Please critique my partitioning scheme for Windows XP

[mooo]

I have a single drive - Western Digital 1200JB. This is a fresh install.

My proposed scheme:

System : 12GB NTFS

Swap : 2GB FAT16 highest cluster size possible

Temp : 1GB? FAT16? low cluster size (%TEMP% + Temporary Internet Files)
Will NTFS be better since it is better at handling a large no. of small files?

Apps & Data : 80GB NTFS

Share : 1GB FAT16 (for sharing over LAN with Win9x/ME system)
Is this necessary?

Backup : 16GB NTFS (Data backups, possibly compressed)

System Image : 12GB NTFS


Any suggestions/comments would be welcome and helpful.

Anybody know if Win XP will do its optimization of file placements for all volumes (partitions). I know that it wont do it accross volumes, but how about within each volume?

 

[sak]

i dont understand...but i am thinking u either using win2k or XP if so..why use fat at all..just use NTFS on all....

 

[owensdj]

mooo, I think you're taking partitioning way too seriously and trying to do too much with it. You don't need to use FAT16 or FAT32 on the partition that you're going to use for file sharing with Win9x/ME systems. NTFS will work just fine, plus you can use NTFS's file/folder security if you need it.

I don't see the point of making separate swap and temp partitions. Unless you're running so low on physicial memory that you're hitting the swap very hard, I don't think you will see any performance increase by having the page file on a separate partition.

I wouldn't put backups on the same hard drive. If your data backup is on the same media, it's not a backup, IMO.

Same goes for the image partition. If you want an image of the system partition, put it on a set of CDs

You may want to have a 16GB NTFS system partition for the OS, programs, page file, and temp. Use the rest of the disk space as a NTFS data partition for the your data and a folder for your file sharing.

 

[ScrewFace]

Yes, all that partitioning is not necessary. I have 2 hard-drives that are both NTFS and I use the smaller one (40GB) for backups and such. Buy another smaller drive.

 

[mooo]

Thanks for the input.

sak, the choice of FAT16 partition for the swap file is for performance. I dont need either the security or the journaling features of NTSF (and the consequent overhead) for it; since FAT16 is small, it will be cached in memory.

owensdj, thanks for the input. I should have explained that the Backup partition is for kinda logical backups. I will be doing software development possibly without a source code control system. This is a backup to guard against stupidity rather than drive failure!

The System Image partition is likewise not to guard against drive failure but to guard against bad installations etc. I am not quite certain about the need for this. I have read that if you mess something up and have to reinstall the OS, it will be easier to reformat the System partition and simply copy the Image onto it (with softaware like DriveImage). I have had enough bad experiences with installing rouge (even Oracle is a rouge sometimes) apps on NT and having to reinstall the OS. But XP may be different. I would like more advice on this partition. Will it be of use with XP? Will it be useful to have this when trying to tweak XP and you want to go back to the "last good" state?

Re the Share partition - I wasn't sure about this either. So you are saying that my Win95 system can directly see shared NTFS files on the XP system? I thought only NT4 SP4 and above could see NTFS partitions. Am I mistaken?

I have come accross posts that suggest that keeping the Temp file on a separate partition will reduce fragmentation of OS files. Seems to make sense. You guys dont think so?

Keeping a statically sized Swap on a separate partition will also ensure that it does not get defraged. Also I will be dealing with applications (App Servers, Databases etc.) that are memory hogs. I will also be attempting to stress the memory to test scalability of applications. Hence the need for a robust swap.

Part of the thinking behind having the Backup and Image partitions was also to block out the innermost part of the disk, so to speak and reserve it for files that are seldom accessed. Otherwise these files will occupy prime drive real-estate towards the outer edges.

Though I too was against over partitioning, I have not heard many reasons that make too many partitions bad, however there are a number of reasons that too few partitions may be bad. Perhaps the only convincing reason that I have come accross to not partition is suboptimal file placement (esp the swap) and the inability of XP to optimize it over time. Can someone comment on this? XP's optimization also seems to target fast system and application startup rather than performance once it is started up. I dont mind waiting for my app server or database or IDE to come up. Once it is up, I want it to be fast. Anybody have thoughts on this?

So what is the downside of overpartitioning. There must be something.

ScrewFace, I agree about the second disk. I will be getting one, once the wallet fattens a little. When I do get it, I'll put the swap on it as the first partition. My previous plan was to do RAID0; but I have read recently that the performance improvement is not much except for specific applications. I need to find out more about this.

 

[Nothinman]

sak, the choice of FAT16 partition for the swap file is for performance. I dont need either the security or the journaling features of NTSF (and the consequent overhead) for it; since FAT16 is small, it will be cached in memory.

The overhead of FAT file/directory lookups probably negates the security and journaling of NTFS. Anyway, unless you have an extremely old and slow drive, you won't notice the difference.

