Primary HDD Question

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Needles-Kane

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Hello, sorry PC newb question here.

Working on transitioning to PC gaming (thanks to Amazon's crazy sales) and finally got my last quality piece today, a new HDD. Currently, I have a really old 75GB 7200 RPM HDD that I have W7 installed and got a 5.4 Windows Index score and a 120GB I used for most games- lol I know.

My new HDD is a WD 1TB Caviar Black 7200 rpm. Should I;

1. Leave my OS on the crappy 75gb, get rid of all programs on it, and put in the new one as a secondary and put all my games etc on? Note, I do not care how long it takes to load up Windows.

2. Put the new one in as primary with OS and all games installed on it? Would not look forward to the reinstall since I have to install XP first but would do it.

Thank you very much to anyone that assists!
 
Install on your 1TB hard drive, partition it into more than 1 partition, the primary for your OS and the 2nd for apps and games.

I'd say get rid of your old hard drives, they are all probably EIDE....those are slow and loud.
 
I propose another option. Get rid of all your hard drives. Get a cheap SATA 80-250GB HDD for you OS and all core programs (Office, etc.) and get a 2+TB HDD for all of your games and game clients. The only reason I say this is because I rebuilt my rig in November with a 160GB primary HDD (it was a leftover) and 1TB secondary HDD for my games. I started purchasing PC games back in October figuring 1TB should be plenty. By the end of December I had 363GB free on that 1TB secondary drive (with about 60GB of games yet to be installed). I have already swapped the 1TB for a 2TB HDD and can see filling that up as well, but that will likely coincide with a full rebuild anyway.

TL;DR If you're starting fresh, might as well start with 2+TB over 1TB.
 
Thanks for the input guys/gals!

What is the benefit of partitioning the drive? Is that for like formatting so you don't have to screw with the OS partion? How much would you suggest for the OS partition that has Windows 7 64 bit upgraded from XP?

I think I'll start with the 1TB as primary since I don't think I'll be needing more for a while- maybe I'll learn the hard way it is not enough :) When I do, I'll just throw 2TB in or something. I've been quite disciplined with my storage space with having less than 200gb currently. I'm kind of stuck with the 1TB too (I used that $50 off Best Buy coupon with it).

Maybe I'll put my old drives in as secondaries to back up my massive quantity of vacation pictures- took 3500 in Italy last spring! They are kind of noisy like you mentioned though.

Thanks again everyone!
 
Repartitioning can help if you mess something up or make it easier for dual booting in the future. Not a huge deal really.

I'm shocked no one has suggested a SSD for booting. Honestly though, unless you are rebooting a number of times a day I do not think this is worth the extra $$.
 
Also remember, don't put too much on the WEI score. It isn't a good measure of HDD performance at all plus you will never get anything higher than 5.9 with a mechanical HDD.
 
Since you just purchased the 1 TB drive, I was not going to suggest a SSD drive for boot but it does help tremendously. But if you are like me, I put my PC to sleep more than reboot, so an SSD isn't all that worth - but I do some heavy lifting VMware Virtual machines on my system so an SSD was essential for those.

The re-partition allows you to re-load your OS without having to wipe out all your games and apps on your other partition. And easier to backup.

On a side note - Usually a 1 year reload of an OS is wise, especially if a service pack comes out. You get rid of a lot of the patches and free up a ton of space that way. And the Service pack doesn't need to be installed and waste valuable hard drive space for the uninstall.

Windows 7 x64 is probably the best OS right now for gaming. Don't bother with windows 8, it give really no advantages if your primary goal for the system is for gaming.

Good luck.
 
Thanks everyone, just want to clear up some things before I take the dive tomorrow night (backed up all my saves tonight).

It looks like the general idea is it is good to partition. I've been trying to do some research on Google but am a little leary since some of the articles are pretty old (maybe I'm not searching right). But it looks like you can create a partion AFTER doing a normal, clean OS install- is this correct? Not 100% of my plan but for now I'm just planning 1 partion for OS and rest for games but am debating for a third for pictures. Just want to make sure I don't get stuck right away with my decision.

If I create a partion just for Windows 7, it will ask how much space I want to give it? If so, how much? Do I need to give it space to grow? It will be installed after installing XP since it is an upgrade code (found that out the hard way haha). After creating the partition for W7, will the 2nd paritition require a given space or is there an option to just give it "the rest."

Again, thank you everyone for your input! Coming from consoles, I'm hesitant to experiment even though that can be the best way to learn. I just want to make my first PC experience smooth since it may help me switch over to PC permanently and build another PC for my wife :)
 
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