HD partitioning

[Moonchild]

What is the recommendation for the size of partitions if you have Win XP?

[The Guardian]

Moonchild: The real key will be if you run FAT-32 or NTFS. FAT-32 is the hanger-over from the DOS world and on extremely large partitions, you can lose quite a bit (up to 50%, I believe) in allocation tables. NTFS was designed for the NT-class O/S's, which is what XP is at its heart.

How are you wanting to split it up?

[Moonchild]

I run NTFS.

If there is no benefit to splitting the HD, I would not mind having just the two Hd's as is.

I have split the first one into one on 90 and one on 30, and I might keep that and use the smaller one as an image of the HD when I reinstall windows.

I run NTFS also and on one drive only. Is there an advantage to having the OS on one drive and programs on another?

I also have a copy of PartitionMagic version 6.0 that I've never used, if it does help to partition the drive how big should drive C: be to hold the OS? (WindowsXP)

[The Guardian]

Moonchild: Where it can save your ass..

I have my drives usually partioned this way:

1. partition, O/S only. For an NT-like O/S, probably around 2-4G space.

2. Applications. I install all my apps in one partition.

3. Data. I map my "My Documents" et al here. Any thing I create, I put on this drive and if I have multiple users on the computer, I create a high-level folder with their name and assign the appropriate access rights.

The reason is that with all operating systems, you can and will occassionally have a corrupted system. I had it happen to my wife's system where we lost the O/S partition on a particularly bad BSOD. Had to reload the O/S. (I believe this was an earlier version of NT.) But we also had to reformat the partition and the data was unrecoverable on it from the crash.

Now if the user data had been there, it would have been lost. (Like all users, she does not back up like she should.) But fortunately, all her important stuff was over on another partition and not affected.

The other reason is backups. Its a lot easier and faster to back up a 20G user partition than an 80G drive. And if you set it up right, you really only need to backup the O/S and apps partitions when they have major changes.

If you are really wanting "good" data security, go get yourself a RAID card. This takes two drives and makes them appear as one (they mirror each other) and the price has been reasonable for a couple of years. My workstation at home is set up this way, it has twin 45G drives in it that appear as one. And if lone drive goes bad, you can rebuild from the other. (I did have it save me too.)

[ALS]

I run NTFS also and on one drive only. Is there an advantage to having the OS on one drive and programs on another?

I also have a copy of PartitionMagic version 6.0 that I've never used, if it does help to partition the drive how big should drive C: be to hold the OS? (WindowsXP)


NT systems like win2k and xp work better if you put your pagefile on a drive other than the one the operating system resides on.

[Moonchild]

I run NTFS also and on one drive only. Is there an advantage to having the OS on one drive and programs on another?

I also have a copy of PartitionMagic version 6.0 that I've never used, if it does help to partition the drive how big should drive C: be to hold the OS? (WindowsXP)


NT systems like win2k and xp work better if you put your pagefile on a drive other than the one the operating system resides on.


What is a pagefile?

[BrandonL]

What is a pagefile?


Also called a swapfile. It a place that the OS will move less often accessed bits from RAM to free up RAM for often accessed bits.