Upgrade computer, upgrade hard drive?

jrs6494

Baseband Member
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Okay so I am upgrading my pc with a new mobo and some more ram. Will have 10gigs of ram and running Windows 7.

My question is that I have two hard drives currently. One is my bootable 120gig hard drive. Slightly older. The other is a newer 1TB hard drive. Is it worth it to buy another hard drive and reinstall windows on it instead of the 120gig drive?

I will have to reinstall about 180gigs worth of games, some from disc and a bunch from steam and direct2drive. Plus many other software programs that I have.

Windows 7 tells me my lowest score is 4.9 because of my hard drive. The next highest is 6.9 which is for processor and Ram.

I appreciate any and all opinions, thanks.

Jonathan
 
Why 10 GB of RAM? Most games barely touch 4. I run 8 and I have a hard enough time filling that up. It also sounds like you're running mismatched sticks (i.e. because you have 10GB, most boards have 4 memory slots, so you're mixing DIMMs somehow)

The 120GB drive is likely holding you back. If you can swing it, buy an SSD that you can afford with 80GB+ of space to install the OS to, and just use the TB drive to install programs/games to. If you don't want/can't go the SSD route, then spring for at least a 500GB drive (Western Digital Black would get my vote) and use that to install the OS to, still using the TB drive for games, etc.
 
A friend suggested cloning my boot drive to a new one so that I don't lose my installs, does this work? Is it a good idea?
 
if you are happy with the current OS on the smaller drive you might want to think about using nortan ghost to clone your OS drive on to another hard-disk that you might buy. This will mean you dont need to re-install your OS
 
How many things are you talking about having to reinstall on top of the os? Also before cloning to be safe ensure you backup all important data becuase these programs are not prefect as great as they are and you wouldnt want to lose your data due to corruption.
 
I've had mixed luck with cloning. My job at a middle school worked great with Ghost 8 and BartPE, but lately, whenever I try to use it (or the latest versions) it doesn't seem to work - there's always some kind of corruption that occurs.

If I were in the OP's shoes here, I'd buy the new drive and install from scratch. Get everything working as I want it to for the "minimums" and then clone the system or do something with the built in backup (Windows 7, etc) to have the peace of mind.
 
Thanks everyone for the info. Honestly I have a lot more games installed right now that I am not using but leave them in case I want too. Right off the bat I would probably re-install maybe 4 games as opposed to the 16 to 24 that I have installed right now.

Okay so let me get opinions on this:
I have a 1TB drive but want another 1TB or 2TB for more storage. Do I buy a 2TB, partition it and install or clone windows on to it?

Or

Should I buy a smaller drive (200GB to 500GB) for Windows and also buy a 2TB drive for storage?

I know the lower you go in size the cache shrinks too. Would it make a huge difference with the smaller drive and lower cache for the OS?
Sorry about all the questions, I just want to do this the best way I can. Thanks.

Jonathan
 
So I bought the Western Digital Caviar black, 500gig hard drive. Should I partition it for the OS? Would it be okay to install games in this drive or my 1TB? If I shouldn't install games on the 500gig what else should I use it for so that it stays fast for the OS or would the difference be very small? Thanks for any input.

Jonathan
 
What I do is use my 320GB for the OS, games and programs, and i use my 1TB for storage like pics, music, videos and some drivers.
I find if I install games on a different drive that my OS is on, it gives my some trouble. I don't know why. It just does.
 
Hmmm. Well I was thinking about doing that and keeping the games on the 500GB hard drive. I have had all my games installed on the 1TB drive and had no problems at all. Wonder what is wrong.
 
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