I could use some hard drive partitioning tips/advice. Thanks!

[dietrologia]

I picked up a 60 gig Maxtor 7200rpm ata/100 drive and I'm going to do a clean install under Windows 98se...

but I could use some advice on how many and what size partitions you would recommend.

I plan on partitioning for:

*utilities
*swap file
*games
*mp3s/videos
*data

Anything else I should partition for? Given that I've got a 60 gigger, what allocations would you recommend?

Thank you very much for any help. This is a confusing subject for me. I'm building a new system and haven't ever dealt with a drive >4 gigs!

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Duron 750
Abit KT7a
256 Crucial PC133 cas2
Maxtor 60 gig 7200rpm ata/100
52x cdrom
TEAC external USB 4x4x6 CDRW

 

[Mapidus]

What I would do is use GDisk to make three primary partitions between 1.5-4 gigs each. These will be your OS partitions (if you are only installing one OS now then you can just use the other primaries now to store small files like installers, swap space and stuff). Then make one logical partition that you divide up into chunks for your MP3's, games, movies, etc.

 

[BadThad]

One of the most frequently asked questions here. This is my opinion for most users: Partitioning

 

[dietrologia]

Yep, sorry. My bad... there's a boatload of threads out there that address this.

 

[Toonster]

I did pretty much what you want to do. I partitioned for: Windows, Utilities, Data, Music, Downloads, and Games. I made the games partition the biggest, obviously but the rest I kept relatively small - between 2 and 4 GB(my drive is only a 30 GB). Whenever I am installing programs I always like to install them to something other than C:. I may be completely mixed up in this but I just think that it keeps your C drive a little cleaner and you don't have a Program Files folder that gets out of hand. Plus it makes it easier to find a specific program if you need to. I've only run into one or two programs that ever needed to be installed to the default directory to work. Well, that's my 2 cents worth. I hope you can find something useful in all that rambling. Good Luck.

 

[DJFuji]

Badthad: Im going to have to disagree with you on the installing to default locations. I realize this is my own personal preference, though. Call me anal but I can't stand to have norton AntiVirus (clearly a utility) install to the same location as winamp (clearly multimedia program or Audio/Video). "Program Files" should be limited to system files and OS files, in my opinion. I'll store IE data there, for example.

I do agree that having the OS on another drive helps immensely, however. I organize my programs on my data drive according to their genre. (accessories, applications, games, utilities, etc). I don't need a billion drives for all the different categories, so one well-kept drive letter with organization does it for me. Though I haven't tried it, making a "strictly data" drive for ONLY data (no programs or executables) ie MP3, documents, WAVs, Movie Clips, etc, seems like a good idea because data like that won't need to be touched if you reinstall your OS, (programs will need to be reinstalled) and its easier to back it up if it's in one place.

 

[BadThad]

Dj - To each his own!

The default locations are perfect for the 99% of novice users out there. When they need tech support, it's easy for me to tell them where to go without have to hunt around for the program install dir.