OS partitions, apps on OS drive - performance?

[beamerxl]

Will applications on the same physical drive as your OS load any faster or slower than if they are on another physical drive? I'm doing a fresh format and reinstall, and I'm wondering if I should install commonly used apps on my C: or D:.

Also, I know some people create a separate partition for the OS. Is there any performance benefit to this, or is it just to keep things organized? What size of partition is big enough for Vista Home Premium 64-bit?

 

[sutahz]

Creating seperate partitions is good for faster defrags and organization.
I'd make the partition 25-50GB for vista (I think 15GB is the min, +xGB of stuff you'll store on the same drive/partition).
In theory, having the apps/os on different hdd's would speed things up but by what ammount I don't know, but it's probably not much.

 

[Nothinman]

Will applications on the same physical drive as your OS load any faster or slower than if they are on another physical drive? I'm doing a fresh format and reinstall, and I'm wondering if I should install commonly used apps on my C: or D:.

It may help a bit but application code is so small and there's likely still going to be files on the system drive that have to be paged in that the benefits will be negligable.

Also, I know some people create a separate partition for the OS. Is there any performance benefit to this, or is it just to keep things organized? What size of partition is big enough for Vista Home Premium 64-bit?

The only real benefit is to keep backup images small., performance during daily use won't be helped and in some cases will be hurt because the disk will have to seek between partitions.

 

[deepinya]

The only benefit I see to partitioning is in case windows gets corrupted. Its easier to reformat your C: drive while keeping all the date on D: intact.

 

[dunkster]

I keep a dedicated OS partition for protection against OS corruption or infection.

I keep it lean (OS, drivers and security apps, about 7.5GB) for quick backup/restore times and to also allow backup to DVD media. Takes about 4 minutes to backup to another partition, about 10 minutes to a DVD.

The intent is to avoid re-installing Windows.

 

[blackangst1]

Originally posted by: deepinya
The only benefit I see to partitioning is in case windows gets corrupted. Its easier to reformat your C: drive while keeping all the date on D: intact.

THAT is the biggest reason to.