I bought a single 200gig seagate Sata hdd, and was wondering what size partition to make for xppro. And should I just make 2 partitions- one for the OS and the other for everything else, or three for OS/Programs/Data,mp3s,photos etc?
Partitioning Question
- Thread starter skiingliberal
- Start date
If I were you, I'd make a smallish partition for the OS. 20GB is plenty, unless you're in the habit of dragging really huge files onto your desktop, in which case the "C:\Documents and Settings\" folder will grow accordingly.
As to the rest of the space, I'd make it one ginormous partition, unless you're planning on writing huge files to the disk (such as audio or video files). In that case, I'd make another decent-sized partition (60-80GB) for programs, and one last partition for the large files; this is to isolate fragmentation issues between partitions. The larger the files you'll be writing and rewriting, the larger the cluster size you should use; I use 64k clusters size on my video capture drive.
As to the rest of the space, I'd make it one ginormous partition, unless you're planning on writing huge files to the disk (such as audio or video files). In that case, I'd make another decent-sized partition (60-80GB) for programs, and one last partition for the large files; this is to isolate fragmentation issues between partitions. The larger the files you'll be writing and rewriting, the larger the cluster size you should use; I use 64k clusters size on my video capture drive.
I usually just make C partition about 15 GB for operating system and use the rest for a D partition for everything else, but everybody does it differently.
Put your MP3's on a different Partition and backup regularly...Cluster size is 4K by default for WindowsXP and no worries on changing
I'd use one partition for the OS and programs, probably around 40 or 50 GB, and leave the rest for documents, music, videos, porn, whatever. Make sure you move your My Documents folder and everything over to the other partition- you can set the default location by following Microsoft's directions.
Like LED says, the default is 4k clusters in Windows. You'll be able to use either 4, 8, 16, 32, or 64k clusters in Windows, although I think that certain NTFS/Windows features are disabled over 16K: file-system encryption, compressed folders, etc. For you, these features are worthless anyway.
Simplified, a cluster is the unit of disk allocation for file storage. If you save a 2k text file on your machine right now, then view the properties of the file, you'll see that its size is reported as 2k, but its size on disk is reported as 4k. This means that on a partition with a 4k cluster size, the amount of wasted space averages about 2k per file stored on disk (the middle of the 4k possible range for the last unit used to store the file).
These chunks of data used to store a file can be scattered over the disk; a 16k file takes up 4 4k units, which can in different locations on disk (although the bytes within each unit are guaranteed to be stored in sequential order). This is known as "fragmentation"-- as a matter of fact, when you watch Windows shuffling things around during a defrag, it is simply moving units from one place to another.
Now you should realize that with a 16k cluster size, among other things that same 16k could NOT ever become fragmented!
The per-file waste does go up with higher cluster sizes, but if you're storing large files, that doesn't matter a whit.
I usually create the system partition when I'm setting up a new disk, but leave the rest of the space un-partitioned. After the OS is installed, I go into Administrative Tools, into the Computer Management dialog (MMC snap-in); in there you'll see a section labelled "Storage - Disk Management". From there, you can right-click on the unpartitioned space of the drive, and create a partition very easily. It'll prompt you for a partition size; the "Default" value in the dropdown means 4k.
I'd wish you luck, but you won't need it. It's very easy to do.
Why not just use one partition for everything? If the hard drive is going to fail, everything's going to go with it, its not like its only going to take down a certain partition.
I think im missing something, but i see no point to having different partitions for everything.
I think im missing something, but i see no point to having different partitions for everything.
because when you reformat you only want to reformat the os and programs or just os. for my case i am going to do this for ripped dvs so i can watch them from my comp and when i reformat and such i dont want all the movies down the drain so u partion it and only reformat os.
This constantly comes up. Keeping the OS and other data separate means you can reformat the system drive and reinstall Windows without losing all your data (which you still have the option of blowing away too, if you want). You can choose different cluster sizes-- WinXP likes to keep the system drive at 4k. You isolate fragmentation issues between partitions. You have more flexibility with some RAID controllers; you could, for instance, set things up this way:
DISK A
Parititon 1 : 50GB
Partition 2 : 50GB
DISK B
Parititon 1 : 50GB
Partition 2 : 50GB
RAID 1
1 mirror, A.1 and B.1
RAID 0
1 stripe, A.2 and B.2
(Most people don't set things up this way, but it's possible.)
Basically, partitions just give you useful management blocks for your data. Can you run your entire desktop off of one drive with one big partition? Certainly, and if that's what you want to do, I encourage you to do it.
Wow, thats such a brilliant thing to do, im ashamed I never even considered anything like that
.Sry about the stupid question.
Originally posted by: CheesePoofs
Wow, thats such a brilliant thing to do, im ashamed I never even considered anything like that
Sry about the stupid question.
dont worry about it i learned here too and still am
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