Partitioning: Does this plan look okay to you experts?

[dietrologia]

Oh yeah! Can't wait--this Saturday I assemble my first computer. This is going to be awesome! Now I'm firming up some information so I know exactly what I'm going to do before I start. One of the last things I need to nail down is hard drive partitioning. Got a Maxtor 60gig 7200rpm ata/100 drive and here's how I'd like to break it up and why:

* C: 2 gb; Windows 98se - OS goes in first partition obviously. I want the OS by itself on it's own partition so that if/when it gets corrupted (I plan on OC'ing) I can easily reformat this partition and do a clean OS install without having to worry about losing data/programs.

* E: 2 gb; Swap file, IE temp files, temp download files - I want to dedicate a partition to swap and temp files. Should make for faster swapping. Lots of adding and deleting means I'll want to defrag this partition fairly often... small partition should make this much easier.

* F: 6 gb; Programs and Utilities - Winzip, Winamp, CD burner software... you name the program or utility and I'll put it here.

* G: 30 gb; Games - all games go here. I want to do full installs, so I can use a lot of space.

* H: 20 gb; MP3s, Videos, data

Okay... well that's my master partitioning plan. What's wrong with it? Does it look good or would you do something different? Sizes okay?

Thank you very much for any advice!

 

[wyvrn]

Sounds like a lot of work when a simpler scheme would work just as well. But that is JMO.

 

[Woodie]

Well, I'll give this a stab, although I haven't bothered with such a complicated setup in quite a while.

C: 2g Primary Partition (OS). OK.
D: 2g Primary Partition (Swap/temp). You won't get a huge benefit from the dedicated "drive", since it's on the same spindle as everything else.
56g Extended Partition (apps). You can only have 4 partitions/drive under DOS/Windows.
E: 6g Logical Drive (Appls). OK.
F: 30g Logical Drive (Games). OK.
G: 20g Logical Drive (Music...). OK.
H & up: CD/DVD/CDRW etc.

Comments: I changed your drive letter assignments, and added the Extended Partition, which you'll need with so many drives.

I have found that separating appls from the OS drive is of marginal benefit, since you have to change the default install drive/directory every time you install a new application. After an OS reformat/rebuild you have to reinstall the applications anyway, because of all the registry entries anyway, so the benefit of saving the files is dubious.

My experience is that it's most important to separate the data and the code (OS/application/game). That way you can easily back up the data (which is yours) without backing up MS Office (which is already on your CD anyway). This means you have to focus your behaviour around the files or projects (folders?) you are working on, rather than the application which created the data.

I would suggest something like:
C: 10gig Primary Partition - OS + Applications
D: 2gig (1 maybe?) Primary Partition - Swap.
Extended Partition: 58gig
E: 35 gig logical drive - Games + ripped MP3s
F: 12 gig logical drive - d/l MP3s, data...

Set your backup to only backup your F drive.

My $.02

--Woodie

 

[Shudder]

I'd say 2 gig is overkill for the swap/temp drive. 1 would be good, hell 800MB would be fine

 

[metallibloke]

<<
* C: 2 gb; Windows 98se - OS goes in first partition obviously. I want the OS by itself on it's own partition so that if/when it gets corrupted (I plan on OC'ing) I can easily reformat this partition and do a clean OS install without having to worry about losing data/programs.

>>



If you have to reinstall the OS, you'll more than likely have to reinstall all your apps, due to all the extra stuff they install, like registry entries, files in the windows directory etc. Unless you have some crazy-but-it-just-might-work backup plan.

 

[dietrologia]

Thanks for the tips. In my quest for organization, I think I'm just complicating things.

I'll go with:

* OS/applications/games partition
* swap/temp files partition
* data/mp3/video partition

and keep it to three partitions.

Thanks for getting me to take another look at this!

 

[BadThad]

Here's what I think: Partitioning.

Actually, you're pretty close to what I recommend.

 

[Woodie]

For W2K and NT, we set the temp file = 2 x amount of RAM. You can set that for the max * the minimum.

Special Note: On either of these two OSes, if you want to capture dump files from BSOD's, the swap file on the C drive >= amount of RAM. Not generally an issue, and we rarely look at them ourselves.

badthad may have a point about the swap file going onto the last partition: Is that at the outer part of the disk, so access should be faster?

--Woodie

 

[BadThad]

Woodie - hehehehehehe....since his system probably has at least 256MB ram, that swap file on inner vs outer doesn't matter. I laugh because I've discussed this plenty in these forums. Most of todays system rarely, if ever, touch the swap file. Conversely, it's more important to optimize the opposite, the VCACHE! The VCACHE is our friend these days, LOL.

Are all of you members of TeAm AnandTech yet?

 

[Woodie]

No,no. fight the evil cube

Anandtech, yes. TA no. moooooooo!