I will be doing software development possibly without a source code control system. This is a backup to guard against stupidity rather than drive failure!

Why not backup to CDRW or DVDRW instead?

Re the Share partition - I wasn't sure about this either. So you are saying that my Win95 system can directly see shared NTFS files on the XP system? I thought only NT4 SP4 and above could see NTFS partitions. Am I mistaken?

They're not reading them directly, they're going through the network and host OS. If the client had to be able to read the filesystem over the server noone would be able to use DOS clients to share files via NetWare, read web pages hosted on Linux, etc.

I have come accross posts that suggest that keeping the Temp file on a separate partition will reduce fragmentation of OS files. Seems to make sense. You guys dont think so?

It won't make a noticable difference.

Keeping a statically sized Swap on a separate partition will also ensure that it does not get defraged. Also I will be dealing with applications (App Servers, Databases etc.) that are memory hogs. I will also be attempting to stress the memory to test scalability of applications. Hence the need for a robust swap.

Statically sized swap alone ensures no fragmentation. The only benefit of moving the swap file anywhere is if you put it on a seperate drive (also if this is IDE, a seperate channel) so that swap activity won't interfere with OS/data drive activity.

Part of the thinking behind having the Backup and Image partitions was also to block out the innermost part of the disk, so to speak and reserve it for files that are seldom accessed. Otherwise these files will occupy prime drive real-estate towards the outer edges.

Again, I assure you it won't be noticable. If you need disk speed that bad spend the cash on a few 15K RPM SCSI160 drives.

I have not heard many reasons that make too many partitions bad

The biggest one is when you run out of space on one, it's a real pain to take space from another.

My previous plan was to do RAID0; but I have read recently that the performance improvement is not much except for specific applications. I need to find out more about this.

RAID 0 performance can be good, but the threat of dataloss isn't worth it. There have been dozens of posts from people who lost data to failed RAID 0 sets, if you care about your data RAID 0 is stupid.

 

[mooo]

Thanks Nothinman, most of your points taken but for a few followup questions/points:

1. FAT16 is undoubtedly faster than NTFS. Even MS acknowledges this directly or indirectly in their kb articles. Having a FAT16 with a large cluster size and possibly just one file makes it even better.

2. Burning to CDRW to do frequent backups will be a pain. Also many of these backups will be overwritten and do not need to be preserved for more than a week.

3. Defraged performance - you are probably right about not noticing the difference, but if it is possible to keep the whole swap partition away from the need to defrag, why not? If it is possible to keep the major culprit of defragmentation - temp files - away from the main areas, why not? Also, if defrag performance is not an issue, why are people recommending DiskKeeper so much? Is it because of my particular drive that you suggest that it will not be a performance issue?

4. No body seems to be commenting on the ability to control file placement (esp. OS & swap) via an ordered creation of the partitions. Certainly there is a big difference in performance due to location is there not?

5. Re running out of space on a partition - the only issue will be if I run out of space for the system partition. Is this really a possibility with 12GB? I thought I had built in a safety factor of 3 or 4 there.

6. Is running out of space really the most serious consequence of partition mania - I have a erie feeling that there might be some others that I will discover too late! Hence this post.

7. Still havent got any opinions/info from anyone on Win XPs ability to optimize file placement.

 

[John]

Unless you are running a dual boot there is no need to partition a HDD.

 

[Nothinman]

1. FAT16 is undoubtedly faster than NTFS. Even MS acknowledges this directly or indirectly in their kb articles. Having a FAT16 with a large cluster size and possibly just one file makes it even better.

But like I said, you'll be harddpressed to notice the difference. You can have 64K NTFS clusters if you want too.

2. Burning to CDRW to do frequent backups will be a pain. Also many of these backups will be overwritten and do not need to be preserved for more than a week.

A small script to do it would be simple.

but if it is possible to keep the whole swap partition away from the need to defrag, why not?

Because it's an unnecessary complication, K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple Stupid.

Also, if defrag performance is not an issue, why are people recommending DiskKeeper so much? Is it because of my particular drive that you suggest that it will not be a performance issue?

Fragmentation only affects the fragmented files, if the temp files are fragmented only the programs using them will be affected. If you have 10,000 fragments in your IE cache the only thing that might care is IE.

4. No body seems to be commenting on the ability to control file placement (esp. OS & swap) via an ordered creation of the partitions. Certainly there is a big difference in performance due to location is there not?

Again, I highly doubt you'll notice. Sure benchmarks might show some speed differences, but real world activity is extremely different from any benchmark.

6. Is running out of space really the most serious consequence of partition mania - I have a erie feeling that there might be some others that I will discover too late! Hence this post.

You're overthinking the whole thing, K.I.S.S.

