Creating a startup partition

[DoubleHelix747]

I just did a reinstall of Windows XP. My intention was to create a startup partition for the OS and a system partition for applications and data. I have never done this before so I was going blind. Here is what I did:

Total free space: 110GB
Chose partition 1 = 10GB
Chose partition 2 = 110GB

My problem (other than I don't know what I am doing) is that at no point during the installation did Windows ask me which partition should be the startup partition. However, I guess I got somewhat lucky as the Windows was installed in partition 1. So now I see the following (right after installation):

Partition 1 10GB has 3 folders: Windows, Program Files, Documents and Settings
Partition 2 100GB has no folder.

Did I do it correctly? I am confused because I wanted only Windows to be on the smaller partition and all application and data (and hence, the folders Program Files and Document and Settings) on the larger folder. Would really appreciate some hand holding here - thanks a ton!

 

[postmortemIA]

your thinking is wrong. Separating applications from OS is not good for drive, it decreases performances and increases wear of head because it has to jump from partition to partition all the time.

Non- application data such as movies and mp3 can be on another partition, but there's no benefit of having applications on separate drive. They are useless without registry that is in \Windows\... folder.