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Question Of The Week

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A reader asked:

I notice on your website that you said I need two hard drives to make everything run better. My question is this: are there any particular hard drive configuration ie, name brand that I should use, and or does it matter if I put in different brands, speed, etc. I now have a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB Hard Drive – 7200, 16MB, Serial ATA-300.

My answer:

It depends on what your goals are. I like to completely isolate my operating system so when possible it/they are on its own drive. Of course this leads to massive amounts of wasted space on the drive but increases performance ever so slightly and makes image backups easier. The OS should absolutely be on the fastest drive (you’ve got a pretty good drive there). Mixing brands doesn’t matter though Geeks will fight over brands based on past experiences. The only advice I would give is stick with the major brands.
Check here for a hard drive leader board:
http://www.storagereview.com/leaderboard.sr
And watch Newegg and here for the best deals:
http://www.techbargains.com/index.cfm

So what do you think? Got a tip or opinion on this?

Catalyst 7.10 Are Out

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[H]ardOCP broke the news!

AMD / ATi let us know that the new Catalyst 7.10 drivers are out now for Windows Vista and Windows XP. Linux drivers are coming soon. Aside from a host of performance improvements in BioShock, World In Conflict, Lost Planet, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and others, the new drivers also include a few new features:

Speaking of [H], they’ve got a review up of the motherboard you don’t want to buy.

Cool Tool Of The Week: SyncToy

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SyncToy 1.4 for Windows Vista is available as a free download from the Microsoft Download Center. The easy to use, customizable application helps you copy, move, rename, and delete files between folders and computers.

This is a FREE program from Microsoft. I use this program religiously and highly recommend it.
Works on XP & Vista.
Download & Info
See also: Synchronizing Images and Files in Windows XP Using Microsoft SyncToy

Half Life 2: Episode 2 Quick Performance Preview

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While Episode 2 may not push the boundaries of graphics by offering DirectX 10 graphical effects, it none the less offers spectacular DirectX 9 graphics with a few tricks up its sleeves, including the ability to offload particle effects to the GPU and of course massively fun gameplay…we’d like to share with you our first performance experiences with the game with a quick apples-to-apples performance comparison.

Gamers, you’ll want to hit up The [H] to see the screenshots.

Hacking openSUSE 10.3

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Novell’s openSUSE 10.3 is an exciting desktop operating environment that includes or supports nearly every program you need for work and play. But there are those last few programs and issues that make openSUSE just short of perfect. Web browser plugins for some kinds of online content; Windows Media and DVD movie playback support; and drivers for Atheros wireless devices and Nvidia and ATI video cards are the chief things holding openSUSE back for some users. This guide will help you remove as many of those barriers as possible.

Hacking openSUSE 10.3 at Software in Review