Best way to partition for OS

[pvrbulls]

I am setting up a brand new system with the following components:

Asus P5Q deluxe, Q9550, 4 GB G.Skill DDR2-1000, Corsair TX650, WD Caviar 640GB. There will be several other hard drives of various capacities as well as a couple of optical drives.

What is your opinion as to the best way to partition the new drive for Vista. Is there a way to ensure that Vista is installed on the fastest part of drive? Does it even matter? What size should the partition be?

When installing other programs, is it best to put them into their own partition on the same drive as Vista or should they be on a completely different drive..........or should they be in the same partition as Vista(which is what I have done in the past with Win2K)? Likewise, where is the best place(relative to the OS) to put user files and data?

I would like this new system to be better organized and easier to back-up than my old one.

Thanks in advance for your help.

pvrbulls

 

[supremelaw]

I don't have experience with Vista, but with XP x32 we now size C: at 30GB,
with plenty of room to spare, and then we partition the remainder on that HDD
as a different drive letter.

Secondly, we load all application software onto C: as well,
for simplicity.

When all software is installed and working properly,
then we do a routine GHOST drive image of that working
software set.

Thirdly, assuming all software is installed and working
with total stability, we then DEFRAG the C: partition,
and do another GHOST drive image after that DEFRAG.

This sequence should result in "shorter strokes"
of the read/write armature on the C: partition
than would otherwise occur if the C: partition were
sized to equal the full capacity of that HDD.

Down the road, don't forget that Windows Updates
will eventually fragment the C: system partition,
so the results of any DEFRAG should not be regarded
as permanent, by any means.

If you should ever need to restore a drive image file,
it's generally more convenient, and more reliable,
to have all your application sofware restored at the
same time i.e. from a working software set.

Lastly, it creates less wear and tear on the main HDD's
read/write armature, if the image file is written to
a different HDD: this will prevent the armature from
"thrashing" back and forth between 2 different drive letters
on the same spindle.

After any given drive image file is created, it should
be copied back to the secondary data partition on the main HDD,
to make sure that it will be available & accessible to any future
restore steps that may be necessary.

Just ASSUME that your C: system partition WILL GET CORRUPTED
by some malware, at some point down the road; so, PLAN AHEAD!!

Sometimes, the GHOST restore environment does
NOT detect all NTFS partitions that have been
created and formatted under Windows XP,
but it will normally detect a secondary data
partition on the main HDD where C: is located.

We also keep a history of drive images files,
by using the following folder naming convention:

images
images.001
images.002
images.003
images.004

Where,

"images" contains the most recent drive image file of C:
"images.004" contains the drive image file created before "images"
"images.003" contains the drive image file created before "images.004"
and so on.

And, at a very minimum, we create a new drive image file
after all Windows Updates have been successfully downloaded
and installed i.e. promptly after every "Update Tuesday".

We developed these policies after taking a very
bad worm hit on our production workstation,
several years ago. And fortunately HDDs are now
so large, it's a cinch to archive a long history of
prior drive image files.


Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell, Inventor and
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library

All Rights Reserved without Prejudice

 

[Foxery]

Originally posted by: pvrbulls
What is your opinion as to the best way to partition the new drive for Vista. Is there a way to ensure that Vista is installed on the fastest part of drive? Does it even matter? What size should the partition be?

When installing other programs, is it best to put them into their own partition on the same drive as Vista or should they be on a completely different drive..........or should they be in the same partition as Vista(which is what I have done in the past with Win2K)? Likewise, where is the best place(relative to the OS) to put user files and data?

Partitioning isn't necessary, nor will it impact the speed of the OS significantly - the OS is written to the beginning of the drive anyway. Personally, I use a boot partition and a data partition anyway, because I like the added organization with such a large drive... but that's a matter of personal taste. Just make sure to leave yourself lots of room (30, 40+ GB, depending on your habits,) on the boot partition for installing apps and games for many years to come.

Some apps assume that they'll be on the C: drive, but generally speaking, most can be installed anywhere you like. Some user data will still wind up on C: due to the way Windows is structured. (e.g. the "Documents and Settings" directory)

 

[QuixoticOne]

I like to keep the OS and most installed applications on distinct partitions from my major volumes of "user data". When I say "user data" I principally mean things like gigabytes of downloads, digital photos, the sort of thing you'll probably be keeping a lot longer than your OS or your given application versions.
That way you can pretty much replace the OS, replace the applications, and don't have to worry about backup / restore of your large volumes of "user data" mixed in with the OS / applications partititon(s).

Vista is probably going to be the main OS you'll want to run for at least 1-2 years even if (ha ha) Windows 7 gets out in a timely manner and is less unstable / unattractive at FCS than Vista was. That being the case, it is probably less relevant of a mandate to keep Vista on its own partition since you'll probably keep the same Vista installation for a relatively long time and have relatively little reason to reinstall it (assuming you don't switch to 64 bit from 32 bit or something like that). Even so, I'd keep it on a distinct partition.

If you just have a few dozen of the relatively common sort of applications, browser, email, office tools, document readers, IM clients, et. al. then you almost might as well put them on the same partition as Vista because due to the stupid way they designed Windows / Windows applications you can't *really* reinstall the OS without having to reinstall the applications one by one even if you had all the apps. installed on a different "untouched" D: partition since all their registry entries and a lot of their files (despite your directives/intentions) would be installed spread out on C: anyway.

