Advice on large disk partitioning

Memphis

Memphis

Memphis

Soldato
Joined
13 Jan 2004
Posts
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Inverness
First off, I wasn't totally sure where to put this, so apologies if I'm in the wrong place.

Ok, I'm looking for a little advice on how my fellow OcUK'ers would tackle the partitioning in the following situation:


I'm currently rebuilding my Dad's PC for him. The PC is used by my Dad, Mum and Brother for gaming.

The PC will have a total of 400Gb of storage, spread across 2x 75Gb disks and a single 250Gb disk.

I don't have RAID available to me on this machine.

As stated, my brother uses this PC for gaming, so will need a chunk of space for that. One drive (or partition) needs to be set aside for what we call the "Documents" drive. Where all of my parents work stuff sits, along with all of our own personal documents, images and multimedia.

Now in all honesty I'm not sure what my best option would be for partitioning. Should I keep one of the 75gb disks for Windows, the other for the Docs drive and give my brother a full 250Gb??? Formatting and fragmentation nightmare???

Any advise on the most optimal way to do this would be great! :)
 
I'd say 75 GB for windows is a bit much, especially considering documents and such are going on a different drive. I'd be tempted to give windows a 20 gb partition on the fastest drive.

I'd install apps on one 75 gb drive and games on the other, and leave the 250 gb for the documents and multimedia.
 
Thanks for your input.

All of the drives are 7200rpm disks, with 8Mb cache, so no drive is faster than the other. Shouldn't matter then where Windows is.

If one of the disks is partitioned, with Windows on one and games on the other, will that slow read performance? Should the games be on another disk?
 
I've split mine so that games are on a different drive to windows for that reason. Don't know how much of a difference it makes but it must make some.
 
All of the drives are 7200rpm disks, with 8Mb cache, so no drive is faster than the other. Shouldn't matter then where Windows is.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily - newer drives are more likely to be quicker than older models. Assuming the 75GB drives are a few years old, it's very possible/likely that the 250GB is the quickest.
 
Have a goood browse through this forum, there used to be quite a lot of posts on partitions.

I think the general trend used to be to install windows on the C Drive partition , Program Files on the D Drive partition, followed by games on E etc
 
sydeccles said:
Have a goood browse through this forum, there used to be quite a lot of posts on partitions.

I think the general trend used to be to install windows on the C Drive partition , Program Files on the D Drive partition, followed by games on E etc
Click to expand...


Thanks, but that wasn't quite what I asked :).
 
So you don't clutter up your windows installation, and in the case of formatting the C:, you can keep your install files if required. ;)
 
Would installing applications/games on a different drive really provide any noticeable performance increase? As when I install games I install them to C:\games\... anyway.
 
Well yes kind of. If you split your drives you increase the speed at which your computer accesses the files required. Less data on a drive will mean quicker seek times etc.

If you look for memory hungry applications (such as Fs2004 with lots of mods) then you will see that it is always adviced that you install the game on its own partition for best performance. :)
 
I can see your point.

I installed 10 of my games last night on an 80 gig C:

Atfer playing a few of them I checked C:

53% fragmentation.

1 and 1/2 hour to defrag.

I will be taking this advice on board. I have re-organised my drives to just this.

Thanks.

I'm converted.
 
OzZie said:
So you don't clutter up your windows installation, and in the case of formatting the C:, you can keep your install files if required. ;)
Click to expand...

I tried that once but some stuff wont install in anywhere but C:/program files and other stuff doesnt give you a choice and if you had to blitz the windows partition you need tp reinstall all the apps as the registry and any thing put in windows system folders will be lost, my personal approach is to format clean, windows do all the updates install all the driver and software then use norton ghost to clone out the windows partiton to another partiton and clone it back when it messes up.
 
I do the same with Acronis. I have two images. One of a clean nLited version of MCE 2005 with all updates and patches that has never been connected to the net (activate via phone), then I back up this image to DVD as well. I then install Office03, Photoshop, Illustrator, Firewall, etc. Connect to the net. Update as necessary and then Image this off.

I wouldn't image any games though. Sometime you can go right off a game. So I wouldn't like to have any games included with my image.

Having just bought another drive I will give installing games to a different partition. I have the additional space to do this now. It will certainly help keep the fragmentation of my C: drive down.
 
Your choice of disks scream RAID 1 with the 75G drives for system, and 250gig for data. The keep documents and things needed on the raid array for safety, and any other non critcal stuff on the 250gig. That would be a piece of cake to setup in Linux, but I'm not too sure if you can retroactively create a software raid partition after a windows install.

As you said no Raid, I would probably go 75 gig system disk and other 75g backup of critical files, and 250 for non critical data.
 
Most of these suggestions are fine, the thing is the OP says it's for his family.
Now I don't know how good they are with PCs but I would try to keep it simple.

I've done something similar for my family and it's not easy to get other people to properly use other drives that are different from a standard installation.
Just keep a 75gig as the C drive (Yes it's a lot for a sys drive but it will not hurt)
250gig as D for the folks
75gig E for brothers games

The difficult part is getting people to then install and save to those drives. It will normally mean doing a custom install to be able to change the destination drive.
For example my parents have a program files folder on their D drive, but I bet half the MP3 utils my father installed over Christmas have gone on the C drive.

I've found it has taken a lot of time and persuasion to get them to use their PCs in this way.
 
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