h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

IMHO every computer should have at least two different HDDs. It may be a somehow lame substitute to have your HDD partitioned into two volumes, but it is better to have multiple HDDs. Store install programs on one disk, data on the other one and, if you have a third one, the swap file on the third.

This may not increase the speed of your machine, but it will help you a lot in the case of an emergency. If your program disk goes down the drain, you don't lose all your data (I won't go into the point that regular backups are a *MUST* anyhow). If your data disk fails, you will still have a working system to access your backup media. If you decide to do the "big upgrade" and buy a new machine, you can take all your data with you and install your data drive into the new one.

Jeremy

Now that is a really good idea.

Using a separate drive (and not a partition) for your scratch disk is a very good idea... especially for those users who have Adobe Photoshop or Quark Xpress and do large image manipulations. Speeds up the machine no-end!

B.

I have one data disk that has accompanied me through 5 different machines over the last years ... I tend to see the hardware as nothing more than a tool or a man-to-machine interface to access my data. So if I install *MY* disk into a brand-new machine, my workspace has not really changed. Cool, isn't it?

I had a 4 GB drive like that until last week, when I bit the bullet and bought a new one, and boy did i notice the speed difference, coud see what rpm the old one did, but the new one at 7200 is so much faster.

The 4 GB is now in my PC, but not connected, with a back up OS on, my old second drive, remains my second drive and the new one has the OS on it.

Massive improvement.

CH