booting from a small hd

[thewombleofdeath]

Just before I go and cock my rig up even more than it already is, I just wanted to check that this'll work and can be done;

1. Nuke PC
2. Fit a small, crappy oldish hd (80gb ish) and install windows to it
3. Make windoze boot from it
4. use my main HD for other shit

my line of thinking in doing this is that I will have a cleanish version of windows on 1 drive and all of my other files on the other, therefore less likely to have to re-install windows as often. Obviously stuff like temporary files and stuff are going to go onto the windows hard drive but overall, there will be less crap.

does that make sense or am I missing something major out here?

[HereComesPete]

Yeah, if the drive really is crappy and oldish, don't use it for windows.

Also - if you do use it, partition it anyway and keep the windows stuff entirely separate. But I refer you to point one

Why are you re-installing windows often? How often is often?

[Dr. kitteny berk]

What pete said.

An old 80gb hdd is likely to be shit and slow. (unless it's a 76gb raptor)

You'd probably be better off partitioning your big drive.

[deject]

What pete said.

An old 80gb hdd is likely to be shit and slow. (unless it's a 76gb raptor)

You'd probably be better off partitioning your big drive.

Just partition out some space on your big drive (I made mine 60GB, but I've prety much filled it up installing games and other programs) and throw the 80GB in there as a file storage bin.

[FatherJack]

Yes, you ideally want windows on your fastest, bestest, but not neccesarily largest drive.

The theory is sound though - I have my OS(es) and most-demanding games on a pair of RAIDed raptors, with other games, docs (and all the game patches!) on other disks.

Keeping the OS disk small means it can quickly be fully backed up and games can be reinstalled from CDs. If you do ASR backups to the other disk you can recover them pretty quickly with only a partial new install of Windows by pressing F2 during the boot from CD.

While you can achieve the same thing with partitions, there's more room for user error and you're not protected from whole-disk failure. My "fast" games, while on the same disk are in their own partition in this way.

[thewombleofdeath]

Why are you re-installing windows often? How often is often?

Not very often, I'd say maybe once a year. I meant it as in virtually never, not less often.

Also, as you've said, the old 80gb one probably isnt a good idea, therefore I'll probably just buy another big drive (possibly on of the ones on the disco board on special offer at OC's)

[HereComesPete]

400Gb for £55, I'm tempted myself, that's why I was looking.

[cheeseandham]

1. Fit a small, crappy oldish hd (80gb ish) on spare channel.
2. Have 60-80Gb Windows partition on fastest, biggest drive.
2. Install Acronis TrueImage on Windows install (or use TrueImage bootable ISO)
3. Set weekly images from system partition to old drive. Incremental will be useful and/or just nuke & make a "fresh of the press" install.
4. ?
5. Prophet!

Just be prepared.