Help with formatting new Hard Drive Partition Sizes for Windows 7

[ChalPhut]

Looking for recommendations on partition sizes for a new build of Windows 7 on a 1.5TB drive.

* Size of OS partition?
* Create separate Swap file partition or have it situated on OS partition? If yes, what size?
* Any other recommendations

Thanks.

 

[Paperdoc]

I'm no fan of putting the Swap File on another Partition of the same physical drive unit. The reason for putting it NOT on the boot drive is to avoid the delays in head seek activity every time the swap file is used. But head seeking is still necessary if the swap file is on the same unit, just a different Partition!

 

[ChalPhut]

Thanks Paperdoc.

 

[Swivelguy2]

Head seeking will always be necessary when moving between two files that aren't consecutive on the disk, whether they're on the same partition or not.

If you have a 50 GB partition for your OS and page file, the page file could be located anywhere within that 50 GB.

If you have a 10 GB partition for your page file and a 40 GB partition for the OS, the location of the page file is known more precisely and when data is needed, it should be found faster.

(Key word: should)

What's most important is that you keep the partition sizes for both page file and OS as small as possible. I have a 4 GB page partition on the outside of my disk, followed by a 20GB win7 partition.

 

[tcsenter]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2025979

 

[ChalPhut]

Thanks Swivelguy2 and tcsenter. Extremely helpful information. Much appreciated

 

[Slugbait]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314482