OT - New HD Setup

[Shiloh 12]

I just installed a 1 TB HD in my gaming rig. It's hooked up to my PSU and to my MB as well. Device manager is seeing it but it's not showing up to the point I can access it and of course it needs to be formatted. I accessed BIOS and its seen there as well. How do I get this HD to the point where I can use it? Thanks guys.

 

- MSI M/B K9A2CF-F AMD 790X

- AMD Athlon II X4 640 Quad-Core 3.0 GHz

- 4GB RAM

- Seagate Barracuda 250GB Sata HD (7200 rpm)

- Samsung Spinpoint 1TB Sata HD (7200 RPM)

- DVDRW/CDRW drive

- Corsair 650TX 650W ATX12V

- GIGABYTE Radeon 6850 HD video card

- Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit)

- Dell 22" monitor (max res 1680 x 1050)

[Parky 8]

Hi Shiloh,

 

Try this:

 

1) Right-click on My Computer, Select "Manage"

 

2) On the left hand side, look for "Storage" which should expand to "Disk Management"

 

3) Select Disk Management

 

Your new drive should show up on the right hand side. There are two areas there you can right-click on which will give you different options. One of them should give you the option to format the drive and/or assign a drive letter. Try formatting it from there and you should be good to go.

 

Cheers,

 

Parky

[Von Paulus 8]

Edit: Parky was quicker.

Basically he said in three lines what I've done in 20.

 

 

http://windows.micro...hard-disk-drive

http://windows.micro...-disk-partition

 

 

Preparing to use a new hard disk

After you have installed a new hard disk, your computer should recognize the new disk if you have installed it correctly. When you turn on your computer, the basic input/output system (BIOS) should automatically detect the new hard disk.

 

If you plan to use the new hard disk as the primary partition that contains Windows, then you will have to install Windows on the disk before you can use your computer. You will need a Windows Vista installation disc to do this. For more information, search Help and Support for "Installing and reinstalling Windows."

 

If you plan to use the new hard disk as a secondary disk (one that does not contain Windows), you should be able to see the new hard disk drive the next time you start your computer and log on to Windows. After Windows starts, click the Start button , click Computer, and then look for your new drive in the Computer folder. The letter assigned to the drive will depend on your computer’s configuration. If you don't see the new hard disk drive, try looking for it in Computer Management.

 

1. Open Computer Management by clicking the Start button , clicking Control Panel, clicking System and Maintenance, clicking Administrative Tools, and then double-clicking Computer Management.‌ If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
2. In the Navigation pane, under Storage, click Disk Management, and then look for the new drive.

You will probably have to format the hard disk before you can use it. For instructions, see Formatting disks and drives. Follow these same instructions to format an old hard disk that contains data you want to erase.

 

If your computer does not recognize the new hard disk, double-check the installation instructions that came with the hard disk. If you have additional questions, go to the manufacturer's website.

 

To create and format a partition (volume)

When you create partitions on a basic disk using Disk Management, the first three volumes you create will be formatted as primary partitions. Beginning with the fourth volume, each volume will be configured as a logical drive within an extended partition. For more information, see What are partitions and logical drives?

 

1. Open Computer Management by clicking the Start button , clicking Control Panel, clicking System and Maintenance, clicking Administrative Tools, and then double-clicking Computer Management. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
2. In the Navigation pane, under Storage, click Disk Management.
3. Right-click an unallocated region on your hard disk, and then click New Simple Volume.
4. In the New Simple Volume Wizard, click Next.
5. Type the size of the volume you want to create in megabytes (MB) or accept the maximum default size, and then click Next.
6. Accept the default drive letter or choose a different drive letter to identify the partition, and then click Next.
7. In the Format Partition dialog box, do one of the following:
    
   
   • If you don't want to format the volume right now, click Do not format this volume, and then click Next.
   • To format the volume with the default settings, click Next.

<li> Review your choices, and then click Finish.

Edited July 25, 2011 by Von Paulus

[Parky 8]

You covered one base I didn't though......he may have to allocate the disk before he formats it.

 

Thanks, Paulo

[Shiloh 12]

Thanks Parky and Von Paulus. I allocated the drive and named it B: drive. It's in the process of formatting now. It seems like a long process so I'll just let her go and report back here if I have any issues. Thanks again guys!

 

Edit: That reminds me - I do have one more question. Right now I have roughly 40GB available on C: and have removed many of my games to save HD space. Can I install all of my games on this new HD? Will this affect performance given the OS is still on C:?

