Partition size for VISTA ?

[Solema]

I used to be a die-hard "partition organizer" until I also came to the realization that separate partitions just don't make a lot of sense anymore. About the only one I'd even consider is moving My Documents and stuff to another drive, but not to another partition. The same point of failure is there regardless of the partition, and backup utilities, including the on in Vista, are good enough to back up my data reliably. So when I reformatted my rig last night it was one giant 230GB partition for me.

 

[jkresh]

while I wouldn't keep programs on a separate partition I do see some benefits in keeping data separate depending on how you backup. If your main backup is imaging software (either vista's built in, or ghost or trueimage...) then having 1 important data partition, 1 os/software partition and maybe 1 for data that doesn't need to be backed up can make sense. If your os gets corrupted you can then restore it without worrying about data, or if your data gets corrupted (or deleted) you can restore it without worrying about any new software installs or os updates you would loose. Also if you copy data to dvd's or blueray for archival purposes (or storage in a fireproof safe...) then having smaller images to deal with by separating software and data can help.

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

Remember Vista eats 15% of your free hard disk space for recovery.

 

[Limberlost]

Like most people my C: drive contains my installed applications/utilities, but I make certain that no data I actually want to keep is stored there if ever I want to roll-back to a previously saved image of Windows using Ghost. Using TweakUI I've redefined the default locations for my documents, desktop, favorites, etc. to a different partition, and whenever applicable I've done the same sort of thing for various applications, everything from the location of my eMail database to where .torrent files for downloads in progress are kept. That way I can "Ghost" my C: drive at the drop of a hat, and never have to worry about losing anything important. I think that's one good argument in favour of partitioning.

However, I don't think it's wise to install applications to a separate partition/drive. The OS and 3rd-party apps often work hand-in-hand, and if ever you need to roll-back to a saved image of Windows using imaging software, there could be problems arising from inconsistencies between the two if only the OS is reverted. Headaches. Besides, sometimes problems reside within the application software, and not Windows.

For rigs with lots of space-consuming games, however, you likely WANT to retain all the settings and progress you've made in those games, so installing them to a separate partition/drive makes sense, assuming all of that personalized data is stored there as well. Also cuts down on the time it takes to perform backups/restores of C:

 

[Navid]

I place my OS on the smallest possible partition I can fit it on at the beginning of the drive. I have a 5G partition for XP and I have 20G partitions for Vista.
I have only one active and visible at any time. The other primary partitions are always hidden.
So, my OS is always C. No OS sees another and cannot write onto another.

I install all my programs on the logical partition on the same physical drive, which is drive D.
All my pictures, music, video, emails, favorites, documents are on drive D.

My second physical drive contains my backups.
It also contains images of my OS. Having only the OS on a partition allows these images to be very small (1G for XP and 2.7G for Vista). This makes it more manageable. I don't want to have a 150GB image to deal with.

I would never place the OS and everything else on a single partition.
I try lots of different programs I find on the web. I get new hardware all the time and try. If I don't like it, I get rid of it.
If something goes wrong, all I have to do is to restore the image to my OS partition, which takes 2 minutes and I have my clean system back.

Edit:
I have reduced the size of my Vista partitions to 10GB.

 

[ingeborgdot]

When you say restore, what do you use? Are you talking system restore or acronis or what?

 

[Pwnbroker]

I used a 20 GB hard drive on Win2k, and put all other software that would let me edit the install directory on another drive. After a couple years, I only had about 3 GB free, and that was pretty much taken up by the swap file (1GB memory with 1.5 GB swap file)

 

[mancunian]

Anybody who says you need more than 2 partitions on a single hard disk is talking out of their a$$.

And the only reason 2 might be necessary is so that you retain data after reformatting the OS partition. The smartest way is to keep data on the second partition and regularly back it up onto a separate drive, preferably one that is offline most of the time.

If you think multiple partitions on a single drive will help you, you'll soon find out they don't if your single hard disk crashes or your partition table becomes corrupted.

$0.02

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Paradox999
postmortemIA ,

I've never heard that one before....
By your logic, partitions themselves make no sense with perhaps the exception of hosting alternate OS's.