 

[Buz2b]

mooo, let me give you a "low tech" answer to your question(s), after a few comments. Long ago I bought Partition Magic so that I could partition my HDD for the best efficiency . I did the System partion, swap partiton, Data partition, etc. Then I had a HDD failure. Guess what? None of that mattered. Yeah, your likelyhood is remote but your protection is nonexistant. Yes, doing a backup via Drive Image 2K is a pain and takes some time but it is worth it's weight in gold if you have a failure. And in your present scenario, you have aboslutely no protection against a HDD failure.
Item #2 is performance. Being rather "anal" myself when I was in my "partitioning mode", I ran a guantlet of tests. Mind you, this was in the Win95-Win98 days. However, what I found out was that no matter how I tried to "tweak" the OS via partitions, the performance difference was minimal at best. The only (somewhat) significant improvement I got was from the swap file partition. Even that was minimal and certainly not worth the effort.
If the truth be known, what I found out is that if you let the MS OS "do it's thing" (for the most part, we must all tweak a bit. ), it works just as fast, if not faster.
I have no doubt that you can quote various info and stats that will show some % of improvement by doing this and that with your partitions. What I am trying to get across is that sometimes the "KISS" principal works well. I don't think I need to explain that. MS actually designed the OS to work on one partition for the most part. It works pretty well for the most part.
Bottom line to this is buy a copy of Drive Image 2K and a good 40-48X burner. Partition your HDD to an OS & Program section and a DATA section. That's it; just two. Leave plenty of room on the first partion for future programs; I'd say about 30 GB and 90 GBs on a 120 drive. Defrag that sucker and then let the OS create the Restore points (which it will do automatically) periodically and do a Drive Image Restore set about once every few weeks.

 

[cleverhandle]

Bottom line to this is buy a copy of Drive Image 2K and a good 40-48X burner. Partition your HDD to an OS & Program section and a DATA section. That's it; just two. Leave plenty of room on the first partion for future programs; I'd say about 30 GB and 90 GBs on a 120 drive. Defrag that sucker and then let the OS create the Restore points (which it will do automatically) periodically and do a Drive Image Restore set about once every few weeks.

Good, simple advice. I second the motion.

 

[y2kc]

Unless you are running a dual boot there is no need to partition a HDD.

why is that.

 

[owensdj]

mooo, I also do software development. What I do is have a folder called Current that has the most recent version of the project. Before I make any major changes, I copy the whole project into a new folder in the form V0001. The next folder will be called V0002, etc. I guess I could put those copies on another partition, but I don't see the point.

FAT16/32 isn't always faster than NTFS. NTFS does a better job handling folders that have large numbers of files in them. I do see your point in using FAT for a dedicated swap partition, but I don't think you'd see enough of a performance boost to make it worth the trouble. If you're paging so much that you'd notice a difference, you don't have enough memory for what you're doing.

You can probably prevent your swap partition from becoming fragmented over time just by making its minimum and maximum size the same, such as 2GB for both.

Yes other operating systems can work with shares on NTFS partitions, even old Windows 95.

The design of NTFS makes its performance degrade less with fragmentation than FAT32. I've gone many, many months without defragmenting, but I didn't see any difference in performance after I defragmented. People recommend Diskkeeper because the company that makes Diskkeeper(Executive Software) scares people into thinking that NTFS fragmentation equals a big loss in performance so they can sell their software.

 

[mooo]

thanks owensdj. interesting perspective on diskeeper. you would think that MS (Marketing Superman) would be easily able to squash a small little roumor like that - if it was a roumor. i have seen kb articles that suggest what you are saying. they should make this a stronger than just a suggestion if it is true.

i agree with you on the seperate folders on the backups; keeping them on a seperate partition just keeps the clutter out of my eyes & mind.

FAT16/32 isn't always faster than NTFS. NTFS does a better job handling folders that have large numbers of files in them. I do see your point in using FAT for a dedicated swap partition, but I don't think you'd see enough of a performance boost to make it worth the trouble. If you're paging so much that you'd notice a difference, you don't have enough memory for what you're doing.

what is the trouble with making and having a partition? It is a one time thing. this is what I dont understand about the anti-partition argument - it is really not that much trouble, so why not do it even if the performance gain is small? i will gladly spend a few minutes up front, just for the clean organization that i get from it. and no, i dont think organizing the c: drive into folders is an equivalent organizational answer - it is just not the same thing.

on a related note, why is it that a Unix file system does not need defragmenting? or am i wrong about this?

 

[Sunner]

I used to have lots of partitions once upon a time, but somewhere along the line I just thought "Why the he11 am I doing this, what's it gaining me in the end?" and went with one partition for the system, and one for everything else, never looked back.

Considdering you've already gotten lots and lots of good technical reasons, I thought I'd give a more "down to earth" take on it

Oh and indeed, NTFS is faster than FAT16/32 under many conditions, especially once your filesystems start to grow in size and numbers of files/folders, and it's features are well worth it, such as ACL's and journaling.

