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General discussion

Added new harddrive, performance seems slow

Dec 27, 2010 8:01AM PST

I originally had a Western Digital Hard drive specs are:

750 GB
7200 RPM
16MB Cache


The drive I purchased to install with it was a Western Digital Caviar Black specs are:

640 GB
7200RPM
64MB Cache

My problem is that once I received the new drive I wiped my computer and proceeded to install both drives everything installed fine. I used the newer drive that has better specs for the C: drive partition and the old drive that is a little bigger as a D drive. I'm only going to have the two partitions and I was going to use the D for just installing games, for instance my steam games which I have a lot of.

Everything installed great. Didn't really have a problem. Seemed like the new drive was a little slow at some points but still worked out. After I installed everything I've noticed that when I go to access or just load up steam or navigate on it I get the loading cursor for a few seconds, I'm not an impatient person but I mean it brings this up every few seconds for the simplest things.. like clicking on a particular game to view the page or initializing a game to install.

I was told that this could be that the old drive that I'm putting just my games on (D drive) doesn't have a paging file for it and that if it did this might clear it up but then I read somewhere that putting a paging file on a drive you will only see if a difference if the drive you put it on is faster than the other.

I'm kind of confused about the whole thing can you put a paging file on two drives? Or can it just go on one? I just don't really have any knowledge on this topic at all and was wondering if someone could up my understanding of this, and also if this would even make a difference and if so how do I do it? Thank you very much for any help.

Discussion is locked

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Forget the paging file.
Dec 27, 2010 8:04AM PST

That's not it. Never has been.

What OS is this? XP for example has issues with the new 4K sectors.
Bob

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Vista
Dec 27, 2010 10:32AM PST

I'm running on Vista home basic 64bit

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The new 4K sector can really slow down systems.
Dec 27, 2010 10:45AM PST

But the missing details don't help here.

I can't find the make, model of the system or HDD. If you want to speed up discussions, don't spare the details.

And PLEASE READ http://forums.cnet.com/7723-6122_102-510824.html?tag=threadListing;forum-threads

The member started off with asking for overclocking but with a little digging we found the cause for the slow machine. And no amount of overclocking would have helped!
Bob

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comp specs and HDDs
Dec 27, 2010 3:50PM PST

Sorry for not listing in the first place, wasn't sure what kind of a response I would get if any. Probably should of listed regardless. My apologies.

My comp is a custom build I'll give you the HDDs first.

Western Digital Caviar Black WD6402AAEX 640GB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - This is the new one I just recently purchased. Here's a link to it on newegg. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136544

Western Digital RE2 WD7500AYYS 750GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive -Bare Drive - This is the old one I've had about 3 years. The link from new doesn't work since it's deactivated.

Here is the rest of my comp build.

Vista Home Basic 64bit for system builders OEM

ASUS P5E LGA 775 Intel X38 ATX Intel Motherboard

XFX HD-687A-ZNFC Radeon HD 6870 1GB

CORSAIR HX Series CMPSU-620HX 620W

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1000 (PC2 8000) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-8000CL5D-4GBPQ ( I have 8gig of this running)

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core

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Just ideas.
Dec 28, 2010 1:01PM PST