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How should I partition my hard drive?

SithSolo1

Diamond Member
I have a 250GB WD SE, how should I split it up size wise?

It's gonna be the only HD in a gaming system running WinXP w/ SP1.
 
Personally, if it's the only drive in the system, I would partition it. Ghosting 250GB would be a pain. ;-) I usually make a 10-20GB partition for my OS and applications, then put all my data elsewhere. Really there isn't any real benefit other than ease of backup/restore to do it this way, but that's enough benefit for me.

\Dan
 
Personally, if it's the only drive in the system, I would partition it. Ghosting 250GB would be a pain. ;-) I usually make a 10-20GB partition for my OS and applications, then put all my data elsewhere. Really there isn't any real benefit other than ease of backup/restore to do it this way, but that's enough benefit for me.
That's how I'd do it. Chop it into 2 pieces. A smaller partition for the OS and the rest for storage. Don't make your OS partition too small though because when you install your games, they will write to your c drive, even if you install the files to the d drive. I guess you could use something like Partition Magic later to expand the c drive..

I personally run multiple drives. I'll run a smaller drive for my OS and then a larger drive as my storage file. I used to run one drive with the partitions that we mentioned, but my drive got tweaked one time and I lost all the data. It didn't matter that I had my OS on a different partition. I thought that it would prevent me from losing data on another partition, but in my case, it didn't. That's why I like my stored data on a separate drive. Plus, if you have the drive fail with your OS, you still have your drive with the important data on it. Though.. That drive could fail too. That's why you should keep it backed up. At least the OS wouldn't toast it.

Anyway.. I'm rambling..

Sal
 
Although I had been eyeing the new Hitachi's w/ 8MB cache, my mobo(Shuttle AN35N-U) doesn't support SATA. I'll probably pick up an 80gb WD SE in a few months.

Is 20GB gonna be enough for games an apps? Should I make it 30 or 40?
 
If you're really into games, I'd probably go with at least 30 GB for the OS/Programs. But then if you're talking about dropping down to an 80 GB drive instead of 250 GB, that's a pretty significant percentage. I'd shell out the ~$20 for another 40 gigs and make the extra OS/Program space a lot easier to give up.
 
Originally posted by: cleverhandle
If you're really into games, I'd probably go with at least 30 GB for the OS/Programs. But then if you're talking about dropping down to an 80 GB drive instead of 250 GB, that's a pretty significant percentage. I'd shell out the ~$20 for another 40 gigs and make the extra OS/Program space a lot easier to give up.


No no no no 😀

I'm not dropping from the 250 to the 80. I'll get the 80 in addition to the 250. 😉
 
Originally posted by: SithSolo1
Originally posted by: cleverhandle
If you're really into games, I'd probably go with at least 30 GB for the OS/Programs. But then if you're talking about dropping down to an 80 GB drive instead of 250 GB, that's a pretty significant percentage. I'd shell out the ~$20 for another 40 gigs and make the extra OS/Program space a lot easier to give up.


No no no no 😀

I'm not dropping from the 250 to the 80. I'll get the 80 in addition to the 250. 😉
that's good..mo' space for your jun..um..valuable data 😉 hiya Sal 🙂
 
Originally posted by: EeyoreX
Personally, if it's the only drive in the system, I would partition it. Ghosting 250GB would be a pain. ;-) I usually make a 10-20GB partition for my OS and applications, then put all my data elsewhere. Really there isn't any real benefit other than ease of backup/restore to do it this way, but that's enough benefit for me.

\Dan

Yup! me2
 
make 500 500mb partitions...just like the good ol days. dont use xp though....it wont fit 😉
it's like having 500 hard drives!
if that isn't cool i dont know what is.
 
40GB for OS, basic apps and patches ( Photoshop, PDFreader, etc.), 60 GB for games, 150GB for movies. The idea of this is that you will never fill up any of them, and you can do a defrag on your games partition without wasting time defragging all you movies, too.

EDIT: if you get the 80, use 20 for OS, patches, base apps, 60 for games. then the 250 for media and backups.
 
I make 2 partitions, even on my tiny Raptor. OS and any app that doesn't hold data (such as utilities) goes on C: I've found that 5GB does just fine if you stick to these rules. D: gets everything that has data you'd want to keep in case you want to reload the OS. That way, every time you want to reload the OS, you don't have to think "did I save everything important?" because it's all on D: and you're not formatting that partition. 🙂
 
A second drive will offer a huge performance gain when the Page file and Swap file (photoshop) are not on the same drive as the OS. Then you can ghost an image of your os/apps on another partition of that second drive.

For the first drive, keep it's size between 15 and 30gb, it will make running defrag much faster. Never keep any user data on that partition, if you ever need to reload your os, your user data will be safe.
 
A second drive will offer a huge performance gain when the Page file and Swap file (photoshop) are not on the same drive as the OS.
The practical gain when doing this is minimal at best. And pretty much unneeded if you have enough RAM to not use the page file that much.
Good gosh man! What are you filling pu 250 gb with?
My file server box has 2 200GB hard drives, plus a system drive of 13GB plus a backup image drive of 13GB. The 200's are near capacity. I wish I saw that CC deal I would have grabbed 2 of the 250s to add to the box! 😉

\Dan
 
Partition 1 (10GB) - Windows and files that insist on being installed on the C drive
Partition 2 (90GB) - For installed programs and data
Partition 3 (150GB) - For audio/video files

If you ever have to reinstall windows you format the C drive and reinstall. All of the little data files that applications store in the "Program Files" directory will be preserved. I know I am paranoid, but it has saved my a$$ once or twice.
 
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