 

[owensdj]

mooo, clean organization? That's just it. You won't have a clean organization, IMO, with your partitioning idea. For example, you'll see a drive letter in Windows Explorer for your dedicated swap partition, but not if you put in on the system partition. I like having one big partition and using the folder structure to create organization, but that's up to you.

File systems(such as ex2fs) used by Unix-like operating systems aren't any less vulnerable to fragmentation than NTFS. You just don't hear about it as much.

 

[Nothinman]

I used to have lots of partitions once upon a time, but somewhere along the line I just thought "Why the he11 am I doing this, what's it gaining me in the end?" and went with one partition for the system, and one for everything else, never looked back.

Same here. I used to have upwards of 6 partitions because I felt it was more organized. Now, I have 1 partition for the OS, one for data and one for programs. The only reason I have 3 now is because I have 3 physical drives. Drive 0 has the OS (shared Win2K system and Linux / filesystem), drive 1 has data (one big FAT32 partition so Linux can write to it) and drive 2 has Win32 programs that don't need reinstalled upon an OS reload to save me time.

what is the trouble with making and having a partition?

As was said, it's not the time or trouble needed to create them, it's the space distribution. It's virtually impossible to predict your space requirements for an extended period of time, so eventually you end up with 1 partition running out of space and another with 75% free and the only solution is to either buy another drive or use something like Partition Magic to shuffle space around.

and no, i dont think organizing the c: drive into folders is an equivalent organizational answer - it is just not the same thing.

Using folders is better than using individual drives. unix has been using the directories-only approach for many years and it works out much better in 99% of the cases.

on a related note, why is it that a Unix file system does not need defragmenting? or am i wrong about this?

Basically it boils down to the filesystem drivers being smarter. They put a decent amount of effort into having the filesystem allocate space intelligently so that fragmentation is kept to a minimum. Whereas MS' FAT and NTFS drivers seem to just use a 'first come, first serve' type of allocation, meaning the very first free block is uses regardless of whether it's contiguous with the rest of the file or not.

 

[sechs]

You have only one physical disk, so there are no performance advantages to having a separate partitions for temp files or the page file; all you would be doing is fragmenting your free space and increasing seek times. If you are using a static page file, leave it on your system volume.

I would not suggest putting apps on a separate partition from the OS. If you reinstall your OS, you, invariably, must also reinstall your applications. These things are too intertwined for you not to stick to that policy.

There's no need to have a separate partition for networking sharing, except for organization's sake. Remember, you share data, not file systems!

I would suggest the following:
System of at least 20GB, depending on applications and page file size
Data, of whatever size is necessary, and inclusive of shared folders
Backup (compressed)
System image

Everything should be NTFS for the sake of security.


Make sense?

 

[Nothinman]

If you reinstall your OS, you, invariably, must also reinstall your applications. These things are too intertwined for you not to stick to that policy.

Not necessarily, it depends on the apps. I find most of my apps (Mozilla, xchat, VirtualDub, games, etc) work just find without reinstallation after an OS reinstall.

 

[Buz2b]

I would have to agree with sechs on reinstalling the apps. Yeah, some may work OK without it but many, many, like MS Office apps will not work and will have to be reinstalled. Too much of a crap shoot.

 

[Nothinman]

I would have to agree with sechs on reinstalling the apps. Yeah, some may work OK without it but many, many, like MS Office apps will not work and will have to be reinstalled. Too much of a crap shoot.

Office is an obvious exception, it's got hooks everywhere. But probably 99% of the apps I use in Windows don't need reinstalled, some preferances may need resetup if I don't keep my Windows profile but other than that they run fine.

Of course it should be said I'm not your typical Windows user, my main apps in Windows are Mozilla, xchat and q3a. Most of my computing time is spent in Linux.

 

[Buz2b]

Of course it should be said I'm not your typical Windows user, my main apps in Windows are Mozilla, xchat and q3a. Most of my computing time is spent in Linux.

That would probably be the deciding factor; whether or not a user is more inclined to use typical Windows apps or ventures into other areas such as yourself. Probably just another excellent argument against MS also. But alas, I too am stuck in BG's world. As such, reinstallation is the rule; not the exception.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I would have to agree with sechs on reinstalling the apps. Yeah, some may work OK without it but many, many, like MS Office apps will not work and will have to be reinstalled. Too much of a crap shoot.

Office is an obvious exception, it's got hooks everywhere. But probably 99% of the apps I use in Windows don't need reinstalled, some preferances may need resetup if I don't keep my Windows profile but other than that they run fine.

Of course it should be said I'm not your typical Windows user, my main apps in Windows are Mozilla, xchat and q3a. Most of my computing time is spent in Linux.

Have to agree, I reinstall like once every 12 months, but I keep most apps around.