Author Topic: Question Regarding Hard Drives  (Read 2149 times)

Offline CK9

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Question Regarding Hard Drives
« on: November 13, 2012, 02:40:13 PM »
Not too long ago I asked you guys for suggestions for a new laptop and ended up purchasing a rather nice one that has 2 harddrive docks.  I took the harddrive out of my old laptop and put it in the second dock, and started wondering if I should do something.

Whould it be a good idea or a bad idea to move the operating system to the smaller drive and set up the large drive for all the documents?

based on the hardware name:
My old laptop's harddrive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822148312

My new laptop's harddive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822148371


from the data available on newegg, the main difference is the data capacity.  Would this be a good idea to do?  If so, is there an easy way to get the computer to put the program files on the second harddrive and still read them the same?
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Offline Hooman

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Question Regarding Hard Drives
« Reply #1 on: November 14, 2012, 03:39:29 AM »
My desktop has an 80GB primary for the OS, and a 2TB secondary for data.

Similar situation at work, where most workstations only have a few hundred GB for the primary boot disk, and have a 2TB or 3TB secondary data drive.


Programs are still typically installed on the primary, which generally makes sense, because many of them are integrated with the OS in terms of registry entries and shell extensions and such. If you replaced the OS, you'd probably want to re-install the stuff in "Program Files".

Most of the user data at work is either large static data sets, or projects that other people might need to work on or have access to, so stuffing them in a private "MyDocuments" folder doesn't make much sense. Hence no need to move that either.

In my workplace setting, there is no need to really replicate the structure of any of the typical system folders on the secondary drive. If you wanted to though, I believe their location is controlled by expandable environment variables, so they should be customizable. I've never tried it though.


In short, yes, use the smaller for your OS, but I probably wouldn't bother moving things like "Program Files" to the second harddrive. Just dump your own files there however you feel like it. Or possible copy programs there that don't need installation. (Unzip and run, like the OP2 download).
 
« Last Edit: November 14, 2012, 03:43:27 AM by Hooman »

Offline Hidiot

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Question Regarding Hard Drives
« Reply #2 on: November 14, 2012, 04:45:36 AM »
Since they're pretty similar, on the smaller one. Otherwise, I'd have advised a OS partition on the better one (so your OS runs as fast as your fastest HD allows), and lots of backing up important stuff in case you need to reformat the whole drive.
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