Size of hard drive partitions in Windows 98

[smithpd]

Someone told me recently that if I have a 40MB hard drive running in Windows 98, it should be partitioned into partitions of 8 MB or less, else there will be performance problems. On the other hand, I have heard that there is no reason not to format the entire drive as one partition using FAT32. Which one is correct (and why)? How much performance difference should I see between the two cases?

Thanks.

 

[JACKHAMMER]

I am guessing you mean GB. But in any case the performance diff. is negligible as long as you use fat32.

 

[Midnight Rambler]

40MB or 40GB?

What they were probably talking about was the 8GB system BIOS limit that earlier systems have.

If you are a relatively inexperienced user, I'd suggest you just do one whole partition. I'd also suggest using good old FDISK to do your work. Sometimes simple is best.

 

[smithpd]

Yes, GB!! 40 GB vs. 8 GB. I'm embarassed. I did not just wake up from the stone age.

Thanks for the responses so far. I fgured the 8 GB story was no longer true. As I see, it's only true if you have an old motherboard with old BIOS.

 

[Merle451]

Actually I believe the 8.4 GB limit is actually the limits of FAT 32.

True enough you can format a 40GB drive in 1 partition in FAT 32 but the allocation unit size is horrid.

Just a thought.

-Merle

 

[Warrenton]

I would honestly say create a primary partition that takes up 32GB and then create and extended in the rest and a single logical drive to fill that up.

My reasoning is this. Windows goes bonkers, and you need to format. So why not save all your downloads, mp3's, and all that stuff on a second partition. Then when you format the windows away, you only format the boot drive, and all your data is untouched. Hence a little more secure. And don't say if windows stops working you would just copy them somewhere in DOS, because you will loose all the long file names.

Of course this does not apply if you have a second physical disk, which is better IMO. Since I dual boot I have a partition for win2k, one for winme and then a partition for installing apps. And then a second drive for storing data. The first drive is 18.2GB total, each OS has 2GB dedicated, and the remainder is shared. The second data drive is 20.4GB so yes you can tell I must have a ton of crap.

 

[Quickfingerz]

create a primary partition of 8 mb or less so you can get a cluster size of 4 kb. This partition should contain your OS and swap file. Your second partition should use the rest of the drive and you can use this partition for movies, music, and other things that you don't want to lose. this way, If you ever decide to format your C: (primary partition), nothing on your Dsecondary partition) will be erased.

I have 2 hard drives with 2 partitions each:

C: <--- Win9x (8 GB IBM 1st part.)
D: <--- SWAP (512 MB MAXTOR 1st part.)
E: <--- Multimedia (22 GB IBM 2nd part.)
F: <--- More Multimedia (26.5 GB MAXTOR 2nd part.)

Each hard drive has a different channel so I put the SWAP file in the drive that is not in the OS. This way as the drive reads info from the OS/Game it the second drive is the one writing and reading from the SWAP file.

 

[AndyHui]

FAT32(X) does not have an 8GB partition limit....that's just the next level before you need to change the default size of the cluster from 4KB to 8KB.

 

[Cosmic_Horror]

make you primary partion about 2Gig. install everything you absoluty must have on this partiton. Eg office, winzip, netscape, anti-virus, utilities, icq, icuii etc etc etc, get it set up perfectly, and backup this partiton.
Then have other partiton(s) for things like data, games, downloads, mp3 etc etc.

then if you need to do a clean install of windows , use the backup, which has everything you need setup the way you like it.

 

[smithpd]

Thanks, all. You have given me food for thought and answered my question.

Quickfingerz,
I am interested in your solution. But please tell me -- how do you get Windows to use a swap file that is on a different partition? I don't recall it asking me where to put the swap. As I recall, it only asks where to install the OS. Is it a registry hack?

 

[C'DaleRider]

smithpd......

control panel....system.....performance tab......virtual memory button.

There you'll probably find the &quot;Let windows control the virtual memory&quot; button checked............

Instead, check the &quot;let me specify my own settings&quot; button and the choices for hard drive it gets put on opens up, as does the memory size settings, min. and max.

 

[Quickfingerz]

You get a significant performance increase with 96 mb of ram or lower if you put your swap file in a hard drive on a different channel. The performance problems with Diablo 2 have disappeared since did this with my second hard drive.

 

[smithpd]

Thanks for the info on the 2nd hard drive. As a matter of fact, I am controling my virtual memory as a fixed size and optimized (with Norton SpeedDisk) as a contiguous block at the faster disk location, but I forgot about the disk drive setting.

 

[Quickfingerz]

Yup, mine is fixed size fastest part of the hard drive on a different drive. This means that my OS is in the fastest part of the other drive.

 

[smithpd]

[Edit]

I just had some other [dumb] thoughts:

If you already have two disks, would it not be better to configure them as a RAID pair and get faster performance for _all_ I/O?

[the disks have to be identical for RAID, don't they?]

If you have some money to spend, would it not be better to buy more real memory than to spend it on virutual memory?

[that assumes you don't need the 2nd disk for anything else]

 

[Quickfingerz]

Yup both drives are not alike. first drive is a 30 gb 75GXP the second is a Maxtor Dmax+ 6800 27 gb drive.