hey everyone, I'd appreciate it if someone could help me out with this question. I've tried searching quite a bit, but it's hard to find what I'm looking for since I may not be using the right terminology in my searches...

I'm running a new computer built for me by a friend of mine with all new components. And a legal copy of vista home premium. I'm starting to fill up the hard drive with music, pictures, programs etc, and I want to buy a new internal hard as the computer is slowing down in it's response.

My question is, is there any specific way to move ONLY vista to the new drive? Or move ONLY and ALL files other then vista to the new drive?

My goal is maximum possible separation between the operating system and all other files not needed for the operating system between the two drives...

Thanks for all your help!!

-David

Hello Traverserdave, welcome to PCHF.

hmmmm, no not really.

If you wanted to copy the entire contents, Vista, software and files from one drive to another, you can use a imaging software such as Acronis.

If you wanted to seperate the software, then your best bet would be to uninstall that software, and then re-install it on your new drive. With most software, it's not just the files you need to move, but the shortcuts and registry links that point to that particular location. Microsoft Office for example contains hundreds of registry links to that location which would be extreeeemly time consuming to change every single one, and potentially dangerous.

If you wanted to just move your files (documents, music, video's etc), then it's just a simple matter of right clicking on those files, click on Cut and then Paste them to your new drive.

__________________

Links: myFavoritesHomepage, Submit your URL to cyberJuice USA / UK online shopping links and blogs

Thanks for the advice mad monkey. I'll probably just do the latter, and move all my media and other large files over to the new drive.. I'm assuming that having the os on one drive and the media files on the other will speed up the computers response..

ek, is the second hard drive faster?

In terms of performance, by seperating your files, don't expect to see any noticeable increases. Saying that, every little helps but I'm sure that there are other area's of your PC that would help increase performance other than your HDD's.

The best thing you can do performance wise with two hard drives is to seperate your pagefile. You can do this quite easily:
- Go to My Computer, Control Panel followed by System.
- Click on the Advanced tab, followed by Settings under "Performance".
- Under the Advanced tab, click Change at the bottom.
- Select your new hard drive from the list and give it a page file, System manged size (or set your own), followed by Set.
- Click back on your own hard drive and click on No paging file, followed by Set.
- Finally restart your PC.

__________________

Links: myFavoritesHomepage, Submit your URL to cyberJuice USA / UK online shopping links and blogs

Say you have the OS on one HDD and games on another HDD. Assuming you want to have good performance from say a very new new game and your OS speed is satisfactory, would it still be best to have the pagefile on the game HDD?

I would say so yes, but your going to have little or no performance increase from installing a game on a seperate HDD.

__________________

Links: myFavoritesHomepage, Submit your URL to cyberJuice USA / UK online shopping links and blogs