Partition Suggestions Please

[jvitzu]

I've got two hard 7200rpm SATA drives; one 320gb and the other 250gb. I plan on using this PC for internet browsing, photo/video storage and gaming. Here's what I intend to do, so far:

320gb:
1st partition - 50gb for OS (Win 7 Pro)
2nd partition - 220gb for pics/music/videos storage
3rd partition - 50gb for future whims, e.g. 2nd OS

250gb:
1st partition - 150gb for Apps/Games
2nd partition - 100gb for essential data backup

I figure the first partition on each drive should go to the OS and Apps because they need to be accessed faster. Any suggestions?

 

[Nothinman]

As few partitions as possible, directories are for organization not partitions.

 

[n7]

As few partitions as possible, directories are for organization not partitions.

This.

 

[jvitzu]

What is the harm in having multiple partitions? This is the first time I've heard someone suggest something other than splitting drives into partitions to give better read times to more common applications.

 

[Nothinman]

What is the harm in having multiple partitions? This is the first time I've heard someone suggest something other than splitting drives into partitions to give better read times to more common applications.

The only harm is lack of flexibility. You inevitably end up running out of space on one and putting stuff on another that doesn't follow your initial organization ideas. You can use things like gparted to shuffle space around, but that's a PITA and potentially dangerous.

And really, any performance difference is going to be negligable. You've probably already spent more time thinking about it than you would gain by splitting the drive up.

 

[GLeeM]

3rd partition - 50gb for future whims, e.g. 2nd OS

The future whim is now - it's a whole year later!

If you must split, put this 50GB on the first OS partition so it is 100GB.

 

[C1]

I believe that partitions incur some HDD overhead (ie, probably less effective use of HDD space beyond two partitions). Also depending on what you are doing (ie, large files vs small files), you have the option to format using different size allocation units (ie, like the old cluster size FAT uses). I think that you will see that these range from 2KB, 4KB, 8KB, ... to beyond 512K (in powers of two). Using a larger cluster size on a large drive cuts down the size of the allocation table &potentially might improve access performance.

It is interesting though, that the big Hitachi Simple Drive that I just purchased & am now testing uses only 4KB, but I believe that you will find that this is the Windows Default. Ive forced all my big drive which I use for multi-media/large video files to 32KB (but you could also try 64KB, 128KB or even 256KB & do some tests & report back).