How to partition Drives in new system. Help!

[powerMarkymark]

After about 2 months of extensive research reading every review I could find and forum posting and lots of great advise, I have settled on the following harware to put in my new system (see details below) and will have it on Friday.

Please advise me on hard drive(s) partitions and your reason(s) why you would set it up that way.

I am a newbie so any advise is welcome.

Thanks.

Antec 1030 Enermax SPI Case Black Med Server Tower
4 x 80mm case fans, 2 for case intake lower front, 2 for exhaust upper back.
Enermax EG 365 P-VE Whisper Series (Fan Control) 430w Atx Power Supply
AMD Athlon XP 1800 CPU
Alpha socket 370/fc-pga Heatsink/Fan PAL6035MFC
Arctic Silver II Thermal paste
Abit KR7A 133 Raid Motherboard
Thermaltake Chipset Blue Orb Fan 15mm (15CFM) on MOBO chipset
512 MB Major DDR PC 2100 RAM
MSI GeForce 3 TI 200 64 MB VID CARD AGP with TV out
Thermaltake Chipset Blue Orb Fan 15mm 1(5CFM) on Video card
ATI TV Wonder PCI TV Tuner Card
2 X WESTERN 60 GB 7200 IDE ATA 100 (Hard Drives installed on Highpoint RAID but NOT as RAID array, both masters)
2 X Hard Drive Coolers (One Mounts in the 5.25" bay and has a detachable front grill w/3 X 15mm fans other is a horizontal mounting 120mm fan on top of Hard Drive)
LITE-ON 32X IDE CD-RW Retail
Pioneer DVD-116T 16x
Creative SB Live Audigy Sound Card
1.44mb Floppy Drive
D-Link DFE-538tx 10/100 pci wol Ethernet Card
PS2 Logitech Cordless Keyboard & Freedom Optical Mouse
4 port D-Link Dl-701 Gateway/Firewall Router
Windows XP professional edition

 

[Superwormy]

The only thing I'd reccomend is to setup a primary partition of bout 4gb for JUST THE OS. Put NOTHING ELSE on that drive, just the OS. Don't use the My Documents folder either cause thats located on the same drive as the OS. That way, when crappy Windows XP dies, you can just format that fiirst partition and reinstall, and you dont' need to worry bout losing any data or files.

Use the rest as whatever you want, if you can't fill up both hard drives, I'd use that second 60gb drive for just backing up the files you have on the first.

 

[Buzzman151]

go for 20 or 30 gig partitions... easier to defrag later

 

[thorin]

I agree with these guys. Make a smaller partition for your OS (or OS and Swap file) say 4 or 5 GB. Then partition the rest in 20 or 30 GB chunks for easy defragging.

Thorin

 

[Yossarian]

Blah, who wants the hassle of running defrag 4 times. Just put a single partition on each drive and be done with it.

You may want to invest in some earplugs too, I think your system will be quite loud.

 

[DN]

<< Blah, who wants the hassle of running defrag 4 times. Just put a single partition on each drive and be done with it.

You may want to invest in some earplugs too, I think your system will be quite loud. >>



I agree with the 1 physical drive/1 logical drive setup.. Who wants to have A C D E F G H I J, NOW I KNOW MY A B C, NEXT TIME WON'T YOU SING WITH ME type of a setup! I find it MESSY, if anything..

The only thing you'll want to make sure of is that you put your data files in a certain directory, using sub-folders to categorize as you like and make backups of it every so often.. So EZ, you can do it blindfolded..

 

[thorin]

"Blah, who wants the hassle of running defrag 4 times. "

You can just defrag "Local Hard disks" it isn't like you have to sit there and watch it and run it 4 seperate times.

Thorin