New C: drive help

[Nick1881]

Currently I have a 320 Seagate partitioned with a 40Gb partition for my windows, this was so if I needed to format I could format the windows partition and not loose any of my other data. I have also just brought a 500Gb drive as I needed more space.

A friend told me my drive will be slightly slower due to the partition so I was thinking about getting another drive to use as my C drive and use the 320 and 500 for music and films and any other data I want to keep.

As its only to be used for windows and game install it doesnt need to be very big, for small drives I found you can pick up a 160Gb for only about £35 but these only have 8mb cache, should I spend more and go for say a 250Gb with 16mb cache? what drive would suit my needs?

Actually just spotted this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-118-WD&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=167

or is there anything of better value?

Thanks guys

Nick

 

[rpstewart]

A friend told me my drive will be slightly slower due to the partition

There's a grain of truth in that but generally it's not correct. There is a slight overhead in maintaining 2 partition tables but nothing significant and it'll be outwieghed by the fact that the partition will keep the OS files etc in the fastest area of the disk. Without a partition they could end up anywhere across the disk and with the outside edge being twice as fast (approx) as the inside there's a benefit to constraining the physical placement.

 

[Nick1881]

Thanks for that.

So your saying its hardly worth me spending another £38, its not like im low on space or anything at the moment. Another thing is if I do it now it would be very easy while I have an empty 500Gb drive to take everything off my 320Gb.

Nick

 

[rpstewart]

If you're not short on space then I wouldn't bother.