What is the descent size for boot drive partition Vista Home Premium?

[gredodenda]

I currently have 400GB HD with 21GB as a boot drive for MCE XP 2005. Is Vista would be OK with 21GB as a boot drive? Should I change to a bigger partition size for the better performance?

 

[Shawn]

21gb is rather small. I changed mine to 30gb when I started playing around with vista.

 

[Nothinman]

Why are you parititioning the drive at all? You'll just end up creating headaches for yourself later.

 

[gredodenda]

Since I'm getting a Vista Pre very soon, I want to partition HD just once it for all...
So 30Gb is better? hmm..anyone else have it in a different size?

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Why are you parititioning the drive at all? You'll just end up creating headaches for yourself later.

Definitely not. I have been partitioning my hard drive for 6 years now and I'd never have it any other way again. Anytime I want to format I just copy over a few directories to one of my other partitions and that's it. I can have everything back as I had it before within a couple of hours. I beta tested vista and I would reformat at least twice a month and it wasn't that big of a deal.

 

[Nothinman]

Definitely not. I have been partitioning my hard drive for 6 years now and I'd never have it any other way again. Anytime I want to format I just copy over a few directories to one of my other partitions and that's it. I can have everything back as I had it before within a couple of hours. I beta tested vista and I would reformat at least twice a month and it wasn't that big of a deal.

Seperation of data is a good thing but it's better and safer to use 2 physical drives for that. And when you run out of space on the one partition it's a PITA to resize them since Windows has no built-in software for managing that so you've got to buy some 3rd party tool and hope it doesn't f' up your filesystems. Then when you start messing with them later on down the road you've got a chance of messing with the wrong partition and that does happen, there's been a number of "Oops, I deleted the wrong partition!" threads before.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
And when you run out of space on the one partition it's a PITA to resize them since Windows has no built-in software for managing that so you've got to buy some 3rd party tool and hope it doesn't f' up your filesystems. Then when you start messing with them later on down the road you've got a chance of messing with the wrong partition and that does happen, there's been a number of "Oops, I deleted the wrong partition!" threads before.

Vista seems to have the ability to EXPAND partitions. But, yeah, I stopped using partitioning on Desktop PCs when DOS 4.0 came out. It was a PITA to have four partitions on a desktop, because each partition was limited to 30 MB or whatever. You ended up wasting 1/3 of your drive space.

Even with Windows Servers, separate partitions for the System and Data tends to CAUSE as many problems as it fixes. Microsoft Small Business Server is a great example. There are TONS of people who've had SBS Servers cause big problems when the C: drive partition overflows because it was originally made WAY TOO SMALL by the Dell or whoever. User Quotas and paying attention to the sizes of logs, mail stores, and database is probably a better way to go and is LOTS more flexible.

 

[rajasekharan]

I have xp my primary part is 6gb . . 3gb part for swap . . 10 gb for software installations , 3 more for music and games and works . That takes total to 6 . 2 more for Linux . . So total 8 on my 120 gb hdd using it for 6 years now no probs so far . Done countless formatting ,instalation and things . I keep min for o.s just whats req

 

[Astray]

Vista requires atleast 15GB to install, 30GB might be pushing it if you have alot of games or other large programs you want to install.

Were not in the 80's anymore, partitioning your drive is a smart thing to do, unless you like reinstalling and losing all your data when your OS shits the bucket, I'd partition. Even if you have backups, it makes thing alot easier.

 

[Nothinman]

Were not in the 80's anymore, partitioning your drive is a smart thing to do, unless you like reinstalling and losing all your data when your OS shits the bucket, I'd partition. Even if you have backups, it makes thing alot easier.

Owning more than one drive and having proper backups is the smart thing to do, using partitioning as a substitue for them is a bad idea at best.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Astray
Vista requires atleast 15GB to install, 30GB might be pushing it if you have alot of games or other large programs you want to install.

Ah....the other reason I don't partition desktop PCs. Once you run out of room on the System Drive, you start installing PROGRAMS on the other drives or partitions. That makes a mess for recovery and moving drives. History shows that running out of space on the System drive is, by far, the most troublesome part of storage management. Adding more DATA space is easy. Adding more SYSTEM space is a PITA. Why handicap youself unnecessarily by purposely limiting the size of the System Partition?

Were not in the 80's anymore, partitioning your drive is a smart thing to do, unless you like reinstalling and losing all your data when your OS shits the bucket, I'd partition. Even if you have backups, it makes thing alot easier.

In twenty years, I've never had an OS go bad. If I ever do, I have full system backups and anything important is on at least four different hard drives.

I'm not saying that there are no good reasons to partition. I do partition all my Servers. But I really wonder if still makes sense in this day of large, cheap, and fast hard drives.

 

[nullpointerus]

Originally posted by: Astray
Were not in the 80's anymore, partitioning your drive is a smart thing to do, unless you like reinstalling and losing all your data when your OS shits the bucket, I'd partition. Even if you have backups, it makes thing alot easier.

