Upgrading to SATA150

[Skirmish]

I had heard that I could gain load performance for games like BF2 and the like by getting a new SATA150 drive and installing the game onto that drive.

My question is do I have to have both Windows AND the game installed on that drive to realize the performance/load time improvement, or can I just install the SATA150 drive as like drive F: and keep Windows on C: drive? (Western digital 7200 RPM IDE100) Do these games load into memory or the pagefile?

Currently, I have it set up as F: drive, with windows on C: and the pagefile set to another partition on the SATA drive (no pagefile on C, and I don't see a difference in the load time for BF2. (20-30 seconds when joining a server) This is why I ask if both Windows and the game need to be on the same drive to realize a faster load time.

Here's my rig:
ABIT NF7-S Mobo
AMD barton 2500 (OC'd to 3200 - 2.21ghz)
1.5GB dual channel Corsair Memory
ATI x800 video (overclocked to 490 core, 530 memory)
Audigy 2ZS sound
Western Digital IDE100 80gb
Western Digital Caviar SE SATA150

BF2 runs beautiful on the highest settings, but I was looking to cut down the load time.... Maybe I need to go RAID 0 with a set of SATA150 drives?

Thanks for any guidance.....

[64705]

Tbh, I have doubts whether it will speed your loading times up that fast, its not a huge step up. I havent gotten any noticable speed up in loading personally (going from a 40gb IDE to a Seagate 80gb SATA Baracuda).

If I were you I'd reformat, install the SATA drivers and then install WinXp on your new SATA HD. I'd reccommend keeping your IDE HD as just a backup / storage drive.

[mendel]

a serial hd (what you do with raid 0) will always be faster than 1 regular hd
the data can be transferred twice as fast (theoretical)
so possibly it will reduce your loading-time

and for second
i think it's the best if you buy 2 hard-drives (or 3 when you use raid )
1 for windows
2 for other stuff (gaming etc)

[Skirmish]

Thanks guys..... I appreciate the feedback....... and yeah.. I did some benchmarking here and the SATA150 didn't score a whole lot higher than my IDE100. Perhaps taking 2 SATAs and raiding them would result in a bigger jump.... I'd love to do 3 SATAs and RAID them with checking and all, but I guess I'm not that obessive about it... hahhahha....

But I appreciate the help....