western digital elements port ehdrive, OPTIONS

Vista 32 bit Home basic, bios;

2 TOPIC QUESTION

Performance Options ?? what is the recommended best choice for PC

Visual effects settings for appearance/performance of windows?
1. let windows choose whats best
2. adjust for best appearance
3. adjust for best performance
or 4. custom

processor scheduling/ how to allocate processor resources of:
1.programs
2. or background services?

virtual memory
A PAGING FILE AREA ON HARD DISL THAT WINDOWS uses as if it were RAM?
1. what paging file size for all drives:
-what is recommended size?____________???

DEP protection/data execution prevention, *what is recommended setting?
1. turn on DEP for essential Windows programs and services only ?
(or)
2. turn on DEP for all programs and services except those i select?
(my computer's processor supports hardware-based DEP)

Portable External Hard Drive ????

Western digital elements 1.5TB desktop version portable external hard drive. intended use; - additional memory/storage space for laptop/PC's,
- complete system, drives files, documents, etc. & family computer storage, portable memory/storage also

Problem is that before initial data transfer was done, by 3rd party a seperate PC's files were transfered to the ext. hard drive.

No partitioning, formating, or allocation for additional storage memory was done -external hard drive now has 2 PC's data & all contents of external HD are in "folders", system shows as "hard drive",

Manufacturer instructions state once data is on drive, do not format !!!!!!DATA WILL BE GONE!!!

1. (What is the difference between 'formating' and making the drive more manageable?

2. can allocating space for portable storage/memory" be done at this point or what do i have to do without loosing my 2 computer's contents?

3.everything on the External hard drive is on 1 partition/disk-
backups are instructed to be in seperate locations from OS, how can this be done now?

4. How can external hard drive properties be managed to suit my needs without loosing everything already transfered.?
Can I do anything now with this 1.5TB ?????

thank you!
please step by step direct guidance. i sure appreciate it

as for managing the partitions on the hard drives without reformatting, i suggest a program called Parted Magic (open source software) which runs at the dos level from cd-rom. i have used this program successfully to manage drives, partitions of all file system types (including ntfs and ext4). the most useful feature of the program in my opinion has been the ability to resize and/or move partitions without losing data while preserving functional structures.

the following text comes directly Parted Magic's website:

• Format internal and external hard drives.
• Move, copy, create, delete, expand & shrink hard drive partitions.
• Clone your hard drive, to create a full backup.
• Test hard drives for impending failure.
• Test memory for bad sectors.
• Benchmark your computer for a performance rating.
• Securely erase your entire hard drive, wiping it clean from all data.
• Gives access to non-booting systems allowing you to rescue important data.
• Runs from the CD, no install required.

for info and download, go here: News

hope this helps and good luck

Hi pugmama05,

In your BIOS, given that you are asking the questions suggests you do not have a lot of experience with such things, so I'll try to answer as seems best for you.

1. Visual effect: Let Windows choose what is best (when you gain more experience and knowledge, you may want to select Custom as that allows more control - but also allows you you mess things up as well).

2. Processor Schedule: Programs. That way what you are doing will get more attention and priority over what is occurring in the background and what you are doing will therefore be faster. Background is typically more useful for servers than personal computers as in that case you want the clients to have priority.

3. Paging File: It should be 1.5 times the amount of RAM you are using (I say it that way in case you have more installed than your system can use). While you could go a little bit higher, it won't really help all that much. If you have multiple drives, some people prefer to store the Paging file on a different drive than the system drive to spread the load - and there's some logic in that but it doesn't make a great deal of difference. I keep my paging file on my system drive myself. You only need one paging file if you are using only one operating system (one per installed OS).

4. I have DEP set for essential Windows programs and services. If you encounter DEP-related problems with your programs, you should then change this to all programs and services except those I select and then exclude the programs where DEP is giving you troubles (though doing this may cause a few that were fine before to need to be added to the exception list).

5, External HDD. Formatting wipes the drive clean of everything. Making a drive more manageable usually means, as seems to be the case here, partitioning it into sections to separate the parts you want to save but will rarely use from sections that you can use on daily basis without worrying about affecting the other data or even really having to deal with that data.

I recommend the free Easeus Partition Manager: EASEUS FREE Partition Manager Software: Free Partition Magic alternative for Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 and Server 2000/2003/2008 Hard Drive partitions.. Not being DOS-based, it is quite a bit easier to use (though it is mostly for partitioning - which is what you need here - and doesn't have all the supplemental features listed above for Parted Magic - many of which are available with other freeware 3rd party programs or a free Neosmart Recovery Disk or a genuine Vista Installation Disk if you have one should they ever be required.

Partition the drive in such a way that each computer's contents is in a separate partition (create the partition of the proper size, move the data of one computer into that partition, create another partition of the proper size, move the data of the other computer into that partition, and create a partition with the remaining space for whatever needs you may have such as backup or external storage or whatever).

I hope this helps.

Good luck!