Edited July 25, 2011 by Shiloh

[Parky 8]

Go ahead and install whatever games you want on the new drive. If there's any performance difference at all, it should be a positive one due to the games being installed on a nice, new and uncluttered drive.

 

Cheers,

 

Parky

[Rugbyfan1972 1]

Shiloh,

 

Not sure if this is relevant when using vista, win7 or even xp, but I remember reading somewhere back in the mists of time (I think I was using win98, so that would make it at least 7 years ago), that if you have a second HDD putting the windows swap file on that one speeds up the time windows takes to do things.

 

Of course Parky, Von Paulus or any of our resident tech experts will be able to give much better advice on this.

[Von Paulus 8]

Not sure if this is relevant when using vista, win7 or even xp, but I remember reading somewhere back in the mists of time (I think I was using win98, so that would make it at least 7 years ago), that if you have a second HDD putting the windows swap file on that one speeds up the time windows takes to do things.

Correct.. I still do this. The ideal situation would be for a third HD. Because you could have one ofr OS, other for Game, and the third for the pagefile.

However never could see much difference.

It's more important to create a fixed pagefile thought, and specially in the case of Shiloh while the hardrive is new and unfragmented.

 

http://mintywhite.com/vista/vmaintenance/performance-boost-move-page-file-to-another-physical-drive/

The amount that should be located for the pagefile is usually 1.5x your physical memory. I usually use the value on the recommended setting.

[Shiloh 12]

Go ahead and install whatever games you want on the new drive. If there's any performance difference at all, it should be a positive one due to the games being installed on a nice, new and uncluttered drive.

 

Cheers,

 

Parky

 

Good to know Parky. I'm going back on Steam and download some of my games I've had to do without over the last year.

 

Shiloh,

 

Not sure if this is relevant when using vista, win7 or even xp, but I remember reading somewhere back in the mists of time (I think I was using win98, so that would make it at least 7 years ago), that if you have a second HDD putting the windows swap file on that one speeds up the time windows takes to do things.

 

Of course Parky, Von Paulus or any of our resident tech experts will be able to give much better advice on this.

 

I'm not familiar with the Windows swap file. Maybe someone else will chime in and enlighten us - thanks Rugbyfan! I'm going to have to upgrade Windows at some point but in the last 3 months I've done CPU, GPU and now added a drive so I'm done for the moment.

[Parky 8]

Shiloh,

 

Before you start downloading anymore games from Steam, you'd be wise to take a look at this: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7710-tdlc-0426

 

Also, just my two cents, but if you're not experiencing any performance issues, just let Windows manage your swap/paging file space for now.

 

As Paulo indicated, the performance differences you'll see by messing with your paging file (particularly if we're dealing with newer hardware) are usually not really evident, and it's probably not even worth the bother.

 

 

Cheers,

 

Parky

[Shiloh 12]

Shiloh,

 

Before you start downloading anymore games from Steam, you'd be wise to take a look at this: https://support.stea...=7710-tdlc-0426

 

Also, just my two cents, but if you're not experiencing any performance issues, just let Windows manage your swap/paging file space for now.

 

As Paulo indicated, the performance differences you'll see by messing with your paging file (particularly if we're dealing with newer hardware) are usually not really evident, and it's probably not even worth the bother.

 

 

Cheers,

 

Parky

 

Very helpful Parky thank you! I had just found a workaround to get Steam to install on my new drive but it is much more involved than what you posted here. Many thanks for your help!

[almccoyjr 7]

The only advise I would add to the above is to place the swap file on the outer most track of the 1TB drive.

 

For this, you'll need a dedicated payware program like O&O, UD3 or ?

 

plug_nickel

[BirdDogICT 3]

The only advise I would add to the above is to place the swap file on the outer most track of the 1TB drive.

 

For this, you'll need a dedicated payware program like O&O, UD3 or ?

 

plug_nickel

At the risk of sounding snarky, it sure is nice to see some intelligent discussion about technical issues from Parky, von Paulus, & Almccoyjr without UncleAl chiming in.

 

Sorry, couldn't resist.

[almccoyjr 7]

You're not sounding snarky BirDogICT. I went back into some much older snippets I'd saved from another forum where unclean was gimpyguy and his tone and demeanor really had taken a turn. I hope he's ok.

 

Sorry. Back OT.

 

For those who are running a single hd of 600GB or larger, put OFF on the first track followed by swap file, boot sector and then Windows. This will give you a much faster prefetch since the the hd heads are reading OFF/swap file sequentially and will give a good balance between "OFFing" and the the more mundane windows programs you're running.

