Ken B.

jmmijo, I can't wait to get this hard disk setup properly. I just hooked up my three drives. 2 are fluid bearings and one is ball (an IBM 60GXP). I will be selling the IBM and getting another fluid unit tomorrow. Even with the ones I have, after hooking up all three, they were extremely quiet. The only one that stuck out sound-wise was the IBM ball bearing unit. Not loud, but louder than the fluid bearings. Man, those fluid bearings must be silky. I had to put my ear up to it to even tell if it was spinning. I'll keep you guys updated. Is there any benchmark utility I should use to mark out the difference between my current setup and the new one I'll do this weekend with the three drives?

jmmijo, I have a Abit KG-7 RAID with a 2400+ Athlon XP on it. It's running with 266Mhz FSB, and the board is capable of up to 3.5GB of RAM, but only registered type in the high an amount. I'm using ECC non-registered, now. I just bought an extra 256MB module for 512MB total, and a 120GB drive. I will probably just use three drives instead of doing the RAM thing, because I don't have any extra money to buy more RAM. I'll let you know how my system performs when it is finally finished upgrades.

Aw man, I'm sorry Alec, one more. How big do page files get usually? I remember there is the option of letting windows decide how to size-resize the page files, or force it to stay within certain parameters. I hate to use an 80GB drive for page files that might be only 1GB. I can put all page, temp, log etc files on this one disk, though, correct? I do have 3 disks available, I'm just wondering if my system will be able to handle it (heat and noise), and if it will be overkill. I guess I'll find out. I'm using FDB drives.

jmmijo, If I use X-setup like you say, what will happen to the ram that was being used by the programs? Also, my video files can be up 10GB files for a finished product (a 35 minute segment), my audio can be about 250MB files. Not sure how big individual clips are, probably less than a GB most of the time, per clip.

Alec, just 3 more questions and I think I will be done, if you don't mind. Is it a bad idea to put the page file and my large audio and video files on the same seperate disk? Or should I keep the audio/video files on their own disk? Big performance differences??? Also, What about duhmez' idea above, the ramdisk NT program that blocks off system memory so that the system won't know the blocked off memory is there? Finally, if I use a second disk for the page file, does it need to be comparable in spec to the main drive, or can it be an older slower disk, or even a notebook disk and still get good disk speed improvements? Thanks Alec, you are da best!!!

Alec, Do you have a list of exactly what files and services should be put onto a second drive, aside from the page file? I use Win2000 (SP4). I'm kinda new at this. ;( Oh, one other question, Alec: Do I have to have THREE harddrives for all this? One for OS and apps, one for page file etc, one for Video/Audio files?? It would kinda suck to have three hard drives going. It will increase my power consumption and noise from my system! ARGH!

That stinks. Just looked up that Ramdisk you mention and their smallest unit at 1GB is a freakin $1000. Too rich for my blood, but thanks for the detailed info Alec, it is appreciated. I guess I'll just stuff my page file on another hard drive. Better than nothing.

I've seen utilities that allow you to section off some of your RAM and turn it into a drive letter. This means it's volatile (erases when the computers turns off), but for a page file (swap file), would not this be a great idea??? Have your swap file, say 512MB, in super fast RAM??? I'm thinking of upping from 512MB to 1Gig and using half of it for a swap file. I'd hate to use another hard drive just for swap file. I do Video and audio work. Any drawbacks to this idea???