Why is it easier? AFAIK, most versions of Windows have the ability to wipe the existing windows folder and do a clean install on the same partition. They can even do just a repair reinstallation to wipe drivers and some OS registry keys if that is all you need.

The only annoying thing about an in-place clean install is the way XP appends .NEW to newly created user directories, making the Documents and Settings folder a mess. For that, I'd recommend moving the user data to something like C:\Backup, recreating the users with the same names in the clean install, and copying the user data back.

 

[ingeborgdot]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Why are you parititioning the drive at all? You'll just end up creating headaches for yourself later.

I am planning on making my partition for vista from 100-120gb and the other will be around 180-200 depending on what I decide. I don't want to run out of room as I put all apps on with os too. I am already running raid 1 mirror for safety and want to put my data on another partition. You are telling me and others this is not as safe. Why? I have been told by many that have been in the business for a long time that it is actually safer. Have you ever heard of langalist? What headaches are you talking about? I have partitions I have been using for over 2 years and have not had any problems. Please explain to me with facts and not opinions. I am doing this for the sake of if or when I reformat I don't have to do anything with my docs, pics, music etc as it is on another partition and no need to do anything to. That's my main purpose.
Thanks.

 

[dighn]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Were not in the 80's anymore, partitioning your drive is a smart thing to do, unless you like reinstalling and losing all your data when your OS shits the bucket, I'd partition. Even if you have backups, it makes thing alot easier.

Owning more than one drive and having proper backups is the smart thing to do, using partitioning as a substitue for them is a bad idea at best.

adding new drives is not always the best thing to do. for one they cost money. and you may not have the existing space to add another drive.

I have three hard drives in my system. two are used for storing data. and the other is partitioned for dual booting. putting windows alone on a 200gb is a bit of a waste if you ask me. what if I want to add vista? buy another drive? if I put data in the OS partition then reinstalling becomes a problem and it would be strangely organized (this is my "windows and music/video partition"?). I would have to partition anyway.

 

[Nothinman]

I don't want to run out of room as I put all apps on with os too. I am already running raid 1 mirror for safety and want to put my data on another partition. You are telling me and others this is not as safe. Why?

Because if anything happens to the drive the chances that it'll affect your data partition are just as good as it affecting your OS partition. It's especially problematic when you decide that one partition is too small and you need to resize it.

I have been told by many that have been in the business for a long time that it is actually safer.

Safer than putting your data on the OS partition, sure, but only by a very little bit.

What headaches are you talking about?

Mostly size issues. You can't reliably predict how much space you'll need in the future so eventually one partition will fill up while another is largely empty and you'll have to either start mixing data and killing your organization or resize the filesystems which is fairly risky. Organization should be done with directories, not filesystems.

I am doing this for the sake of if or when I reformat I don't have to do anything with my docs, pics, music etc as it is on another partition and no need to do anything to. That's my main purpose.

Then get a separate drive (or two if you want to mirror them) and use that for your data.

what if I want to add vista? buy another drive?

Or put it in VMWare. Dual booting is a PITA anyway, just pick an OS, stick with it and put any others inside of some virtualization.

if I put data in the OS partition then reinstalling becomes a problem and it would be strangely organized (this is my "windows and music/video partition"?). I would have to partition anyway.

That's why you have a completely seperate drive for your data. It'll be better for performance and it'll be safer when you decide to do some funky partitioning on your OS drive.

 

[mancunian]

Originally posted by: rajasekharan
I have xp my primary part is 6gb . . 3gb part for swap . . 10 gb for software installations , 3 more for music and games and works . That takes total to 6 . 2 more for Linux . . So total 8 on my 120 gb hdd using it for 6 years now no probs so far . Done countless formatting ,instalation and things . I keep min for o.s just whats req

Fine if it works for you, sounds like a PITA to me. And having your swap file on another partition and not on a separate physical drive is a total and utter waste of time.

You'll be singing a completely different song if that 8-partition disk takes a dump on you.

 

[BD2003]

I wouldn't use less than 20gb for the OS partition. I personally use 25gb and with a whole mess of programs it's still less than 50% used.

 

[ingeborgdot]

I have 3 partitions on my main drive and only one on the other. My vista is at 50gb as I am only putting the os and several small apps on this drive. All the other apps are on my other separate drive. My problem is that somehow the vista drive keeps filling up and I don't know why. I can't find anything that is adding up to 41gb that it says it is full of. Where could it be?

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

Partitioning is so 2000....

 

[ingeborgdot]

When you dual boot you have to have partitions or more than one hard drive.

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: ingeborgdot
When you dual boot you have to have partitions or more than one hard drive.

That's the only reason I partition. I currently have XP32 in a 40gb partition, and Vista64 on the rest of my 320gb drive. I doubt I'll ever use the XP partition, and if that's the case it'll be gone on my next reinstall, and I'll run Vista64 on 1 partition on the whole drive.

 

[BehindEnemyLines]

I would suggest at least 40GB for Vista, maybe more if you play games that have 100MB+ save files. These save files tend to locate in your profile location. NOTE: I install all my games to a secondary drive. It's really impractical to have 40GB for Vista and game installations. The games are simply too large these days.