I am getting a new computer today and it will have XP pro on it. Up until now I have been using win98. Anyway, I have 2 questions. I have read that you shouldn’t log on as administrator if you don’t have to, but sometimes you need to in order to install some programs. I have also read that you can automate the login process so that you do not have to sign in every time you restart. So my first question is, if you enable automatic login to a user profile, is there a way to log off and then log on as administrator? I don’t want to lock my self out from administrator access with the auto login function!
My second question relates to partitioning. I think I may want to partition the 2 hard drives, as they are huge. When assigning letters to partitions, are earlier letters physically accessed faster than later letters or is it the opposite? The reason I ask is because I am going to be doing multitrack recording and faster access time is better in that situation. Also I would want my programs partition to access faster than my data partitions. Thanks if you can help.
As for #1, you can logout of your everyday user account and login as administrator. There is a logoff button in the start menu of the windows toolbar. The autologin is fine if your computer is in a secure area like home, or a locked office. If it is in your office where others have access, I wouldn’t use the autologin because it is a security risk.
For #2 I don’t think that there is any difference in the access time of drive letters based upon the lettering scheme. What may matter is if your hard drives have different cache sizes. If you have multiple hard drives I would write the data files to a partition on a different physical drive from the programs drive. Modern disk subsystems Parallel ATA, Serial ATA, and SCSI are very fast so I don’t think you will have any problems unless you have a slow speed 5400 or old Parallel ATA hard drive involved.