cheaper option form me?

The performance difference would be very minimal provided you partitioned the drive up correctly.

salami1212 · 27 Feb 2006 at 22:46

Jeff Crawly said:
The performance difference would be very minimal provided you partitioned the drive up correctly.

so theres not much point partitioning the hard drive as the gain in performance is minimal. i should just install everything normally all on the drive

salami1212 · 28 Feb 2006 at 17:12

me227 · 28 Feb 2006 at 23:29

How exactly would I ensure that my page file would be stored on the outer edge of the platter?

smids · 28 Feb 2006 at 23:31

me227 said:
How exactly would I ensure that my page file would be stored on the outer edge of the platter?

Make sure it is the very first thing you put on the HDU or more simply, reformat the second drive completely and make 2 partitions - one 3-4GB partition for only the pagefile and the rest for storage, when you create the partition, it should ensure you don't get a fragmented pagefile and that it is at the beginning of the drive.

EDIT: Thought you were the OP :rolleyes:

.

There is no real way unless you partition the drive at windows install. This way you can offset windows by 3GB and put the pagefile there, but then you ensure that windows is slightly slower, so it is best that unless you have a second drive, you partition enough space for windows and the pagefile together.

Jeff Crawly · 1 Mar 2006 at 00:31

salami1212 said:
so theres not much point partitioning the hard drive as the gain in performance is minimal. i should just install everything normally all on the drive

Your OS and Pagefile should be on a C: partition of 6-10Gb's for best performance. This ensures both OS and Pagefile are on the fastest part of the 160Gb hd and also that it fragments at a much slower rate.

Installing windows + pagefile on seperate hd *query*

Installing windows + pagefile on seperate hd query