Advice on Partitioning?

[iseethemtoo]

Much to my surprise the search function didnt bring up as much stuff on partitioning as i would have thought!

Anyways, Ill describe my set up and what Im thinking and hopefully Ill get some feedback from you all.

Ok so I gots me a 36g Raptor, obviously it will be my primary, and a second 120g as my secondary.

On my Primary Im thinking Ill have my OS, App's, and Games.

Sound good? How would you partition this or would you partition at all?

My secondary will of course be for storage.

Sound good? Should I partition it? If so, In what way?

Maybe music should have its own partition?

I havent been so good with keeping my computer nice and organized so I wanna make sure I do it right from the beginning with my new machine.

Thanks All!

 

[Navid]

Some of it is style and has no right or wrong.
There is no benefit from creating partitions in order to separate music from pictures, or word documents from movies. It is easier to make those kinds of separations using folders. The advantage of folders is that their size is not pre-determined. So, if all of a sudden, you end up with lots of music, more than you had estimated, you will have to change the sizes of your partitions if you have different partitions for each. But, with folders, you have nothing to resize.

There may be a benefit from putting your pagefile on the second drive so that the head that is used for the pagefile is different from the head that is used for the OS and the application (speed). It is even better if they use different cables (different channels). You can create a partition on the second hard drive at the begining of the drive (faster area) for your pagefile.

On the main hard drive, you benefit from having a separate partition for the OS and a separate one for all the programs and games. Then, you can create an image of the OS partition, and it will not be too big. You can use this image for fast restore of your OS in case of a paroblem instead of having to re-install everything.
You can save the image(s) on your second drive. You can also save one on a CD or DVD.

If you are into trying linux or like to do multi-booting, you can create multiple primary partitions on the first hard drive.

You can use the XP backup, to back up your data and store it on the second drive, or on CDs.
Some people like to create different partitions for each type of data so that they can make images of those as well. If that is what you want to do, you need more partitions.
But, I only use the XP backup for data.
The only thing I create images of is my OS since it needs to be a perfect copy of ALL the data (when not booted) in order to be bootable.

 

[ProviaFan]

I highly dis-recommend putting programs and the OS on different partitions, because programs tend to get intertwined into the registry and system folders enough that you're going to have to do some time-consuming reinstalls of big programs after an OS reimage or reinstall anyway - just what you were trying to avoid. In general, not a good idea. OS/Programs and Data on separate drives or partitions is always a good idea, but I wouldn't separate data into separate partitions either, unless you have a Really Good Reason to do so. I did that once a long time ago, and highly regretted it - it was nothing but a PITA.

Now, on a UNIX system with some form of Volume Management, you can create a lot of partitions just a bit bigger than you need them initially, leaving most of your disk unpartitioned, and then seamlessly expand any partition whenever you need to. Dynamic Disks may let you do this in Windows also, but I'm not certain at all about that.

 

[iseethemtoo]

Thanks guys that helps alot.

But as always, decisions....decisions

I dont have a great big operation going, so really my primary goal is to keep my drives nice and neet; not the clusterfcuk I got goin on my current PC.

 

[SUOrangeman]

Just some random thoughts ..

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...1028370&arctab=arc

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=551495&arctab=arc

I can't find my original "Dissertation on Partitioning" online. I think I've got the original document if someone thinks it will be worthwhile.

-SUO

 

[Navid]

It is true that some programs will place dlls into the system32 folder. That is a good reason to keep the programs and the OS on the same partition. No arguments there.
The con of that approach is that if you are into creating images of your OS partition, they tend to get very big in that case.

So, I see pros and cons with either choice.
If your C partition has 10GB of data on it, its image is going to be 5GB at best (smallest). I don't want to have to deal with that. My C partition image is 800MB. I restore it in 3 minutes.
I have created the image after I have installed most of my favorite programs. So, after the restore, all of those programs work fine. Only programs that I have installed after the creation of the image may need to be re-installed (but, not all of them).

It is your choice. I don't think there is a right and wrong way.