how best to partition a hdd

[lrmat]

i'm just wondering what size to partition a 200 gig sata hdd.

also on the rig i'm building i will install a 160 gig ide drive for backup purposes. what is a good backup program that will automatically backup files, folders, etc that i chose.

 

[1sikbITCH]

To answer your question, I would make your Windows partition around 20 GB's. I used to have mine at 10 or 15, but games and apps are gettiing HUGE. UT2K4 was 6 GB's alone, not to mention all the maps you'd collect over time. My current OS partition is 25 GB's.

Now, this might be specific to my motherboard (Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe), I really don't know. I don't see anyone else talking about it. In my personal experience, I had a few problems getting Windows to recognize my SATA drive when I try to install Windows on it when I had an IDE drive attached as well. It automatically chooses the IDE drive and that's it. Won't even list the SATA drive, even after you hit F6 and install the drivers.

I got around this by unplugging the IDE drives before booting to the CD, and then I could install Windows to the SATA drive no problem. Once Windows was already installed, I then attached my IDE drives. However, every time I needed to reinstall Windows, I had to take my case apart and unplug the IDE drives so they wouldn't be detected again.

Finally I just created a new partition on one of the IDE drives and installed Windows to it instead. Problem solved.

 

[PCHPlayer]

Originally posted by: 1sikbITCH
To answer your question, I would make your Windows partition around 20 GB's. I used to have mine at 10 or 15, but games and apps are gettiing HUGE. UT2K4 was 6 GB's alone, not to mention all the maps you'd collect over time. My current OS partition is 25 GB's.

I don't get your comment. If C: has nothing but windows it can't get too large.

I have it split up exactly how he wants and my disk usage is: windows: 2.1G, documents and settings: 1.2G (3 users), program files: .9G and swap 1.5G. That's about 5.5G. I have my C: drive setup for 10G and am not even remotely concerned about filling it up. All my games are installed on the D: drive.
BTW. There is a way to tell windows that the default installation directory for programs in D:\Program Files, but I have never done it myself.

 

[1sikbITCH]

There is certainly nothing wrong with installing your programs to a different partition, but it's pretty much useless. A lot (most?) of programs install dll files in the System32 folder and make changes to the registry. If you reformat your C drive and reinstall Windows, you have to reinstall those programs as well. So you may as well just install them to C. In addition, as you said, you have to keep telling programs not to install to C. I need to be organized, so keeping it all together is easier for me come format time.

Of course there are some programs that don't install anything to the registry or System32 folder, and then they can easily be stored on whichever drive you want, to avoid having to reinstall when you wipe windows.

My partitions:
80GB HDD - 25GB Operating System and Programs (14GB's at the moment)/ 55GB MP3's, Software, Pictures, Office Docs
160GB HDD - DVD backups
80GB Removable HDD - Backup of MP3 collection, some Docs, etc, and a Ghost Image for emergencies.

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: 1sikbITCH
There is certainly nothing wrong with installing your programs to a different partition, but it's pretty much useless.

No, it's not!
If you create drive images of your OS partition, it helps to have a small OS. You can create an image that takes less than 1GB. Restoring it would be fast. Storing it would be easy. Who wants an image of a partition with 15GB of data on it?

You are right about having to install some programs again after a restore of C since the dlls are on C. But, that is not a big problem.

 

[1sikbITCH]

I have a DVD image of my Windows installation with everything installed except the games. I don't understand how it's possible, but it's 5.47 GB's, when a DVD is only supposed to hold 4.7GB's. Anyhow, I just restored it last night because I was getting some lockups (happened after I experimented with GAIM and Trillian, actually).

It took about 30 mins, and when it was done, I only had to reinstall and patch my games (CoD, UT2K4, NFSU), and I was back in action.

 

[chuwawa]

Ok, I'm new to this whole partitioning of the hard drive thingy. For the past 5 years I've had everything on the same HD without the partition.

So what goes on the partition? Just the OS? Everything else, like games, applications (winzip/winamp) and stuff goes on the other partition?

What about drivers and stuff?

<<really confused.

