So heres the deal, I currently have a 120GB WD harddrive that is nearly full with games, personal stuff, movies, recordings, music, EVERYTHING. I don't feel organized and its seems to be just super slow booting up anything.

I have it partitioned, but I dont think I did it the most efficient way.

I will be going to school next year to become an Audio Engineer, so I want to get a NEW harddrive where on half I can store my personal stuff such as music and documents, and then on the other half my digital recordings.

I want to reinstall windows freshly also, so I can perhaps feel a little refreshed.

Also, I want the new harddrive to be under $100, preferably $70-90 range. I can go with 120GB, but I'd like 200GB.

I have a ASUS A7N8X (NON deluxe) so it only supports ATA100/133... I'm not familiar with SATA and raid configs, but I know for a fact SATAs are simply faster. I see all these different PCI cards, but I am not sure what they do, do they allow you to hook up a SATA harddrive > PCI CARD
Anywho, I was looking at the Barracudas and WD harddrives for under $100.

Another small thing, like I said, I want to partition all this stuff. Perhaps clear EVERYTHING off of my current 120GB, have one partition for windows, another for games, another for whatever applications. And then my NEW harddrive like I said, will be for personal stuff like music, documents, and my recording. In case you don't know how much recordings take up, one song may be anywhere from 50mb to 1gb depending on the quality, the amount of tracks there are and effects. So it is important I get a good fast harddrive.

LAST QUESTION! Is it possible for me to have that second harddrive have its own copy of windows? So when I am recording I have NO other applications running? All I want is my recording software to be there. I know this is alot of questions, but I hope a few people can answer these for me. THANKS!

Lets take your questions in order. as for sata, it does offer increased bandwidth, but todays hds dont begin to staturate (overburden) ata 133 bandwidth. your psu should be fine, no need to upgrade. for your 120gb, have the windows and driver partition be 5gb, the games about 60gb, and the apps the rest of the space. a hint about formatting. multiply 1024 by however many gbs you want o find the reall size of your partition.

for the second hard drive to have a copy of windows, you would need to install it on that drive as well, but when you wanted to run the windows on that drive, you would have to switch the boot order in the bios, which would require a reboot everytime. i recommend putting the recording stuff (all of it) onto the new drive, and creating two partitions, one for the program, and one for the recordings.

i recommend this hd for your budget and needs:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148072

it seems that ata hds have come down in price quite a bit since sata was introduced. if you spent 128, you could an extra 50 gb, but thats your decision.

hope this helps.

That is the excact HDD I was looking at today.

I dont think I would mind the reboot, if I'm going to be recording, I'm going to want to be focused purely on my recording and nothing else, so if I boot my PC intending to record, no biggy. I can have two harddrives with windows on both.

As for my current harddrive, I've always found this difficult. I know I can put in the windows CD and copy all of the "my documents" stuff, I can back up whatever folder I want. But I have so many random folders installed in program files/applications, I dont even know what to do.

I have games Ive installed on my computer that I dont often play, but theyre just there because they are. And applications also... I'm guessing for freeware programs I should just write down which ones I need so when I set everything up fresh I can just go download everything again (after updates and antivirus/firewall of course)

The thing is, no matter how hard I try, I'll end up downloading things, or apps will be installed on C: no matter what I do, some things dont give you a choice where you want to install, so that windows partition (C ends up being more than that. What I would like to have is a simple 😨 with nothing but 2 or perhaps 3 folders. "Games" and "applications." On my other harddrive will be "my documents"

Should I wait until I get my new harddrive and somehow back up all the data necessary to my new harddive, and then reformat my old one, reinstalling windows and all my applications? I doubt simply dragging and dropping folders will do me any good, if anything itll just confuse the computer on where files are located and that will probaby be worse. But yeah, Im guessing I should do that once I get my new harddrive. I just want to make sure I run this smoothly, and that everything goes well. I'm upgrading memory this christmas to 1.5GB, hoping to get some new games, hoping to get a little better, smoother performance as far as booting and loading goes. Next is my graphics card, but thats another topic.

wait until you get your new hardrive, as you can just transfer across partitions in windows.

alrite, fo sho. if i have any questions ill probably come back. i plan to get it within the next few weeks, i think...

sounds good, dont hesitate to ask.