How can You improve performance of Windows XP with 2 HDDs (NOT RAID)

[wbcmwhoisthis]

Hi!

I would like to know if there are certain options, tweaks or maybe tools to boost the performance of a Winwos XP PC with 2 HDDs.

Of course there is RAID but thats not an option for me since the HDDs are different and besides, I dont want only half the size.

The PC:

Windows XP Pro

Asus A8N-SLI (Nforce4)

1 GB RAM

HDD1: SATA Samsung 250 GB (Performance ~70 MB/s)

HDD2: IDE Samsung 160 GB (Performance ~50 MB/s)

Currently Windows XP is installed on the SATA drive and 1.5 GB swap file is also on the SATA drive (on a dedicated partition).

So does anyone have suggestions? My first Idea was to put e.g. the swap file on the second drive, but of course its a bit slower. Or to make 2 swap files on each disk. But I would like to hear Your ideas!

[-pops-]

You don't give any information about your CPU.

You could increase the RAM to improve performance.

The problem is, though, that with the high speeds of modern machines, small improvements in performance that would be considered amazing a few years ago now get lost and become insignificant.

As a sometime computer builder, I have never found that upgrading or improving an existing machine gives the results that were hoped for. I would far rather start again on a new build than try and patch a current machine to try and make it go faster. Having said that, though, I built this machine in 2001 and I'm still very happy with its performance and I use it for video work but not games and suchlike.

You can improve performance quite a lot by regularly defragmenting the drives and keeping them free of rubbish. Also, removing redundant programs and other software will quite often speed things up for you.

[cozofdeath]

Doing what you have done sounds good. The best you can do with the swap file is to put it on its own dedicated partition on the fastest drive or on both drives. To have any real performance/safe gain I believe you would have to beef up the hardware. Tweaks and overclocking, don't seem to be for every machine and OS but if your really want to do it be safe and monitor things. Its to bad their not raid drives, because that would help. Defragmenting is a very importand process and will help with performance. Sysinternals has this neat app, PageDefrag, which can also defrag your registry, page file, hibernation file, and event logs. Windows defrag won't do that and it can drag down performance by not defragging them. Setting the drives for DMA if possible will help, this page has a registry tweak to boost hard drive performance by forcing the drive into UltraDMA-6. I would definitely recommend a registry cleaner. Disable any unneeded services or devices, its helped me alot. Manage your msconfig tool for startup files. There are so many little tweaks you would have to go to a good page with a bunch and just sort out the ones you want. Heres a good page for that, and this one will tell you what services you may shut off, there also backup info on there too.