(Still trying to break 200K.

--Woodie

 

[dietrologia]

Yeah, I have 256 megs of Crucial PC133 cas-2 and plan to get another 256 next payday.

I've followed your &quot;discussions&quot; about swap files/manually setting swap file size etc.

That's how I learned about the registry &quot;addition&quot; for better windows memory management--thanks for that tip!

So, I realize that there isn't going to be a lot of &quot;swapping&quot; going on, but I wanted a partition for IE temp files and for temp downloading.

Damn you guys! Now you're gonna have me investigating what vcache is and tweaking that too! Heh, heh...

&quot;Help... I'm getting sucked into the OC/Tweak Black Hole!&quot;

There's no turning back from the Dark Side, is there. Thanks for the help guys!

 

[Pretender]

question: how would you modify this for a dual boot (win98se/win2k)?

* win98 (fat32)
* win2k (ntfs)
* applications/games partition
* swap/temp files partition
* data/mp3/video partition

does this look right?

 

[Staver]

C: Swapdrive Fat16 for speed
D: OS (your choice) Fat32 To share files if dualing with Windows OS
E: OS (next one) Fat32 &quot; &quot;
F: Applications Fat32 This way you can nuke an OS Partition and the other is unaffected.

 

[Woodie]

Keeping the applications/games on a seperate partition brings up a couple issues.
1. You can only have 4 partitions.
2. Dual-boot means installing every shared application in each OS.

Kill two birds w/ one stone: Install each application/game onto the OS partition that you plan to use it from. Then you can eliminate the app/game partition.

Since the NTFS drive can't be read by W98, doesn't that mean that it doesn't get a drive letter? That would mean that W98 w/ Word thinks the data drive is F: and W2K w/ Word thinks the data drive is G: That may lead to some &quot;funky&quot; issues.

I personally like the Boot Manager way of doing it, which hides/unhides the boot partitions. That way W98 wouldn't even see the W2K partition, and W2K wouldn't even see the W98 (OS) partition. No possible OS-to-OS corruption there, and the drive lettering is the same for both OS's.

I like Pretenders better than Stavers.

Remember--I don't have to live with it afterwards!

--Woodie

 

[BadThad]

IMO you guys are making your lives too complicated. I USED to do all those partitions and drive letters, then I got smart. No flame, just my 2 cents.

 

[Staver]

So you installthem twice on a partition other than the OS, Once from each booted OS. That's no biggie since your installing in the same location.

 

[Pretender]

Ah, I changed my plan a little:

C: = swap file, temp folder win98, 2.5 GB
D: = win2k 2.0 GB
E: = programs undef
F: = data (music, movies, etc) undef

Since swap file should be at the front of the drive to increase speed, I'm going to put it in the first partition, and use Speed Disk to move it to the front of the partition. Same principle applies to the temp folder.
Since win98 needs to be (or it's a lot simpler if it is) installed first, it's going to be C:
To keep all the drive letters constant, I'm going to make win2k fat32 (it's a shame, I want to try out ntfs, but I don't want the drive letters going crazy all the time) also.
E and F's size will be based on demand, and I haven't decided on.

Any final comments before I make it happen (prolly tonight or tomorrow)

 

[rw120555]

If you get Partition Magic, you'll be able to change things around if you don't like your initial setup. It is quite handy if you suddenly discover you need a GB more than you anticipated and have free space somewhere else. It also has procedures for moving a program from one drive to anaother, although I've never used them.

I put all programs and operating system on C: and try to use program defaults for installation. All data and other files I create I try to put on other drives, how many you use is probably just a matter of personal preference.

I want it to be the case that I could wipe out C: if necessary and not lose anything I had created, other than maybe customized program settings -- but some programs will make it difficult for you to do that, they'll want to store their creations as a subdir of the main program unless you figure out how to override. C: is the drive you are most likely to want to, or have to, zap, so if you are careful to only put programs on it and save the install disks you have a fighting chance of not losing too much if disaster strikes.

One other factor to consider may be your backup procedures (if any) -- I have a tape backup system, so I try to make my partitions a size such that one tape can get the entire drive (perhaps minus anything I am willing to sacrifice in a disaster, e.g. my MP3s can be recreated or are already backed up on CDs).

 

[randypj]

I pretty much go with rw120555's suggestions. PM is essential if you add drives, etc. and don't want to reinstall. I've used PM's feature of hiding partitions, and making small &quot;placekeeper&quot; partitions when I add or subtract physical drives.

I would suggest a second, preferably equal speed drive, that you can at least backup your essential programs to, then hide that/those backup partitions. You can also use this for your swap file. I currently have two physical drives in my main pc, and have partitions through 0: I prefer to have my OS and all critical programs/utilities on one partition, so that is all I have to backup.
--Randy