To Partion or Not To Partition

[cpotter]

Setting up my new system. I'm a newbie to building but have fairly good knowledge base. I've installed an AMD Athlon 64 2800+. Have bought a new Seagate IDE 160GB drive and I'm using an older Maxtor 20GB drive as a slave. I'm about to begin installing Windows XP on the 160GB drive. I was planning on using just one partition on this drive. Are there any pros/cons to using multiple partitions on this drive. The other 20GB HD will be used primarly for crucial data backup. Thanks for the help. Chad

 

[Varun]

Make an OS partition, and a data partition. That way, if you ever need to reinstall the OS, you don't need to lose all of your data/mp3's etc. I would probably do 20GB for OS and apps, and the rest for everything else.

 

[yezhou]

I second what Varun said. But I'd make your OS/Apps partition a bit bigger if you play a lot of games...games these days are taking up so much space!! Hahah.

 

[modedepe]

Originally posted by: Varun
Make an OS partition, and a data partition. That way, if you ever need to reinstall the OS, you don't need to lose all of your data/mp3's etc. I would probably do 20GB for OS and apps, and the rest for everything else.

^^what he said

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

I just do 15GB for the OS, and install everything on the data partition.

I used to do 10GB, but then I had to relink my docs & sets and that's a pain.

 

[Texun]

Originally posted by: Varun
Make an OS partition, and a data partition. That way, if you ever need to reinstall the OS, you don't need to lose all of your data/mp3's etc. I would probably do 20GB for OS and apps, and the rest for everything else.

Well, a few hours have passed since you posted this message so I would venture a guess and say you have probably already done the deed one way or the other, but if you haven't set the partitions yet I would advise setting it up with multiple partitions as the others have suggested.

How many you decide to go with is up to you. I have a 160g and have about 6g for Win2k and 15 for WinXP. Some use Linux and WinXP but I haven't tried that route yet. Having more than one OS will come in handy some day. When XP gets corrupted, and it has, I can boot to Win2K and sometimes fix or move anything that hasn't been backed up. In addition to the 2 OS partitions I have one for Apps, one for games and one that I call my Workbench. Downloads, graphics, MP3's or anything else that I want to edit or work on stays there until I am ready to move on to something else.

 

[ThePiston]

with that much space here's what I'd do:

20-30Gb for Windows
13-140 for data

WIndows WILL crap out on you so you don't want to lose your data,, keep your data far away from Windows partition.

Use your fast drive for OS and the 20GB drive for ghost/backup images.

 

[Deslok]

I used to do the same-one partition for OS, other for apps, data, etc.
With the price of HD's now what i would suggest is a seperate HD for the OS- 30, 40, 60GB
just look around for a good deal.

The second(and third, fourth, whatever) can be split up into APPS, GAMES, DATA, whatever you like.

I'm only suggesting this because i have had a single 80gb drive go bad that had 2 partitions as suggested and I lost A LOT from the data partition.

Also for me - it's easier to make backups of things that change frequentlly such as important data

games- don't really care if I lose those saved games.

Then again with dvd drives being so reasonable backing up 100 or200+GB of data is not that time consuming.

Hope this helps.

 

[Zepper]

Unless you are handling drive-sized files, you should always partition. I use drive volume labels as sort of a top level directory structure. I have C: thru J: as logical drives on my HD. You can also move as many HD writes off the C partition (temp and tmp folders, temp internet files folder, print spooler files, virtual memory (swap file), etc.) as possible so if something goes wrong, the boot and OS partition will less likely be affected.
.bh.

:moon:

 

[cpotter]

Thanks for all the help. I went ahead and partitioned the drive into a 20GB block for Windows XP and 140GB for my data. Thanks. Chad

 

[sniperruff]

Originally posted by: cpotter
Thanks for all the help. I went ahead and partitioned the drive into a 20GB block for Windows XP and 140GB for my data. Thanks. Chad

i'd do a 40 for OS given today's large programs...

 

[poopspray]

I don't understand why you guys would have applications/games in the OS partition. I don't know anything, but wouldn't it make sense to have a partition strictly for Windows/Linux/whatever, and then have the next partition for games and apps? What's wrong with doing that?

 

[Varun]

Yeah, I usually install games in the data partition so that if I reinstall Windows I don't lose all my saved games etc. Many games can just be run straight from the other partition without being installed, saving installs after a format. The 20GB is for XP, and programs I don't care to lose to a format like Open Office (which I keep an install file of on my data partition anyways).

 

[henmaster]

Why are people recommending 15GB for the OS partition? My Windows XP install right now is only taking up 2.4GB of disk space. I have a 5GB partition for it and it's plenty. Apps/Games, Data, and Swap file each go on a separate partition. What do you guys have on your OS partition that is taking up so much space?

 

[Zepper]

I usually recommend a minimum of 5 logical drives. C=OpSys, D=Programs, E=Data, F=Transient files (TEMP and TMP folders, Temp Internet Files folder, virtual memory (swap file), print spooler file etc.) and G=copy of OpSys installation CD. Also if you burn CDs and/or DVDs, then set up separate logical drive(s) to contain source files for burns and to act as buffer space for your burning program.
.bh.

Where's the :sun: ?

 

[ZobarStyl]

I use a 26 Windows to 160 Data, which is up from my 8 windows 85 Data on my old 100gig. I put all my programs on the data disc so I have my game files and whatnot, and I put all the crappy have-to-reinstall-anyway programs on the windows disc. Either way, it's a good idea.