does running programs on a seperate HD from OS help much?

I am going to be installing a new hard drive soon, this will make 2 in my machine. And I was wondering if installing all of my games and video/audio/visual intensive programs onto this seperate drive, will I notice a huge improvement in performance?

Are there any problems that might arise in doing this also? My OS (windows XP) will be installed on the 1st HD, then all my programs on the other. How is this going to work? thanks!

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Originally Posted by coolmandingo

I am going to be installing a new hard drive soon, this will make 2 in my machine. And I was wondering if installing all of my games and video/audio/visual intensive programs onto this seperate drive, will I notice a huge improvement in performance?

Are there any problems that might arise in doing this also? My OS (windows XP) will be installed on the 1st HD, then all my programs on the other. How is this going to work? thanks!

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Simply: NO! Why? You already have a Maxtor 80 gig drive which I am sure is 7200 RPM, right? The physical characteristics of the drives would be what matters, not the fact that the program is on a second drive. What you will benefit by is security. In other words: keep all your data on the new drive. If anything happens to the boot drive, your data and programs are safe.
Problems? NO again. It would be like installing programs on separate parititions, no different. It will still work, and the parts of the programs that need to be on the boot dirve C will still be there.