recommendation for partitions

[critofor]

I just installed 2 160gb WD SATAs on my Neo4 Platinum motherboard.

I am wondering if anyone has suggestions as to optimal partitioning. I know that some recommend separate partitions for the OS(in this case XP pro), the page file, programs, video, other media and then a back-up partition.

Another question is that if a separate partition is designated for programs, then isn't it necessary to change the default installation path for windows? How would one do that?

Additionally, I have read that in order to benefit from having the pagefile separate, it should actually be on a separate drive altogether. First of all, why? And is this necessary if the page file is set to a static value?

My main quesiton is if I have a partition( say X) which I have labeled programs, how can I get windows to install prgrams there?

Thanks for all your help.

 

[toleraen]

I don't think I can answer all of your questions...but i'll give it a shot. Having seperate partitions for everything but your OS is mainly for organization. If you have your OS on a different partition, it could make retrieving files easier if your OS goes bad on you. You could in theory just wipe the partition instead of the entire drive, saving your files. You can use fdisk to make new partitions, and there's other programs out there as well, like partitionmagic. If you don't have any other method of backing up files, it works out ok. I have two drives in my computer, single partition on both. I back everything up on another computer though.

As far as a swap file, the benefit is that it can load files off one hard drive, and write them to the other. Might make it a little faster if you have several programs open, or doing photoshop/video editing type stuff. Couldn't hurt to put the swap file on the secondary hard drive though.

Having programs install to a different partition just involves you selecting the folder to install to. Most programs allow you to choose the installation directory.

 

[KoolDrew]

Have a very small amount of partitions. Having more will only decrease performance. It is best to have just one large NTFS partition taking up your whole drive. If you have some stuff you would like to keep if you reformat you can make one more partition for this stuff. For example I make 2 partitions. The first is for OS, games, apps etc. The second is for stuff l.like all my MP3's. This way if I reformat I will only format the first partition and still have all my MP3's.

Another question is that if a separate partition is designated for programs, then isn't it necessary to change the default installation path for windows? How would one do that?

There is a registry key to change this. Since there are so many keys directing to the default install directory it may cause problems with some applications. I cannot confirm this since I have never done it.

Additionally, I have read that in order to benefit from having the pagefile separate, it should actually be on a separate drive altogether. First of all, why? And is this necessary if the page file is set to a static value?

The pagefile would also have to be on a seperate controlller not just a seperate drive. This in theory would help paging to the pagefile performance because both drives can be used at the same time. Also if you have enough RAM placement of the pagefile is pretty silly has it would rearely be acessed. The pagefile is also not the only file involved with paging. I suggest just leaving the pagefile system managed on the root partition. You also do not benefit from having it static. This will only make it so the pagefile cannot expand when under heavy loadfs when it is needed to expand.

 

[Nothinman]

I know that some recommend separate partitions for the OS(in this case XP pro), the page file, programs, video, other media and then a back-up partition.

Some people recommend cutting yourself for pleasure as well.

Another question is that if a separate partition is designated for programs, then isn't it necessary to change the default installation path for windows? How would one do that?

No, you just choose the new target during installation of each program. But doing that isn't recommend anyway because a lot of program require reinstallation after a format so there's no gain in seperating them. If you run things like cygwin, mozilla, etc that don't require reinstallation it might be a good idea to put those somewhere else though.

Additionally, I have read that in order to benefit from having the pagefile separate, it should actually be on a separate drive altogether. First of all, why?

Because seek time is the performance killer on hard disks and when you create partitions you make the heads seek between those partitions if you use both of them. Now assuming that your'e actually using the pagefile there's a lot of disk activity going on already and now you've slowed it all down more by making the heads seek to your super-leet pagefile partition. And on top of that, in a low memory sitation you're also paging a lot to other files so optimization of the pagefile is a losing battle anyway so just get more memory.

And is this necessary if the page file is set to a static value?

It's only necessary if you like to tweak things for no reason. And setting the pagefile to a static value gains you nothing either and you've removed a safety net should you need the pagefile space, instead of things chugging along slowly you've made an allocation fail and something potentially crash.

 

[h2]

"Because seek time is the performance killer on hard disks and when you create partitions you make the heads seek between those partitions if you use both of them."

That's exactly the reason why you should partition your drive. If your main os partition is close the beginning of the drive, and is small, say less than 20 gig, most disk seek activity is going on in that very narrow space. So obviously the disk arm is moving less, and moving less far. It's unclear to me how people, and there seem to be many here, come up with the idea that having your OS data and swapfiles scatterd across 160 or 200 gigabytes of space can possibly be better for disk seek times.

When you partition a drive, almost all the work is happening on the os sector, the only time you are writing to a data partition is when you save or open a file from it.

I don't recommend using a separate swap partition for windows, it's unreliable, and in my experience led to disk failure. Let windows do its thing, if you want a system designed to do that, use linux.

But when your windows install fails or whatever, it's such a joy to have your other data there, exactly the way it was, accessible to anything else on your box with no problems.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: h2
"Because seek time is the performance killer on hard disks and when you create partitions you make the heads seek between those partitions if you use both of them."

That's exactly the reason why you should partition your drive. If your main os partition is close the beginning of the drive, and is small, say less than 20 gig, most disk seek activity is going on in that very narrow space. So obviously the disk arm is moving less, and moving less far. It's unclear to me how people, and there seem to be many here, come up with the idea that having your OS data and swapfiles scatterd across 160 or 200 gigabytes of space can possibly be better for disk seek times.

When you partition a drive, almost all the work is happening on the os sector, the only time you are writing to a data partition is when you save or open a file from it.

I don't recommend using a separate swap partition for windows, it's unreliable, and in my experience led to disk failure. Let windows do its thing, if you want a system designed to do that, use linux.

But when your windows install fails or whatever, it's such a joy to have your other data there, exactly the way it was, accessible to anything else on your box with no problems.

Yeah because the arm doesn't move much when you're reading a bunch of data files off the second partition and trying to do its thing on the first...

 

[h2]

The real thing to be aware of is how randomly windows throws data around the hard drive, in windows 98 days, you could watch the actual blocks on the hard drive surface being defragged, took hours, you can't see that on the new nt defragers, but it's the same. If you restrict the space that the file has to be scattered around in, the arm has to move less to get any one file. If you have a 200 gig hard drive, unpartitioned, it's completely possible, indeed likely, that any os data and any file data will be written any place on that disk surface, you have no control at all of that. If you restrict the space each file has to be located in, ie partitioning the disk, the file can only get fragmented so much. Personally, I use lots of partitions, 3 for data, 1 for photoshop swap, like you're supposed to, and 1 for each OS. I've been using the same hard drive for about 5 years, no problem, knock on wood. When I need more space I just add a hard drive, reorganize my partition sizes, simple. Currently I don't have any drive bigger than 30 gig on my box, LOL, though I have a big backup drive. But I do web stuff for a living, lots of files, lots of OS's need to access those files.

 

[thegorx]

I usually set the windows os partition to 40GB
and with change the program paths in XP it's a mess if you try and change it after install
so unless you want to configure setup with a different default path I wouldn't bother.

the way I do it is if it a necessary program like a microsoft program or antivirus program I just install it as default on the OS partition,
If it's a huge game or program or trialware ore demo I change the path manually during install by changing the C:\ to another drive letter but keeping the same path.
this make it pretty simple.

but in general I'd make your OS partition less than half of the 160GB

 

[critofor]

During XP setup, how would one specify a different default program install path?

Thanks for all your advice so far.