Installing a second hard disk

[drvajra]

Hi folks,

I have a 30 Gig hard drive (master) in my computer. I have bought a new HD (160 Gig Western Digital WD Caviar SE)which I want to use as a second HD mainly for video recording and editing.

Here are my questions:

1) Should I partition the 2nd HD? I am thinking of not partitioning, as this will make the full 160 gig capacity available for projects which may need large capacity. Am I wrong in this thinking? If I should partition the 2nd HD, how many partitions should I create? How large should each be?

2) This is how I plan on formatting the 2nd HD. Is there a better way? I do have partition magic - should I use it instead?:

1. Double-click the My Computer icon. 2. Single-click the second drive icon to select it. 3. Open the File menu and select Format. The format window displays the hard disk capacity. 4. Click Start. Windows displays a warning box. Read the warning, and then click OK to begin formatting. Your comments will be highly appreciated.


Vajra

[numero1]

I suggest you create a minimum of three partitions. This will help you to organize better your data.At the same time it would speed up the time when you will have to defrag the drives. If you are using windows xp; do this: control panel\administrative tools\computer management\storage\disk manangement, from there you can partition and format the hard drive.

[Frogy]

How large are the projects? "as this will make the full 160 gig capacity available for projects which may need large capacity"

As mentioned above, you may want to have multiple partitions but make sure that at least one is large enough to handle those project files.

[Dr.Dan]

Depending on just what you do with your computer as to how many partitions you should have, but I always recommend at least 2 for a drive that size.

One should be for all of "My Documents" so that it's not stored in the same partition as the OS.
That way if you need to format and reinstall the OS, you already have all your saved data on another patition ;)

Format and partition as posted by numero1.

[Shinma]

IF you intend to use the large HDD only for storing data/temporary data while working on projects, no multiple partitions...

[Cat person]

IF you intend to use the large HDD only for storing data/temporary data while working on projects, no multiple partitions...

I agree, partitions are a nuisance if plenty of space is needed for multimedia or other large files.