How do YOU manage your partitions/hd's?

[gizbug]

I have one harddrive, 80 gig, for my FTP site, and my 30 gig hd for a BACKUP only drive.
Then I have one harddrive partitioned into c and d, c is for the os and core apps, d is for my addon applications and games

This organization method probably isnt the most efficient.

How do you have yours?

 

[JHeiderman]

I have my 40gig 7200rpm drive as my boot drive as C and I have my 80gig 5400 drive as D.

No more partioning for me. With two harddrives it's kind of a moot point. When I reinstall my main drive I just copy off what I want to save to my 80gig drive.

Probably not what you had in mind as far as help but it works well enough for me. With drives so big now I really don't worry about inefficient cluster sizes and things like that. I don't think it's even an issue anymore with FAT32 or NTFS... could be wrong about the FAT32 though. I'm sure someone will chime in to correct me if I am.

- J

 

[Zugzwang152]

Mine is easy:

1 HD, IBM 40GB still-going-strong GXP. 1 partition. All backups and stuff are burned onto CD, then shared from my read drive when I need to

 

[SUOrangeman]

(insert big grin)

3GB FreeBSD 4.6
2GB QNX 6.2
1GB DOS FAT32
50MB Linux ext3 /boot
1GB UNUSED (Solaris no like AMD)
1GB UNUSED (BeOS will not cooperate either)
2.5GB WinXP NTFS
4GB Win2K NTFS (main OS)
2GB WinME FAT32
2GB Personal Files NTFS
15GB Games FAT32
40GB MP3s FAT32 (nearly full too!)
30GB Downloads (FAT32)
4GB Linux ext3 /
0.5GB Linux ext3 /home
256MB Linux swap

Hopefully, that adds up to the ~115GB my WD1200JB has. Then there's:

60GB Downloads backup FAT32 (IBM 60GXP in a removable caddy, only powered when needed)
40GB OS (via Ghost) +Personal Docs backup FAT32 (IBM 60 GXP, also in caddy)

-SUO, dual-Athlon partitioninig PHREEK

 

[MasterHoss]

HD 1
----------
1 partition --> OS and all applications/programs (including games)

HD 2
----------
partition 1 --> mp3 and other music files
partition 2 --> temporary "holding place" for downloaded files extracting files etc.
partition 3 --> drivers and other "back up" files

EDIT: All partitions NTFS except for partition 3 on HD 2 (FAT32)

 

[corkyg]

For years I have used the same partitioning scheme - it works for me:

Main drive (80 GB)
C:\ = Operating System
D:\ = Utilities and Misc related programs
E:\ = Corel Office Suite 2002 and related programs
F:\ = Communications and Internet
G:\= Graphics and related programs
H:\= Swap/Page file and temporary CD burning cache

Separate drives:
A:\= Standard Floppy Drive
B:\= LS-120 SuperDisk drive
I:\ = DVD\CD Player
J:\= External Firewire HDD - for all data in support of all of the above
K:\= Media Reader/Writer (Digital Camera)
L:\= External CDRW (USB 2.0)

All plays together in perfect harmony.

 

[NOX]

HD 1 (RAID0)
=========

C:\ - OS (Window 2000)
D:\ - Drivers\Downloaded Software Applications Files\Utilitie Files\Patches\Updaters
E:\ - Applications\Games
F:\ - MP3's\PhotoShop Work Files\Illustrator Files\PageMaker Files\Website Files\Backup Files

CD-R/RW
=========
G:\ - Plextor Combo Drive - Important Backup Files (burned to CD-R)
H:\ - USB Zip 250 - Important Personal Files etc.

 

[gizbug]

MasterHoss:
Why the FAT32 partion on your 2nd HD?

 

[Lint21]

2 physical drives, both WD 1200JB's

HD1:

C: 6 Gig, OS only
D: 8 Gigs, application installs
E: 10 Gigs, game installs
F: 88 Gigs, downloads, etc (mostly pr0n )

HD2:

G: 111 Gigs, mp3's


I also have a 45 gig drive on a Linux box shared via Samba for backups and file serving with the other 4 machines on the network.

 

[ST4RCUTTER]

Since when have drives become partitions? How can a unique drive be "part" of something else if it's discreet?

 

[DeschutesCore]

HD0: 81 GB Maxtor D740
C:\WinXP

HD1: 40 GB Maxtor D740
9.5 GB D:\Development
9.5 GB E:\Data
9.5 GB F:\Media
9.5 GB G:\Games

HD2: 18GB SCSI Seagate Cheetah
8GB C:\Win2k
10GB D:\VMWARE with Beos, Dos 6.22, OS/2 Warp, Win95, Win98

That's just one of the 5 machines though. I use all x86 OS's possible for development.