 

A long time ago, I ran some tests doing just that and found that even on 5400 rpm hd, having the swap file follow the primary app you wanted to run made a difference in performance. On a 7200 rpm hd, the gains are even better and all it takes is some "pre-flight" time to do it once and your done.

 

I currently run a 600GB WD_Raptor as primary with a 1TB WD_Black Caviar as secondary. I have the swap file (fixed at 8.75GB) on the first track of the secondary with all my flight sims on the primary. I have 6 sims, then my boot sector listed as the 7th allocation followed by windows. My boot time is 16 seconds. I don't load a lot of resources at start up

 

I can wait that long. It takes me longer than that to manually cold start my Nupe.

 

plug_nickel

[Parky 8]

At the risk of sounding snarky, it sure is nice to see some intelligent discussion about technical issues from Parky, von Paulus, & Almccoyjr without UncleAl chiming in.

 

Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

Hi BD,

 

At the risk of sounding sentimental, I'll still miss him. Every once in a while he'd make a comment that I'd just tear him to pieces over. It was always PC/Hardware/Software related usually, but I recently snarled at him about one of his more "political" posts. I kind of regret having done that. Regardless, I think we all understood that his knowledge of PC's in general was somewhat limited. I also think most of us understood that he could voice political/religious and just basic "views" that would piss the Pope off. With all that in mind, he also was a fountain of knowledge when it came to some of the more subtle aspects of the OFF GUI and it's various functions. That in itself, was worth something. His "Sticky and Cheats" contribution was always part of his signature.......you might have noticed that. It meant a lot to him......and I know that for sure. It was a magnificent contribution to this community.

 

I'll miss taking him to task for going outside his areas of expertise. I'll also miss his brazen humor. It's just a damned shame he couldn't rein it in enough to seem "almost" congenial. Hell......he was WAY outside of that. He knew it......and I also know he didn't give a shyt. Something I also admired him for....

 

Nonetheless, I understand exactly what you're saying. It's just so terribly unfortunate that UncleAl had such a rare talent for getting people to say what was really on their minds. Now, THAT's interesting....to say the least, huh?

 

 

Cheers Mate,

 

Parky

[Von Paulus 8]

That's what I call real optimization, almccoyjr.

I've been using UD2 and now UD3 (Ultra Defrag ) for a couple of years, and it might not be the best but I really like it.

I use a set of three HD. Three OS. All have the pagefiles allocated to different HD's, and one have in the first partition (the one with the outer track) filled with games. I place the most demanding games starting from the outer track. UD permits to select which you want and in what order.

[almccoyjr 7]

Hey VP,

 

I've been using UD2/3 as well and IMHO, Disktrix really knocked it out of the park with UD3. I've started to watch how some of my apps change and am learning to partially compensate for that by allowing extra free blocks on the track for those apps. Defrag is a snap now.

 

Three OS's...I can't wrap my head around one let alone three.

 

plug_nickel

[Von Paulus 8]

Three OS's...I can't wrap my head around one let alone three.

For tests, and who knows more.

I've a Win7 x64 for games (no A/V), a XP for old games and Win7 x86 for Apps.

But I do have another computer (which I end up using for all service) connected by a switch to the same mouse, keyboard and monitor, that one has 2 HD, but only one OS.

I won't speak about my eternally switch off HP with Vista. I just hate Vista. I've to try some things with 2008 Server, probably I'll install a second HD on that f***er and install it there.

[Parky 8]

You're not sounding snarky BirDogICT. I went back into some much older snippets I'd saved from another forum where unclean was gimpyguy and his tone and demeanor really had taken a turn. I hope he's ok.

 

Sorry. Back OT.

 

For those who are running a single hd of 600GB or larger, put OFF on the first track followed by swap file, boot sector and then Windows. This will give you a much faster prefetch since the the hd heads are reading OFF/swap file sequentially and will give a good balance between "OFFing" and the the more mundane windows programs you're running.

 

A long time ago, I ran some tests doing just that and found that even on 5400 rpm hd, having the swap file follow the primary app you wanted to run made a difference in performance. On a 7200 rpm hd, the gains are even better and all it takes is some "pre-flight" time to do it once and your done.

 

I currently run a 600GB WD_Raptor as primary with a 1TB WD_Black Caviar as secondary. I have the swap file (fixed at 8.75GB) on the first track of the secondary with all my flight sims on the primary. I have 6 sims, then my boot sector listed as the 7th allocation followed by windows. My boot time is 16 seconds. I don't load a lot of resources at start up

 

I can wait that long. It takes me longer than that to manually cold start my Nupe.

