XP partitioning - your opinions

Skrael

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Okay - I've never bothered to partition my HD before but since my machine fell over recently I decided to look into it.

After some research I decided to go for a 5gb C: for the XP pro OS, a 8gb D:for all my program files, a 3gb E: purely for the paging file (all primary partitions so far) and then the remainder 24bg on a G: logical drive within an extended partition for data/storage files.

(most of this gathered from http://www.theeldergeek.com/hard_drives.htm)

Later I'll move the PF to a separate hard drive (I dont have this luxury at the moment). I have 512Mb DDR RAM with a P4 and I do "max out" a bit with the current single partition set-up when I'm running Photoshop & Illustrator (plus some other memory hungry programs).

What do you people reckon - is this a reasonably practical way to slice my HD? Am I maybe getting a bit too fancy here...? How would you guys slice a single disk for optimal performance?
 
First of all you have to remember that every time you will install a program, it will logically want to install on the C drive; so don't make it too small, you make get stuck on space.
Secondly, you could make a 1.5 Gig for you swap file. Ideally the swapfile shoule be 1.5 times the amount of RAM, but make it a bit bigger in case you install some more RAM.
From what I see you have a 40 Gig hard disk, why don't you buy another one, put the swapfile partition on it, as well as splitting it in 2, and leave the C drive as a unit.
You will have a big advantage of putting your swapfile on a separate hard drive and if you leave you operation system alone on its drive; if you have to reformat, you won;t have to touch the other drive and/or partitions.
Note: A swapfile by itself in its' own partition will barely fragment which helps the operating system run more smoothly.
 
zero4zero said:
First of all you have to remember that every time you will install a program, it will logically want to install on the C drive; so don't make it too small, you make get stuck on space.
I was a bit worried that trying to install programs on a different partition (drive) would create some headaches. Truth be told - I've never tried this before.
Since the OS is about 2.5Gb and my program files folder is currently 3Gb should I maybe increase my C: to about 8Gb, another partition for the swap files of about 2Gb - which I can move later to another HD and the rest for storage.

zero4zero said:
You will have a big advantage of putting your swapfile on a separate hard drive and if you leave you operation system alone on its drive; if you have to reformat, you won;t have to touch the other drive and/or partitions.
Note: A swapfile by itself in its' own partition will barely fragment which helps the operating system run more smoothly.
For those of us without the luxury of another HD what would be the most effective and sensible way to partition a disk?

While I DO have another HD it is a real oldie at 4Gb so I dont really know if there's any advantage.

I also get the impression installing another drive on the same IDE as the first has no real benefit for locating the PF
 
I have my OS (win XP Pro) on a seperate drive from everything else as well. I have found in order to run everything comfortably that you should have a minimum of 8GB for your OS drive. Most programs will allow you to install on another drive, but a lot of them, including photoshop and illustrator will install common folders on your OS drive and these take up a lot of room, temporary and not. Depending on how muc software you have running, it waould be advisable to have a good 8GB. I have similar programs, all web development and designer programs on my old machine and out of an 7-8GB drive, 1Gb is left and that waivers. some days its down to 400mb and then up to 1.6Gb b/c of temp files.
 
Partitioned

Thanks for the feedback guys.

I ended up with 3 partitions - a 10gb system/programs (c:) a 25gb data partition and a 5 gb archive partition.

I decided not to bother separating the OS from the program files - I was concerned the hassles with installation and setup for the programs would outweight the benefits....

So far so good - although installing XP-SP2 destroyed my chipset/graphics drivers so I had to find & reinstall them ... *sigh* nothing EVER goes to plan does it??
 
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