Whereas if you had some major space intensive applications like a huge data base server, source code control system, major CAD software, major Photoshop/Lightroom installation, etc. taking gigabytes of disc space with special efficiency concerns, then I'd consider putting those (and maybe most all the other in that case) applications on a distinct D: application partition.

And large / long term storage user data would go on a different partition just for it. If the PC is a major media storage unit / media center then you'd probably want a drive / partition JUST for your music / videos and maybe photos since those will often be many gigabytes in size and you'd typically have different backup plans / concerns for that type of data than you do for your OS + applications + documents/files/work types of user data.

The goal should be to maintain a recent full "image" backup of your installed OS + installed applications at all times, and have a distinct image or file based backup strategy for your categories of user data and media / downloads.

C: = Vista = 50GB is about the minimum I'd suggest, even when you don't install many major applications on C: partition. To allow room for usual applications, free space, defrag room, et. al. I'd say C: = 60GB-70GB would be a good choice. Install your usual applications there as well except for special category major stuff that might need its own partition like databases / CMS systems / CAD / whatever.

D: = Application partition, if used. Most simple users may not need / want one but rather install apps. on C:.

E: = Persistent user data that is long term or short term but isn't principally huge media files or image backup files or whatever. Start around 50-100GB and expand from there based on your type of storage needs. Do an occasional full image backup with frequent incrementals.

F: = huge / special user data like movies / videos, major music collections, major photo collections, major download archives, virtual machine images, whatever. Define special backup / redundancy plans according to how interesting / valuable the content is.

C: the OS partition (and maybe applications too) should be one of the primary partitions, probably the very first, and probably at the beginning of the disc from 0GB - 60GB or whatever

D: applications (if used) follows.

then the rest.

Short of having maybe D: and E: and F: on a different file server then the above is probably the "most organized" windows will let you be. It'll be dead easy to reinstall the OS and applications after a crash, and it'll let you not pollute your user data backups with program files / OS stuff.

 

[supremelaw]

> C: = Vista = 50GB is about the minimum I'd suggest


PAUSE HERE FOR "THE WAY BACK MACHINE" courtesy of Rocky and His Friends:

I was taken by this short phrase, as it rolled off the author's keyboard so effortlessly.

My company paid $43,000 for a 1MB upgrade to our minicomputer in 1979.

In the same year, we paid about $250,000 for a minicomputer capable of 1 MIP
(MIP = Million Instructions Per second)

I paid $25,000 for 3 x 340MB CDC Winchester disk drives circa 1984
(CDC = Control Data Corporation): I remember that check: I WROTE IT!!

I paid $2,500 for a 1GB IDE HDD for my PC back around 1993.

Today, a 1TB HDD sells for around $0.25 per GIGABYTE!


AM I DREAMING, OR DID THE FUTURE JUST ARRIVE FASTER THAN I EXPECTED? LOL!!!


p.s. These kinds of ruminations happen to people after they reach 60.


Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell, Inventor and
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library

All Rights Reserved without Prejudice

 

[QuixoticOne]

I remember those days too.. it is amazing that we've gone from drooling over kiloflops and kilobytes to expecting teraflops (ATI 4850 $150) and terabytes ($110 HDD).

I had a couple of core memory systems after the days of their prime just to play with, and some other more modern stuff like one of the smaller PDP/11s.

I should have kept those, the huge linear power supplies and metal chassis alone would be worth like $500 or more today. It was rare to find a serious computer you could LIFT without taking your life in your hands back around 1985.

I remember $4000 magneto optical 1GBy drives which seemed almost infinite in capacity back in the day of expensive 10GBy hard discs.

I remember buying a 32kBy memory upgrade for a pretty penny and now that's about the same price as 8GBy would set me back. 250,000:1, not bad.

I remember one of my first Z80 systems with ..what.. around a 4 MHz clock rate I think, and somewhere in the 1 MIP range for the few very fastest instructions. I remember writing entire terminal programs for that one in assembler that were under 1KBy of code and data excepting the screen buffer itself. Now I get annoyed when a given software set doesn't fit on a 4.7GBy DVD backup.

The sad thing is today Moore's law has given us phenomenal hardware disk storage capacity, phenomenal CPU processing capability, phenomenal memory storage capacity, and yet the SOFTWARE seems like it is barely better than the better sorts of stuff that was out there around 1990 or so.

Let's see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_Y-MP

My current quad core desktop CPU gets around 24,000 SP GFLOPS peak capacity with realistic rates around half of that, so that's about 5x-10x the peak performance of a fully loaded 8-vector-processor Cray YMP (333MF/VP) from 1988.
The Y-MP had up to 512MBy SRAM, I've got 8GBy, so 16x as much, and faster.
It had an optional solid state disk of up to 4GBy; the last USB flash drive I got for $22 was double that. The 2TB drives I use must be on the order of a thousand times bigger than those systems were often equipped with.

And yet here we are with EXCEL which isn't all that much more capable than VisiCalc of the 1980s and on screen "scientific" calculator programs that aren't nearly as capable / nice to use as the pocket model I carried in 1990.

I forget whether Microsoft Notepad still can't edit text files larger than 64kBy in size (on a machine with 8GBy RAM), but I wouldn't be surprised.

I'd say the hardware is just a little ahead of the software.

I'm surprised with how ardently they researched / pursued AI back then in the 70s, 80s, and now ... well .... intelligent is not usually the word people would apply to their commonly used software. Given the exponential increase in compute power that's available, it'd almost have to happen "by accident" soon.