 

plug_nickel

 

Ok,

 

Just to get back to the more technical aspect of this thread, I have four 1T drives in a RAID-10 ( I just like that kind of redundancy....it saves me a lot of fekkin' headaches) *that comment was just for UncleAl*. The pagefile for that array resides on a 36 Gig Raptor........the pagefile and nothing else. Old habits are hard to break....lol. I also have an 80 Gig SSD where OFF and a couple of other "texture load intensive" programs reside. I could probably move that pagefile on the Raptor back to the "C" drive, let Winblows 7 manage it, and not see any discernible deterioration in overall system perfomance. There was a time, with older operating systems and hardware, that having a designated pagefile partition on a separate drive may have made sense. Just my humble opinion that it doesn't amount to a hill of beans worth of performance difference on an otherwise properly configured system....not if we're talking about today's hardware and Operating Systems. I'll leave mine on the separate drive anyway...not in an attempt to increase system performance...but mostly just because I can.

 

Cheers,

 

Parky

[almccoyjr 7]

Hey Parky,

 

"Old" habits are hard to break especially when results are good. The "page/swap" file debate still goes on and it probably always will. Some apps are codeds so well that the S_F isn't really needed.

 

What I found on my system when upgrading was that if I had only the Raptor installed with OFF, OS, other programs and the S_F "sitting" there, I had a baseline started using Performance Test.

 

I set OFF, S_F, boot then windows and picked up about 2%.

I set the S_F to 16gb and now was almost at 4%.

 

I installed the 1TB and placed the S_F on the first track and was now at 11%.

I then changed the S_F to 8.75gb and was at 13% from the original baseline.

I then put in an open block right after the swap file and picked up almost 1-1/2%, now at 14%+. I'm still trying to figure out why that happened. I've got several differing opinions regarding that last change.

 

All "free" increases; with only the time taken to optimize.

 

It does and can make a difference when ALL the pieces of the system are factored in. The current crop of drivers really do seem to bring out the best in hardware in 64bit OS.

 

As to RAID, "fekkin" is good adjective. How do "fekkin" defrag a RAID drive? "Parallel, mirror, sequential, oh 'fekkin' my!"

 

plug_nickel

[Parky 8]

I set OFF, S_F, boot then windows and picked up about 2%.

I set the S_F to 16gb and now was almost at 4%.

 

I installed the 1TB and placed the S_F on the first track and was now at 11%.

I then changed the S_F to 8.75gb and was at 13% from the original baseline.

I then put in an open block right after the swap file and picked up almost 1-1/2%, now at 14%+. I'm still trying to figure out why that happened. I've got several differing opinions regarding that last change.

 

 

 

As to RAID, "fekkin" is good adjective. How do "fekkin" defrag a RAID drive? "Parallel, mirror, sequential, oh 'fekkin' my!"

 

plug_nickel

 

I have to admire your more clinical and less empirical approach to compiling data and end results. If the end result is a 14% improvement, then I wouldn't even bother "trying to figure out why the last 1-1/2% improvement occurred". I'd also take each and every one of those relevant, but differing opinions as to why that happened with a grain of salt. If the results speak for themselves, just enjoy the benefits. The hard work has been done...you've earned the reward.

 

As far as defragging a RAID-10 array is concerned, I've never really considered it. When I analyze the array using the built in Windows 7 utility (yeah...I know it sux), it tells me there's no need to defrag, and that fragmentation is below 2%. If I ever experience any performance degradation at all, I may just take a crack at it with UltraDefrag. I doubt there's an option to perform the operation any differently than you would with a regular drive (although I haven't checked yet), as Windows itself sees the array as a single volume.

 

One thing I'd like your opinion on, Doc. Some people recommend leaving a small but static pagingfile area on your system drive even if you are going to assign your main pagingfile to secondary drive. Any thoughts on this?? It's always confused the hell out of me...

 

 

Cheers,

 

Parky

Edited July 27, 2011 by Parky

[Von Paulus 8]

 

One thing I'd like your opinion on, Doc. Some people recommend leaving a small but static pagingfile area on your system drive even if you are going to assign your main pagingfile to secondary drive. Any thoughts on this?? It's always confused the hell out of me...

Thats' new to me. Tell us doc, please.

[Parky 8]

Thats' new to me. Tell us doc, please.

 

Paulo,

 

Here's a perfect example of that hypothesis from yet another website where the author is supposed to be some kind of expert when it comes to this sort of thing.

 

Should the file be left on Drive C:?

