Author Topic: Solo hard drive (Read 364 times)

TBolt A-10 · « **on:** December 04, 2004, 10:06:26 AM »

need your input...

does anyone use a slave drive exclusively as an AH2 drive?

i have access to a 12gig hard drive (not brand new, but in good condition). was wondering, if i formatted it & used it ONLY for AH2, would my performance in-game improve (ie: fewer screen freezes, etc, etc)?

i believe that the few screen freezes that i have are due to low RAM (256mb), but i figured i'd ask, anyway. might be worth the trouble of installing the drive.

thanks!

Blooz · « **Reply #1 on:** December 04, 2004, 10:46:44 AM »

A separate hard drive won't have any effect.

RAM isn't that expensive and it is an easy upgrade to get better performance. You just have to make sure it's the same type as the RAM you already have.

TBolt A-10 · « **Reply #2 on:** December 04, 2004, 10:55:28 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Blooz
A separate hard drive won't have any effect.

RAM isn't that expensive and it is an easy upgrade to get better performance. You just have to make sure it's the same type as the RAM you already have.

Yes, but RAMBUS will cost me 2 car payments.

Thanks for the input about the hard drive. U saved me some time.

Blooz · « **Reply #3 on:** December 04, 2004, 07:23:37 PM »

oops. Yup, Rambus is the exception. Rather finicky too what with the blanks that need to be in any extra RAM slots.

Bummer.

Perhaps a better vid card (more vid RAM there) or CPU?

Sundowner · « **Reply #4 on:** December 05, 2004, 06:08:25 AM »

If AH is on dedicated drive, (this includes page file located at the front of another drive) your disk head seek times to AH.exe should be faster due to AH always located at the front of the drive.This should lead to a bit faster AH load times than a drive with both AH and OS.

Also, with only AH being accesed, the dedicated AH drive should fragment at a much slower rate than a drive with both AH and OS. Drive seek times should remain at optimum longer.

beet1e · « **Reply #5 on:** December 05, 2004, 07:06:50 AM »

T-Bolt - check your power management settings. Make sure your hard drive is not being shut down while you're playing. I had that, and the game (not this game) was freezing when it needed HDD access because of the disk start up time.

TBolt A-10 · « **Reply #6 on:** December 05, 2004, 07:49:26 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Sundowner
If AH is on dedicated drive, (this includes page file located at the front of another drive) your disk head seek times to AH.exe should be faster due to AH always located at the front of the drive.This should lead to a bit faster AH load times than a drive with both AH and OS.

Also, with only AH being accesed, the dedicated AH drive should fragment at a much slower rate than a drive with both AH and OS. Drive seek times should remain at optimum longer.

This is what I was shooting for...thought that might improve some of my gameplay. I may give it a try next weekend. Thnx, Sundowner!

Beetle,
The only thing on my system that will "shut off" is my monitor. Thnx for the tip!

Widewing · « **Reply #7 on:** December 05, 2004, 11:16:47 AM »

We have three desktop computers and a room full of other (mostly photo related) hardware.

The machine I use for entertainment has two drives, an 80 gig and a 40 gig. AH2 is on the 40 gig slave drive. This machine has a P4, 3.0 gig CPU, P4P800 ASUS MB, 1 gig of ram, ATI XT9600 video and SB Live sound. AH2 is the only game on the slave drive. This allows me to store an awful lot of films, all organized in folders by date and tour, and not clutter up master drive. I also back up critical files to the slave as well. The only time I have been out of service for more than 5 minutes was when a motherboard bellied up. Every machine I own has at least two drives (one has three). Large capacity drives are dirt cheap and provide for the redundency I like to maintain.

My regards,

Widewing

FT_Animal · « **Reply #8 on:** December 05, 2004, 01:33:02 PM »

I'd have to agree with this. With exception to the *speed* of the HD. If it's slower drive then the current the trade off could be equal.

This could also increase performance a little by putting the virtual memory (swap file) on it's own drive, next to the main drive if using partitions.

I used to use a separate drive for AW and my swap file.

In fact, I put any expanding folders or files on separate drives to limit how much C: becomes fragmented.

I have partisions on a 40GB HD.

I use C: (2GB) for OS, tweaking proggies, and any drivers.

D: (1GB) to store all Temp folders, Temp Internet File, Swap file.

E: (4.5GB) for all my programs, only.

F: (4GB) for all my games.

G: (6GB) for develepment projects and Software install exes.

H: (8GB) for music

I: (5GB) for processing music and video files

etc....

Quote

Originally posted by Sundowner
If AH is on dedicated drive, (this includes page file located at the front of another drive) your disk head seek times to AH.exe should be faster due to AH always located at the front of the drive.This should lead to a bit faster AH load times than a drive with both AH and OS.

Also, with only AH being accesed, the dedicated AH drive should fragment at a much slower rate than a drive with both AH and OS. Drive seek times should remain at optimum longer.

Quote

Originally posted by Sundowner
If AH is on dedicated drive, (this includes page file located at the front of another drive) your disk head seek times to AH.exe should be faster due to AH always located at the front of the drive.This should lead to a bit faster AH load times than a drive with both AH and OS.

Also, with only AH being accesed, the dedicated AH drive should fragment at a much slower rate than a drive with both AH and OS. Drive seek times should remain at optimum longer.