The c drive in my case is a small partition of a large hard drive. The main aps on E, the very next partition are in reality on exactly the same physical place on the drive as if there was no partition at all. In other words, why should my drive wear any faster getting to Photoshop on physical space x regardless of it being on C:\ or E:\ ?

Can you explain me that?

Your NTFS MFT is located approximately at the halfway point of a given partition. This is done to increase speed as you write date/update mft/repeat. The head just doesn't have to move around that much. Your drive head is going all over the ying yang because you have multiple MFTs in different places is basically what he is saying.

Make it one large partition. If you want to gain performance by having additional partitions put those partitions on completely separate spindles. From reading the rest of this thread there seems to be a consensus on this advice as well.

 

[KeypoX]

Originally posted by: mancunian
Anybody who says you need more than 2 partitions on a single hard disk is talking out of their a$$.

And the only reason 2 might be necessary is so that you retain data after reformatting the OS partition. The smartest way is to keep data on the second partition and regularly back it up onto a separate drive, preferably one that is offline most of the time.

If you think multiple partitions on a single drive will help you, you'll soon find out they don't if your single hard disk crashes or your partition table becomes corrupted.

$0.02

but what about if you only have 2 hds? and one is kinda small

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

D'oh! I think the reverse argument is more appropriate -- using directories to do all organization while partitions may be helpful in some cases is more akin to using one tool to solve all problems.

The problem is that when, not if, you run out of space on one of those partitions it's a lot more work to resize it and if you opt not to resize it then you end up putting stuff on the "wrong" partition and losing your organization.

I can totally relate to what you just said, but on the scale of having 5 hard drives. Once the DVD backup drive is full, where do I put my DVD images? Solved the organization issue by setting up a JBOD raid and giving each category its own windows folder, which is basically the same as what everybody else is saying about making one huge file system. There's no real point of having 3 partitions or 3 hard drive file systems; just clump them all together as one huge file system.

 

[IEC]

My advice is to not use partitions at all. I used to because I used FAT32 and dual-boot, but now I only use partitions to separate OS installs. Separate partitions for OS/apps/games just slow things down.

 

[mancunian]

Originally posted by: KeypoX

but what about if you only have 2 hds? and one is kinda small

Well, the expression 'living beyond your means' comes into play here.

It's a case of how important is your data, if one hard disk is 'kinda small' then you maybe should think about how much data you can actually possess at any given time. If you don't have enough space to back it up onto a separate disk, the question then is are you prepared to lose all your stuff? Because that's a potential scenario. So if I had a 120 Gig disk with 30 Gig and 90 Gig partitions, but only had a 40 Gig second disk, the maximum amount of data I can safely own is 40 Gig, anything more I'd have to be prepared to lose.

Everything I and a lot of other people have said here is based on the 'what if' question. People who think their data is safe because it's on a separate partition than their OS are rather misguided. Their data is really no safer than if it was on the same partition as the OS, because it's still part of the same 'pie'. The only thing it protects against is accidental deletion while formatting, not hardware failure.

If you have a second disk that is 'kinda small', the most sensible thing to do would be to backup to DVD.

Partitions and data loss are often not far away from one another. The reason I discourage people to not rely so much on partitioning these days is because of having witnessed unfortunate situations where partition tables have been hosed, or some 3rd party partitioning app has taken a dump on you. PM has done this to numerous folks, despite lots of people recommending it.

The only reason I have 2 partitions on this 320Gig disk is so that OS reinstallation is simpler, i.e. I don't have to back up loads of stuff before a reinstall.

It has nothing to do with data being safe. Nothing whatsoever. It has everything to do with convenience.

I do not back up to DVD, maybe I should. But the reason for that is that I have another 6 disks that only ever go into an enclosure and are offline 99% of the time. They are rarely exposed to the Internet and their lifespan is increased as they are not spinning anywhere near as often, just enough to see that they still operate. To me, the chances of me losing the stuff on the 2nd partition as well as that on the 3 out of 6 backup hard drives is rather remote.

But I still think I should start to make a few DVDs. Something to consider.

And I should stress that the points I and others are making are not to shoot other people down, but merely to wise them up.

 

[Hurricane Andrew]

I have Vista on a 25GB partition, along with all of my apps, including Office 2007. I still have roughly half free, and that includes a 2.5GB page file (though I did kill hibernation).