 

[PCHPlayer]

Originally posted by: chuwawa
Ok, I'm new to this whole partitioning of the hard drive thingy. For the past 5 years I've had everything on the same HD without the partition.

So what goes on the partition? Just the OS? Everything else, like games, applications (winzip/winamp) and stuff goes on the other partition?

What about drivers and stuff?

<<really confused.

Bottom line: If you have two partitions, whenever you install a program go to the custom installation dialog and change the installation drive to D:. Drivers will always install on C:

My C: drive contains: windows, programs files and user temporary files. Whenever I install a program I change the drive letter from C to D. Unfortunately many programs insist on installing stuff on the C drive into what is called the common files area. In addition many software vendors create their own common area in C:\Program Files. In some cases you can control this behavior with a registry edit.
I like this approach because some programs store configuration information in their installation directory. If you have to reinstall windows you do not lose this information.
In addition to installing all my programs in D: I also have all my user data (My Documents) there as well. So I have almost nothing on the C drive that cannot be restored when reinstalling windows. As one ill female dog stated, it is also very easy to restore from a DVD backup.

 

[lrmat]

ok,

so dedicate 20gigs, 30? what? make it smaller? how much room should i have in the os partition that safely accounts for potential upgrades (maybe longhorn comes out, hah!)

also, anyone have an answer to my second question i have doucments, photographs, audio files on my hdd is there a program that would automaticlly backup the folders i chose (i don't necessarily need to backup the os) meaning i want to be able to pull out the drive, pop it in a new pc and have my files ready for access.

 

[flexy]

this could be a long debate, but after a lot of research and own experiences i TRY to make this short [Edit: Nice 'try ]

The most important question here is which OS you install.

If you install XP, then the best thing is actually NOT to partition.

XP has 'built in' filesystem optimizations like pre-fetch and 'self organizing of file structure' which do NOT work across partitions. (keyword: layout.ini).

You can do a google search and/or read a lot abut that online..also...MS for this reason recommends that XP (under NTFS) only uses ONE partition.

HOWEVER - if you have strict 'DATA', eg. videos/pictures...or backups, or archives, zip-files, downloads....eg. files you do not use a boot-time and where access-times dot matter then you can create a second partition and put these data on it - if you WANT.

HOWEVER - also for this (inmy opinion) there is really no need. I had several partitions years ago, eg. one partition "D" for "data". But you can also create a FOLDER data on the physical drive C: and put shortcuts to it.

Instead of woring with a second partition D: then you just do the same thing using C:\Data whic does not make a difference in real 'life', working with it. With the advantage that the XP internal optimizations then work - eg. if you put a game on C:\data (instead of another partition) it can be optimized.
(Optimized meaning windows defragger puts the file(s) 'in front' of the HDinstead of yuo being stuck on the slower second partition. HDs get slower on the 'end'..meaning if your new partition (after C: ) is far behind, say 50 gig or so, its slower than the partition 'in front'.

Als..i my opinion its BAD to have a small partition for the OS (eg. 20 gig)..again...best would be that ALL your OS *and* often usedfiles/apps/programs reside on ONE partition.

You wil have bigger defrag-times with bigger partitios (of course) - but overall i think its better in conjunction with a good defragger, eg perfect disk if access times etc. matter to you.

 

[dionx]

i have 2 harddrives, 4 partitions

WD Raptor 74G
30GB - Windows, Programs, Games
40GB - Documents

Maxtor 160GB
120GB - Music, Videos
40GB - Backup of Documents from Raptor

i like the backup of my important documents between two harddrives. some people prefer WD over Maxtor and vice versa. i've had no problems with either brand in the past so that way i'm covered if either drive goes bad.

 

[lrmat]

flexy, what you say makes sense, i recall reading pretty much what you said when xp was being previewed (many years ago).

that being the case can anybody recommend software for auto-backups of individual folders/files?

 

[nageov3t]

my current setup:

Drive 1: 36GB Raptor
-20 GB partition for Windows + Programs
-remaining space is used by Linux

Drive 2: 250GB
-one partition, for documents and other media files.

I've never seen much benefit to having a partition just for programs. I guess it might be good for saved games or something, but I tend to back those up anyways.