Just added a new Maxtor 250g to this puter! You guys only can image what I use it for!

Already have 2 160g Western Digital, and one 100 Western Digital already on this puter!

All drives are 8mb cache except for the 100.

None are partitionned except for one of the 160 which is divided 1/3 partitioned for the c: drive and other 2/3's is another!


Any tips on managing. I do need 1 drive that is extremely large to store lots of data!

Format the drive for 16 kb cluster size instead of the default 8kb. You will get a nice performance boost. If you use partition magic, it will make the change without having to remove the data on the drive. When i move 1.6 gig of data from one drive to another, it used to take about 5 mins. Since the change, it's about 2 mins.

Isn't that gonna increase the amount of unusable space? I think that Slack is the right word for it...

I really depends on the size of the files ... This would benefit larger files.

Dozens of large files (50Meg and larger) will benefit from a 16kb cluster. Hundreds or thousands of smaller files would benifit from a 8kb cluster. So let's say you use the one large drive to archive video files as a scratch disk - you're better using the 16kb cluster size. But if your talking about a mp3 server (where files are around 5meg each), use the 8kb cluster size.