Partitions on Hard Drive

[psychofox]

Hi Guys,

So, while I wait for my hard drive to be returned (see other thread), Ive bought myself a new500 gig drive off of Amazon for £30
Im thinking I should partition this one

Im guessing: OS/Programs/Games/music, docs, etc

Should the OS and Programs go together, or stay in a different partition?
How big should I make the partition for the OS? its XP.

Cheers for the help

 

[Hellcat]

I would partition:

60GB OS and apps that dont like installing elsewhere.
100GB for Games
Remainder for docs and music.

It really depends what apps you'll be installing. The aim is to make the partition for the OS big enough that the drive doesn't drop below about 20% free, but not too big that it becomes too fragmented.

 

[psychofox]

I would partition:

60GB OS and apps that dont like installing elsewhere.
100GB for Games
Remainder for docs and music.

It really depends what apps you'll be installing. The aim is to make the partition for the OS big enough that the drive doesn't drop below about 20% free, but not too big that it becomes too fragmented.

Much appreicated Hellcat, apps wouldnt be anything special, Office, AVG, Spybot, etc the run of the mill stuff.

Just out of interest, how big is XP with all the updates installed?

 

[Adrian Bravo]

Partitions will make it easy to back up and restore windows say using ghost. You will not see any speed increases by seperating your games/music/windows between partitions. To get a speed increase you will need two hard drives.

I have windows xp 32bit and vista 64bit on one hard drive then I put games, programs and music on there own hard drive. It reduceses load times and hitches especialy with a large number of mp3's playing on suffle.

 

[psychofox]

Partitions will make it easy to back up and restore windows say using ghost. You will not see any speed increases by seperating your games/music/windows between partitions. To get a speed increase you will need two hard drives.

I have windows xp 32bit and vista 64bit on one hard drive then I put games, programs and music on there own hard drive. It reduceses load times and hitches especialy with a large number of mp3's playing on suffle.

So 1 drive for the OS, 1 drive for everything else?

 

[Adrian Bravo]

So 1 drive for the OS, 1 drive for everything else?

If you want to increase performance yes.

 

[psychofox]

If you want to increase performance yes.

I might look into that when I get my other drive back. Cheers for that.

 

[pasotibbs]

May be worth creating a Swap partition at least twice the size RAM(XP can't see more than 3GB? so 8GB would be about right),then you can change the Virtual memory settings to use it as this will help with fragmenting.You can find this by right clicking My Computer then Properties/Advanced/ Settings/Advanced/Change then select No Paging file for all Partitions other than the Swap.
It used to be popular with Win95/98 but most people don't bother now, it still may be worth doing though.

 

[Hellcat]

Swap partition isn't really worth it anymore. XP holds the system files in a single area on the disk - it's the bit you can't defrag.

Partitioning can help with performance by keeping related files together on disk - reduces the amount of disk seek. Going to a 2nd drive is the next stage of performance.

 

[psychofox]

Right, thanks for all the info, you guys are legends!!!

Next step: The drive came in the post yesterday (whoop!). I’ve installed it, and installed XP on it. It has been assigned drive letter J (I had forgotten that I also had a smaller drive connected inside, which has now been assigned C, there is also a card reader so that is taking up some of the other letters). Is there any way to swap the letters around, or should I disconnect the smaller drive, reinstall XP, and then connect it again?

Also, should I have already have done the partitions (I didn’t see the option when installing XP)? If not, do I do this in the disk management options? Would the OS then stay on the first partition (Where I want it)?

So far all I have done is install XP, (no updates, or moved my data on to it yet), so it is not a problem if I have to reinstall it, as (it installed quicker then I thought it would).

 

[Oakley28]

Yep - Click Start - Right Click My Computer - Click Manage - Click Disk Management. Then right click the disk you want to change and click change drive letter.

 

[psychofox]

Yep - Click Start - Right Click My Computer - Click Manage - Click Disk Management. Then right click the disk you want to change and click change drive letter.

Thanks, I took out the smaller drive and reinstalled XP on the new drive (making it C,D and E), then put back in the older drive.
Fixed everything.