I remember you're on a PC, so tell me what other drives (hard, CD, DVD) are in your system and how many IDE channels there are on your motherboard (places to plug in ribbon cables - not counting the one for the floppy). Are you looking for tips on how to physically install it, how to set it up in Windows, or how to optimize its performance?

As of tonight, I have the following:

(1) 40-gig hard drive (for applications)
(1) 250-gig hard drive (for media)
(1) CD-ROM
(1) DVD-ROM

I have 3 IDE ports on my motherboard. Everything's installed, and I'm mostly just looking for ways to optimize my machine's performance. I'm told that things are supposed to run faster (now that I'm not having to partition drives), but my audio programs seem somewhat logy after the installation.

Well, of course make sure that the two hard drives are on separate IDE channels. After that, there are a couple of little things you can do:

Disable Disk Indexing Service: (right click Start > Explorer > right click each disk > Properties > uncheck 'allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching')

Disable disk I/O logging: (Start > Run > type 'diskperf -n' > Enter)

That's about it really. I'm not sure how your programs are running slower after adding a hard disk, or if that's even possible. Odd...

of course make sure that the two hard drives...

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It's probably not wise to leave anything as given with me--what's this about using separate IDE channels? Does that mean I can't daisy chain the 2 drives?

No, do not daisy chain the two hard drives. Putting them on different IDE chanels will allow simultaneous reading from both drives so that the flows of application data and media data are both unimpeded. If both drives are on the same channel, they are tripping over eachother, so to speak.

Ah... David, thanks for being so patient with me (yet again). I'll go fix this problem, and I'll just search this forum more thoroughly tomorrow for more ways to optimize my machine.

Patrick, read everything on [[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.musicxp…"]this site[/]="http://www.musicxp…"]this site[/]. Ask questins here if you don't understand any particular tips.