Improving disk performance

[keith_leitch]

And how often does a drive actually crash?

A timely question. Not often enough, evidently, for me to buy a floppy drive and make an ASR backup. Does anyone know of a way that I can restore settings from a plain "Let me choose what to backup" style of backup? If it makes a difference, I made a separate backup of "My documents and settings".

I will reconsider RAID for when I reinstall properly, with jall my new hardware, later this week. Nothing like letting technology dictate our timelines for us.

[keith_leitch]

Well, I created a smaller-than-full partition on the temporary system drive, to help me take up some of pBS's advice. I then asked setup to format the partition. Setup liberally interpreted this instruction as, "please format the partition, then proceed with the setup without first allowing me to create another partition."

So, the question is: can I create a partition in the unused space without using Setup? I will start over if I must, but I'd prefer not to blow yet another hour.

Edit: I found DiskPart from the recovery console. Celebrated mildly. Windows then decided to reinstall from scratch anyway. Cursed mightily.

[Reddwarf]

I tried the ASR once..... it didn't work.:mad: BUT, there are lots of third-party SW out there which provids good backup-systems, like Nero drive backup. I just got me a 1.5TB drive with usb-adapter and copied all the important stuff to it using Partition Manager. So now I'm struggeling with the temptation to use it for data storage instead of backup :p

[keith_leitch]

I tried the ASR once..... it didn't work.:mad: BUT, there are lots of third-party SW out there which provids good backup-systems, like Nero drive backup. I just got me a 1.5TB drive with usb-adapter and copied all the important stuff to it using Partition Manager. So now I'm struggeling with the temptation to use it for data storage instead of backup :p

I will keep that in mind...but i'm kind of dealing with this today, if anyone knows how to tame Windows backups.

Also, all you people recommending RAID and AHCI: I have twice booted to the setup CD with my BIOS set to one or the other, and receive a BSOD as a result. I have twice booted with it set to IDE, and everything was fine. Any advice?

Also...partitioning...I have just run Setup again in the hopes of correcting this, but Windows has decided that my drive is just smaller. It is no longer giving me the option of partitioning, now that it has formatted the drive once.

Why do we use Windows again?

[keith_leitch]

BUT, there are lots of third-party SW out there which provids good backup-systems, like Nero drive backup.

Any of them free?

[Reddwarf]

Any of them free?

As with all good things, no, the really good stuff you have to pay for. But I'm sure there's som free as well, but I don't know them.

As for partitioning, are you talking about the system drive? If so, the easyest way out would be to delete the old windows partition and create a new one, say 15-20 Gb and install. Once you have windows running you can use Disk Manager to create another partition for the pagefile if you want.

BSOD? Did your motherboard come with a floppy containing RAID drivers? If so, you have to add these in the very beginning of the installation (when it says Press F2....).

[keith_leitch]

BSOD? Did your motherboard come with a floppy containing RAID drivers? If so, you have to add these in the very beginning of the installation (when it says Press F2....).

Oh, you must mean F6. That's what pBS was talking about. I wasn't looking before the BSOD, but I guess there was time for that to display. Yes, I do have a disk...I can't set up RAID properly today, but do you think I should start again to use the other? Would I still be able to read the drive I formatted under IDE?

[martint123]

Any of them free?

Depending on the make of drives of yours, there are free versions of Acronis bundled for some makes of drives (check manufacturers web sites).

I'm running plain old SATA drives in IDE mode with no problems with multi recording and playback, including HD. I have swap file turned off and it seems fine to me.

[Reddwarf]

Yep, I ment F6, my mistake.

To set up a striped raid array you need two drives of the same size, and preferably they should be identical, that gives the best performance. But no, you won't be able to use the existing drive and keep the content without backing it up first. So I think the best way out for now is to go on with the existing drive and try to get the best out of it, I guess you don't have a spare drive in the drawer :o.

And if your MB comes with disk-drivers use them instead of the windows default, native drivers almost always gives better performance then microsoft's. You can install them once windows is up and running.

[keith_leitch]

This is a frigging nightmare. And just when I had it all looking so schmik, and playing all those million file types. I can't help but wonder about the point of writing backup software that doesn't perform proper backups?

Without the patch disk I was preparing ready, I have got months of reinstallation and reprogramming ahead of me. Maybe I will try Johnnycam's "safety pin" approach, instead: http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...94&page=10