DC

 

[SOSTrooper]

I'm too lazy, I only have 1 60GB HD, and its IBM 120GXP which I leave it on 24/7 . I have 29GB (roughly) for my boot drive C:, 24GB for my data drive D:, and 4GB of hidden partition of my clean load of C:\ which I ghosted over after I finished loading in necessary apps and drivers when I did Win2K from scratch. So if I mess up my C: in the future, I can just ghost the hidden partition back to C:\ to save some time formatting and installing my Win2K.

 

[amdskip]

I'm formatting everything right now and I just got this system up, duron 750, and it's the server

I'm mad I have to format though because of all the corrupted files

 

[MasterHoss]

Originally posted by: gizbug
MasterHoss:
Why the FAT32 partion on your 2nd HD?

Just in case I needed to go to a Win9x-based OS for some reason...

 

[dukdukgoos]

WD 1200JB:

C: Windows (4GB)
D: Files (108GB)

Windows partition contains minimal OS (swap file, dll cache, etc. are moved to D and regularly backed up to D: using Drive Image. Simple and effective.

 

[gizbug]

I wonder if it is better to have a backup partition in fat32 rather than NTFS.

 

[galt]

hdd 1: 60gb

c: 4gb ntfs os(w2k)
-- 4gb ext3 linux
f: 52gb ntfs data(mp3, games, stuff)

hdd 2: 40gb

--: 512mb swap linux swap
g: 8gb fat32 common to linux and w2k
h: 30gb ntfs more stuff

 

[Athlon4all]

lol SUOrangeman, I used to have a setup like yours (one where I was dual booting all these different OS's Now a days, lets see:

Partition 1: 17.56GB NTFS for Win XP and programs
Partiton 2: 1.95GB NTFS Win 2000 (but it prolly doesn't work cause I recently did a mobo upgrade)
Partition 3: 7.94GB NTFS Data files for me, and shared docs as well
Partiiton 4: 502MB FAT32 Its labeled Misc. but its (along with Partition 5) basically a place to dump stuff that I may need to get to in DOS (all my partitions except these last 2 are NTFS)
Partition 5: 8MB FAT16 Temp

 

[MiExStacY]

60gb 60gxp

10gb-os winxp-apps
50gb-games-mp3-etc..

my 2nd drive from wd 15gb just broke down after 2rma and fell 2weeks short of warranty
for some odd reason i feel my ibm drive is going to go down also

 

[gizbug]

Is it possible to convert a NTFS partition to a FAT32 partition within windows xp? Or do I need to use partition magic.

 

[Athlon4all]

Originally posted by: gizbug
Is it possible to convert a NTFS partition to a FAT32 partition within windows xp? Or do I need to use partition magic.

Win XP/2000 can only convert FAT16/FAT32 to NTFS, not NTFS to FAT32/16. Even Partition Magic's Utility for converting NTFS to FAT32 has some limitations.

 

[Alphazero]

I have my OS on C: and everything else on D:. I think splitting it up is not so wise. The bulk of the reading is done on the partition with the apps/games/mp3s, but every now and then it has to go back to where the OS is. And I'm never completely sure where I should put the swap file.

For these reasons, I think it would be better (if a little less convenient) to have everything on a single partition and keep it defragmented. I'll be trying this theory soon enough...

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: Athlon4all

Win XP/2000 can only convert FAT16/FAT32 to NTFS, not NTFS to FAT32/16. Even Partition Magic's Utility for converting NTFS to FAT32 has some limitations.[/quote]

True! Most of time, P/M 7 can convert NTFS to FAT32 if it did the initial conversion to NTFS. If it was done by XP, it refuses more often than not.

As for keeping a backup file in FAT32 - that is a good question. If you might have to access that backed up data from a DOS boot disk, then that would be advantageous. If you are on a network, it doesn't make too much difference because the network protocols make both sides visible to each other.

 

[gizbug]

This is for a home computer, not a business/network
I converted NTFS via WINXP

 

[thraxes]

My Setup:

C:5GB System W2K & Apps
D:30GB Video Editing
E:60GB FTP & Downloads
F:8GB MP3S
G:17GB Games

H: Zip Drive

X: DVD Drive
Z: CD Writer

I Use 2 WD600BB Drives as the main array formatted with NTFS.