I have a bit of dilemma. After about 9 months of usage, the drives on my computer are not running as well as they once were. This pc - which is my main one - now take longer to boot into XP then my 2nd pc, and considering that this one has 2x 60gb 7200rpm Maxtors in RAID0 - and the 2nd pc has 1x 60gb 5400rpm Maxtor - that ain't right! The WinXP defragmenter reports that it is 22% fragmented - but I'm not sure how much of an impact that would make on performance. So the question is, do I: A: Defrag it and hope that speeds things up again. B: Backup everything, format the whole thing, and start from a clean install. Your thoughts please
Why not just let it defrag over night and see if it makes a difference the next time you boot up? It couldn't possibly hurt you! If she still runs slow, then maybe reformat?.. my 2 cents.
just a lil Tip if ur gonna be reformating all the time, what I did was do a fresh install, install all my drivers fav programs etc and then made an Image. So now when i wanna reformat i just replace my drive with the image i made
good idea reversal. I plan to do this SOON after Xmas. I'm going to get a WD SE 80GB drive and save a perfectly clean image of a fresh 2K install. I keep all the latest drivers, game patches, and save games on CDs anyway so it'll be nice. sco0by, I would definitely try to do a disk cleanup in windows, scandisk, and defrag before I even thought about doing a reformat. I scandisk and defrag my drive at least once every 2 weeks and it keeps it up to speed pretty good. (KNOCK ON WOOD) Good luck!!!
yeah surely u do Disk Cleanup & Defrag once in a while? I do and it keeps mine running smoothly, it really does make a difference!!
Nice idea ReversaL! - Do you know how large a working XP image roughly is? I wonder if I could fit it on 1 dvd-r? I think I'm just going to reformat. I like the bare image idea, and I have everything of importance backed up to my 2nd HD. Plus a defrag takes sooooo long!
With a RAID0 array, how does it arrange the data when you defrag it? Is it still okay to defragment the array as you would with a normal hard disk?
Do what I do! Set your drives up so that you don't have to re-do everything to clean up windows. Using tweakUI and xSetup to do this has saved me TONS of time, and really speeds up my system by not worrying about fragmenting the Windows drive. I have my drives in my system set-up like this: C: System -4gig's Contains Windows, and ONLY windows D: Programs -20gig's Replaced the Program Files directory. Contains programs and ONLY programs. If a program tries to install to c:\program files it will automaticaly install on this partition. E: Media -20Gig's (Soon to be 40gig) Replaced the My Documents folder. If a program tries to write to c:\my documents it automaticaly writes to this partition G: Games -20gigs Why nothing but Games in here F: Graphics -10gigs Graphic editing programs and files. DIVX, Photoshop, 3D Graphics, DVD Ripping. I: Settings -5gigs Contains windows registry, start menu, favorites, Internet Cache Files, Temp, and Drivers. The settings drive is the gold here, by keeping all the files to run windows apart from all the custom settings speeds up your system. Plus to wipe out windows and re-install with new drives, etc.. All I have to do it wipe out the C: re-install fresh and restore the custom settings. No fragmentation of the windows drive, and retain all your program and custom settings. I will write a guide on how to do this next time I restore my system.
I look forward to that, and I'm after a new HDD, so hurry up! Having several partitions is a big help in defragging and virus checking. I haven't gone as far as ZapWizard, but I've a partition for Windows and MyDocs that fragments a lot, a partition for programs I change fairly often (shareware utilities), one for the main suites (Office, CorelDraw, etc) that hardly ever changes, and another for cd copies to speed re-installing and virtual drives for a few games. If booting is slow, also check what's being installed (MSConfig or similar) and dump what's not necessary.
hmmm ill have to check in on partitioning my wd 120se so zapwizard... is that all one drive or seperate drives. I was considering getting a 10 gig or so drive to install XP on my new system, just to keep windows stuff from slowing done the other HDD activity
Alright your MEGA GUIDE is up! http://www.zapwizard.com/Partitioning/ Darn bit-tech users keeping me up to 2:45am typing up guides.
Hay ZapWizard, just out of curiousity what program do you use to create images of you hard-drive? As I've had to the reinstall thing too many times and really should start doing something like that.. Cheers
