Speeding up the Drive

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RWB

Thank God for Blue Monsters

7,356 Posts

7 Jul 2003, 8:11am

What is a good peice of software, easy to use that will speed my disk up a bit, in any form or way.

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MERRICK

DAW Tech

334 Posts

7 Jul 2003, 8:53am

I presume you're talking about read/write speed (not physical RPM)

We'd need a little more info on what you mean but I'd start by saying that there are several optimizations that are discussed all over this forum.

What is your PC configuration (O/S, RAM, #of drives/partitions etc.)?

And what do you want your computer to do (gaming, surfing Video etc.)?

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Bellsong Recording Studio

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RWB

Thank God for Blue Monsters

7,356 Posts

7 Jul 2003, 9:28am

I'll get as detailed as I think I can...

Windows 2000 Pro, Gaming Services Tweak Guide at blkviper.com, Indexing OFF on all partitions.

Only 1 Hard Drive, A Maxtor 40GB w/ Liquid Bearings of course 7200RPM

Partition 1- C:\ 5GB NTFS
SWAP=1024MB
Windows 2000 Pro installed w/ SP4 all updates
Extra: Program Files Folder moved to the D:\ to save space, along with ALL Temp. folders to the E:\ Thus limiting the Windows OS to never use more than 1GB on this particular Partition.

Partition 2-D:\ 20GB NTFS
SWAP=128MB
Program Files Folder located by defualt here, all programs and games are installed here.

Partition 3-E:\ 10GB NTFS
SWAP=64MB
TEMP Folders Located here by Default instead of with the OS.
Junk Files, and anything that I do not percieve as requiring any performance goes on this partition. Downloads, Media, etc...

The rest is whatI use in my feeble attempt to learn Linux.. so itis not important to specify.

I know there are programs out there that can help speed up your Drive, not PHYSICALLY, but like Caching and such. If anyone can tell me which program and whatI should do, thatw ould be awsome and exactly what I am looking for.

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TheLostSwede

Where's the ****ing beers?

3,212 Posts

7 Jul 2003, 9:57am

If your tempfiles is in use a lot, i would suggest having it on the same partition as the windowspartition since that partition is the most used. That makes the the harddrive move less to access the temps. The same rule is for the swapfile if you only have 1 drive.

There are many theories about where to put the swapfile for best performance but as long as we can tweak our system so it DONT use it to much, instead use the ram if available. With 2 drives, thats another thing. Then you would really benefit from having both the temp and swapfile on a separate drive.

How about clustersizes? Im thinking of that temppartition. Tempfiles are generally very small and theoretically would be faster, save storage and create less fragments if the clustersize is small, 4k or even less. For example, i move a lot of big files daily and that creates fragments that slows down the drives a lot and i have to defrag the drives every night to have the system on par. Get a good defragger that you can schedule defrags on a daily basis when you are in bed or at work. Thats best advice i can give.

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RWB

Thank God for Blue Monsters

7,356 Posts

7 Jul 2003, 6:13pm

All that is the reason I have it setup the way I do... the temp folder is only used for setup and other non performance related things, the SWAP file is when a game needs to cache away something becuase you don't have enough RAM or if a program stores information constantly.

Spanning the SWAP out like I did has increased my FPS in most of my games and even gave a several hundred point boost in 3D Mark. I knwo many claim spanning the SWAP over a few Partitions will slow youdown, the FACT of the manor is that Windows will use which ever SWAP it can access the fastest.

I have one of those Locked AGP/PCI dividers, I unlocked it and am able to set it to whatever the hell I want(gotta love intel and SIS for that). So I tried overclocking that to see if my HDD can go any faster, and I did see a SLIGHT increase, but not much.

all my cluster sizes are default, it doesn't make too much of a difference on my HDD for some reason. I believe having only one HDD instead of a RAID setup is the major factor, plus if you set the cluster sizes too low it will hurt the HDD in the long run.
Kinda like driving your vehicle with a Backup tire for a long time instead of replacing it, your drive train(I believe is it's name off the top of my head) will weardown faster.

I have reformatted and repartitioned HUNDREDS of times, I swear by this, I have done it over the course of a couple yars in search for the BEST partition method with my HDD, and this is it.

IS THERE not a Cache tweaking program out there?!

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MERRICK

DAW Tech

334 Posts

7 Jul 2003, 7:02pm

Have you tried Caheman?:
http://www.outertech.com/index.php?_...add536ac0cc85a

"You don't need to purchase expensive computer memory in order to speed up your PC - download Cacheman instead! The Cacheman utility is designed to improve the performance of your computer by optimizing the disk cache, memory and a number of other settings. Cacheman prevents frequent paging to the hard disk caused by poor memory management, so you get improved performance, faster system reaction time and greater stability. Wizards and predefined profiles make it suitable for novices and yet it is also powerful and versatile enough for the more experienced user. Cacheman also corrects generic problems on systems with more than 512MB of RAM.

What can I do with Cacheman?

Optimize your Disk Cache, Name and Path Cache, CD-Rom Cache, and Icon Cache to speed up your computer

Periodically recover memory

Tweak several system settings to improve performance

Watch and monitor several important system values within Cachman's graphical user interface, including the computer system Overview page, History Graph, Logging, and Tray Icon.

Create System configuration reports

What does Cacheman cost?

Cacheman's cost is dependent on the user:

1. Private/Educational user

The registration fee for Cacheman is $10. Since most users cannot afford $10, Cacheman has no disabled features and no time limit. If you really cannot afford the shareware fee you are allowed to use Cacheman as Freeware. All updates for registered users will be free even if we should be forced to change the license to Shareware only with the next major release"

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RWB

Thank God for Blue Monsters

7,356 Posts

7 Jul 2003, 7:19pm

Do I have to leave this program open in the background for it to work? Or can I just close it?

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MERRICK

DAW Tech

334 Posts

7 Jul 2003, 7:42pm

Do I have to leave this program open in the background for it to work? Or can I just close it?

You have option to do both. I have it running in background but I've also used it as a set once and close thing. Cacheman will make a Backup of your whole system settings first time you run it. The wizards are very explanitory and there is actually a useful Cacheman forum at their site which I've used. BTW now that I think of it I use cacheman for FAT32 I can't comment on NTFS compatability but I think it's okay.

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Speeding up the Drive

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