The slowest aspect of getting at a file on a hard disk is in head movement (‘seeking’). If you have only one physical drive then the file is best left where the heads are most likely to be, so where most activity is going on — on drive C:. If you have a second physical drive, it is in principle better to put the file there, because it is then less likely that the heads will have moved away from it. If, though, you have a modern large size of RAM, actual traffic on the file is likely to be low, even if programs are rolled out to it, inactive, so the point becomes an academic one. If you do put the file elsewhere, you should leave a small amount on C: — an initial size of 2MB with a Maximum of 50 is suitable — so it can be used in emergency. Without this, the system is inclined to ignore the settings and either have no page file at all (and complain) or make a very large one indeed on C:

 

My question is, does this "theory" hold water, and if so, is it proprietary to Windows XP only or is it also applicable (if it's applicable at all...lol) to later operating systems? In this instance, the author seems to think assigning a small but "dynamic" pagingfile on the C drive is the way to go....interesting to say the least.

 

 

 

 

Cheers,

 

Parky

Edited July 27, 2011 by Parky

[almccoyjr 7]

Good question Parky.

 

I've never really conducted any test with a static pagefile on the primary and have a another pagefile, dynamic or static, on the secondary. Interesting. This I may just have to check out one day. Something else to do...thanks.

 

With hd's being so big now, why would you want to setup a static S_F? Why not let the "system" dynamically handle the file? My performance answer to that is consistency. The flight sims I fly will not "use" more than 4gb of memory. So I've setup the S_F file at 8.75gb to incorporate 4gb of memory, system resources, v.c., and best guess as to the leakage rate of the OS. It only makes sense that 8.75gb static reads faster than 1.5, 2x or whatever the OS assigns at any particular time to a track that's dynamically changing.

 

All of my "tests and approaches" to performance start and end with the hard drive(s). If you think about it, the app has to process information along certain pathways and invariably, no matter how fast your other components are, the code has to get off the disk first and invariably, be pulled off of it again. SSD's and VRD's bring just how "good" an apps code is into light, sometimes glaringly. Take for example CoD. I read of all the problems with it and was able to run it on friends pc after I had installed a VRD. The performance was abysmal! In a VRD loaded directly into system ram! Not even late alpha quality. No hardware combo could overcome its initial flaws.

 

I haven't really gotten into delving "deeply" into SSD's because I'm fixated on OCZ's RevoDrive X2. The specs on the throughput for the 450gb card is staggering and so is the price!!! And processing info over the PCI bus makes a lot more sense to me, IF the board has the bandwidth and lanes. I've also learned to check or find out about where the "sweet spot" is on hd's before buying one. And you don't find it in the mfg's specs or marketing venues; only in dedicated hardware forums, however; that's only for pure pursuit of speed for speed's sake. Not really performance oriented IMHO. When I was pursuing performance and speed for its own sake, I'd actually flush the S_F, temp, cache and prefetch to attain the fastest possible throughput. Now I only flush the temp and cache files.

 

I'm intrigued about the small bump in performance when adding the open block at the end of the S_F. WHY? Simply because it happened. My hunch is that it's acting as a hard stop: there's no info beyond this point. Go back to square one. Certainly not clinical nor empirical but it makes sense.

 

For me, "poor" or more appropriately, inconsistent FPS results always leads me to look at the v.c., memory/prefetch and how the info is getting off/on the disk. The hd usually and significantly figures into the "bottleneck" due to rotational speed, head pickup, number of platters, drivers, file placement and file condition, etc.

 

As for calling me "Doc"...please....I'm still trying to understand the nuances that make pagefile and swapfile different. It's like the color white. The spectrum is supposedly void of color, hence white. Well isn't white then a color of void?

 

plug_nickel

[almccoyjr 7]

I was typing away when your last post hit Parky, so am now only seeing it.

 

I'd pose some questions regarding head reading efficiency, file placement/order, the size of system ram being used, the memory leakage rate of the OS and what the apps code is doing regarding v.c., memory and prefetch.

 

The hd's physical size also enters into the equation. A 300gb single drive is about as "small" a drive I'd recommend using if you're going to setup the drive without much concern regarding app size

 

App

S_F static

Boot

Windows

 

The physical size of the primary app needs to needs to be taken into account if you're at 150-200. You're starting to enter the head's read/write tangent to file placements and platter curvature. This is where the "sweet spot" would come into play. On a Seagate/WD 240gb hd @ 5400 rpm, the "sweet spot" for best performance is around the 2nd migrating to the 3rd track. Don't ask; I dont "fekkin" know why. I don't have the technical training or background to explain why.

 

plug_nickel