HD Partitioning recommendation?

[aman74]

I have a 120 gig drive for my new computer that I'm building. I've heard alot of people say just make one big partition, but alot of others say make a smaller one for the OS and other things, and that seems to make sense in case the OS goes bad you don't have to lose all your data. What other types of software would go on the partition with the OS and how large should I make this partition? Maybe 10 or 20 gigs??? That would be 10K mb's or 20K's mb's right?, excuse my newbieness.



Thanks!

 

[sniperruff]

i have a 120gig too and i partition it into 20 20 73.
20 for the OS
20 for Mp3's and in case the OS goes bad
73 for a pile of junk such as programs and movies and such.

IMO 3 partitions is the best config. it's personal preference

 

[nebula]

I only have an 80gb but I'd recommend a 20 or 30gb for the OS and programs. If you install ALOT of games, maybe you'll need a bigger OS partition, or install them on another partition. Overall, I believe it's better to have a seperate OS partition with the size of HDs nowadays. If you have two HDs, then no big deal, but when you want to reformat, it makes things alot easier, just move your data off the OS partition.

 

[eGAK]

You may find this to be a good read on HDD partitioning options and why Radified

 

[thraxes]

I have:

7GB W2K OS partition
25GB private junkyard / video editing disk
8GB exclusively MP3s
14GB Games and stuff that i install once to try out
6GB Linux
60GB of misc. server data (FTP, WEB, PHP etc...)

I have found that this setup works very well. I have all my proggies installed on the OS partition and still have 2 GB left. The rest of my data is spread out and the drive partitions loosley arrange all that stuff into categories.

 

[Davegod]

it really depends what you want to do, what you feel most suited to etc...

personally with that space i'd go with something like:

c: OS 4gb
d: programs / Program Files 50gb
e: files / My Documents 50gb
f: backup 10gb
g: swapfile 1gb

f: is used for the most recent ghost of C:, temporarily holding downloaded files until burnt to cd/dvd, occasionally holding a backup .rar of My Documents until burnt to cd/dvd... if having a second hdd, f: and g: most likely to be going on it, then e:. This approach seems convenient -- to me! -- for occasional complete backup of the OS for easy + quick "reformat reinstall" that doesnt screw up program's registry entries etc. Personal files are kept seperate in whatever way you want to organise them, also allowing for relatively easy backup... backups have their own space to make frequent temp backups and more occasional proper backup onto cd or dvd. swapfile kept seperate to reduce fragmentation (if onto a second hdd, a minor performance increase also).

As you can probably see though, it really comes down to preference. I put quite a bit of consideration for ghosting the OS because i like to fiddle and customise a lot, and also for downloads/files etc as i have a slow 64k isdn.

Useful programs, IIRC - Norton Ghost 2003 for ghosting entire partitions, useful for being able to completely reinstall it to exactly how it was when you made the ghost. MS Powertoys/TweakUI to change window's idea about the default path to Program Files and My Documents.

 

[Karll]

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=43