SATA Hard Drive

If you move the pagefile you will notice a difference in the reaction time of windows. Depending on how much RAM you have you may or may not notice a change in other applications. Since you have 1 Gb of RAM you probably won't notice much of a difference unless you use some very powerful programs. I have 1 GB of RAM and the only time I ever need to use the pagefile is when I play Battlefield 2 or do video editing.

Windows loads files into the pagefile when there is not enough room in the RAM. The Pagefile is about ten times slower than RAM but it is much much cheaper to use a portion of your HDD than to add RAM. Even if you have enough RAM so that you don't use your pagefile, you will still see a SMALL difference as Windows will always use part of the pagefile to run its own processes.

To move your pagefile, right click on 'My Computer' and click 'Properties'. Now Click on the 'advanced' tab. Under performance click 'settings'. Now click on another 'advanced' tab. Now at the bottom under virtual memory click 'change'. There will now be a list of all your partitions. Select a partition on the drive you want to move the pagefile too. There will be a "Recomended" size for the page file towards the bottom of the window. Type that amount in both the initial and maximum columns. now click set. Now go back to the partition with your original Page file and select 'No paging file'. Now click 'Set' again. Click 'Ok' 'Apply' 'Ok' 'Apply' 'OK' and restart your computer.

Note: You may want to type the original amount into the initial and maximum boxes instead of the recomended. However, windows "Usually" does a very good job at recomending how large your pagefile should be.

Edit: I'm not exactly sure how much your recomended pagefile will be, but I too have 1 GB of RAM and the Recomended amount is 1531 Mb (just to give you an idea of how much your pagefile might be).

Oh, just a little more about how the pagefile works, becuase it helps to know what you are doing if you understand it. Here is the reason windows will be more responsive by moving the pagefile to the 2nd HDD.

A HDD has to use a needle to search for the information. Becuase it has mechanicle parts, the HDD is the slowest part of your computer. (The only thing slower is when you read information from your a CD.) The disk that has Windows located on it is constantly being spun up to retrieve information for the operationg system and other software programs. When something is needed from the pagefile, the needle in the hard drive has to jump back and forth looking for information. When a drive is only used for DATA, it doesn't have to spin up unless that data needs to be retrived. Becuase it doesn't spin up as often, windows can be more responsive with the page file set on the second HDD. This is becuase the HDD does not have to jump back and forth as much looking for information.

Hope that my little rampage helps you out. I always like to understand what I am doing before I start clicking buttons.

Cheers Brum

I have not had a chance to check if my old HD is 7200RPM and will have to get some software to check that.

I changed the Pagefile and made the old drive have no Pagefile as you suggested.

I think i will keep the windows that i have instead of formatting unless i get a problem.

The system is running better but only 1 problem that is easily solved which is my 2nd DVD writer is asking to burn disks at 2x instead of 16x (which is what the disks and the writer are) they ask up to 16x on my other writer but can easily buy a new one to replace it if it gives any more problem.

It is not a hassle at all as i burn on the other drive anyway.

It is running the best for now (Until i fiddle with it again and do something i shouldn't, lol)

Startrekker