running old pc from cd or hd install. Which is faster?SOLVED

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Canadianpride
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running old pc from cd or hd install. Which is faster?SOLVED

#1 Post by Canadianpride »

Hi, I have an old pentium 1 166Mhz with 48 mgs of ram. What I'm wondering is. I have a 4 gig hardrive with a 200 mg swap partition. So I'm wondering would it be faster to run puppy of a cd with a frugal install, or would it be faster to do a total instal and use wakepup to boot it. I'm doing this with puppy barebones 2.01r2. Since all I want on this pc is a word proccesor abiword which I'll install and mabye a music playing program. Also for some strange reason the only way I can get puppy to boot from cd is if I use the ide** boot option I forget what the stars were. It says this option is for booting from some cf cards so I'm not sure why that is. Trying to boot it anyway else sends it into a kernel panic.
Thanks Matthew!
Last edited by Canadianpride on Sun 30 Jul 2006, 03:00, edited 1 time in total.

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sunburnt
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#2 Post by sunburnt »

Hard drives, DVDs, & USBs are always faster than CDs, only floppies are slower.
CDs are made with the 3 base Puppy files, on a HD this is a frugal install, it takes less space than the full.
For the simple word processor you want, I'd do a frugal on the HD, also you don't say if there's any other OS on the HD.

If the HD is a Linux format you can boot Puppy with Grub, Syslinux, or Lilo.
If the HD is fat32 you could boot Puppy with DOS, Linld.com, & the autoexec.bat file.

raffy
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Frugal install

#3 Post by raffy »

option is for booting from some cf cards
- Maybe your CD drive is attached to USB or PCMCIA?

As to install, using the frugal install enables you to keep the Win partition as-is. To use a full HD install (option 2), you'll have to make the partition a Linux.
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

Canadianpride
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#4 Post by Canadianpride »

There's no other operating system on the drive. It has a 3 gig fat32 partition a 1 gig fat32 partition and the swap partition. The cd drive is hooked up through an ide conection I put it in myself. So basicaly I'm willing to do what ever I have to do to the drive. I just want it to be as fast as possible with the old hardware it has.
Thanks!

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sunburnt
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#5 Post by sunburnt »

Canadianpride; Do you need instructions & files to boot Puppy from your fat32 drive?
If you know how to use Grub or Lilo they're good (Grub's best), I use DOS to dual boot Puppy & Win98.

If you wan't, I'll post the files that you need to make Puppy start automatically at boot with DOS.
It's simple & most old Win. users are familiar with DOS, so it's a good choice to get old PCs Linuxized.

Canadianpride
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#6 Post by Canadianpride »

Thanks for the offer. But I'm having no problem booting them off my fat32 partition using wakepup2.

thebear8me
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#7 Post by thebear8me »

sunburnt,

I have a similiar problem as I am trying to set an old laptop up to run only puppy from the HD no other OS. Cant get it to boot. Any and all help/directions would be greatly appreciated. I have another thread started in this forum under "getting puppy loaded on a presario 1235"

thanks for all the help.

i am new to linux so detailed instructions are appreciated. You mentioned partioning the drive. How exactly hould the partions be set up?

thanks

raffy
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Faster?

#8 Post by raffy »

Most users here endorse frugal install to make Puppy run fast on hard disk, and you're using it now. Cheers!

"Running fast", however, depends on whether you count from boot-up or after boot-up. That opinion above is perhaps after boot-up, as Puppy gets files from RAM rather than from hard disk.

Since you have another spare partition, you can convert it to Linux ext2 with cfdisk in console then after saving the change, try a full install* (not the frugal/coexist one), and check the speed differences. Your results will help answer the question you posed in this thread.

* You may have to use Grub and point to /dev/hdaX (the partition you used for full install). Don't forget to make that partition bootable (press B) while in cfdisk.

Edit: bear8, try this about partitions.
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

Canadianpride
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#9 Post by Canadianpride »

Alright. Thanks everyone for your help!

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Flash
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#10 Post by Flash »

Canadianpride, don't leave us hanging. If you're going to put "Solved" in the subject line, please tell us what worked for you. The forum is for learning as well as asking for help. :)

thebear8me
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#11 Post by thebear8me »

raffy:

thanks for the link but that seems to be a referencing an older version of puppy. they reference boot scripts that i cant find in version 2

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sunburnt
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#12 Post by sunburnt »

raffy; There's another post where they wanted to test the difference between full & frugal.
I posted a link to a series of tests done with various compressed file formats & squash won.
But the test also showed that the cpu load to decompress was far less than the HD latency.
So pulling a smaller compressed file from a slow drive is faster than an uncompressed one.
The file's are 2.5 times smaller compressed, so the read of the squash file is 2.5 times faster!

Also a full install can be done to a fat32 or vfat partition if it's inside a BIG ext2 image file (500 MB).
It'd be an interesting little trick to perform, but would take more modifing than most would want to do.


thebear8me; I'll have a look at your other post & see what I can do...

Canadianpride
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#13 Post by Canadianpride »

Flash wrote:Canadianpride, don't leave us hanging. If you're going to put "Solved" in the subject line, please tell us what worked for you. The forum is for learning as well as asking for help. :)
Sorry about that. For me on my old pc it seems to take about the same amount of time running from cd, frugal install and total install. So I opted for the total install. Free's up my cd drive all the time.
Thanks Matthew.

edit: On closer inspection running puppy from a total hardrive install seems slightly faster. I'm guessing with a fast pc the difference might be more noticable.

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