Performance of having 2 drives vs 1 drive with 2 partitions

[Claydelas]

My old drive was dying on me so I bought a new one and it just arrived. The dilemma I am having is between using my old old (not the one that's dying) drive entirely for Windows (160GB) or partitioning the new drive and having both Windows and my bulk files on it. Would there be any difference in performance or longevity? Keep in mind that the 160 GB drive is slower. Also, would there be more stress on the drive with both Windows and everything else on it? The reason for my dilemma is that the smaller 160 GB drive makes terrible noises when running, in spite of it being 100% healthy with no bad sectors.

 

TL;DR:
Performance of: 1 drive for everything vs 2 drives (1 dedicated for Windows, but slower)

Thanks!

[sadface]

Clone to new drive and use old for storage/backups.

[ARikozuM]

You can short-stroke the new drive if you want to partition with slow and fast partitions.

[VVoltor]

Moving files from one partition to the other is slower than copying between drives, but the performance of the drive with your OS on it will make the biggest impact to your system.

I would put windows on the fastest drive.

 

If your old disk is making funny noises it's likely to fail soon so I wouldn't keep anything important on it, especially if you don't have a backup.

[Claydelas]

Thank you everyone for your advice, I decided to install Windows on my new drive.