How much should i partition for games?

In terms of gaming there aren't many advantages to either partitioning a drive, nor to formatting it as a compressed format. If you are hoping to speed things up by partitioning, think again. Due to the mechanical aspects of reading a drive, partitioning won't speed things up, and the compression will in fact make the drive slower. If you want a seperate partition for games, i would suggest buying another hard drive and putting them on there.
 
gamer_boy said:
In terms of gaming there aren't many advantages to either partitioning a drive, nor to formatting it as a compressed format. If you are hoping to speed things up by partitioning, think again. Due to the mechanical aspects of reading a drive, partitioning won't speed things up, and the compression will in fact make the drive slower. If you want a seperate partition for games, i would suggest buying another hard drive and putting them on there.
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I just want to partion my 500gb hard disk..

one for music, one for games, another for films..

or should i just put it all in the 500gb?
 
I would just put it all on the one 500gb in seperate directories. That way if you find you need more space for games and less for music than you originally planned, it makes no difference.
 
Moredhel said:
I would just put it all on the one 500gb in seperate directories. That way if you find you need more space for games and less for music than you originally planned, it makes no difference.
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what do you mean by separate directories?
 
In my C drive can i put

program files
windows
drivers

in one folder called misc?

so its C:/misc/windows
C:/misc/program files
C:/misc/drivers
 
dont enable compression. especially on a partition with an operating system on it.

maybe if the partition was only holding music and movies. but for gaming its a no no and generally for any other programs/os.
 
lolage said:
In my C drive can i put

program files
windows
drivers

in one folder called misc?

so its C:/misc/windows
C:/misc/program files
C:/misc/drivers
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Umm.. No. You shouldnt really move the windows or program files or drivers folders as it can screw things up. In fact, you cant move the windows folder at all. You will just have to make new folders.

Or you could re format and create a partition just big enough for windows, and then have the rest of the drive for your other stuff.
 
gamer_boy said:
Umm.. No. You shouldnt really move the windows or program files or drivers folders as it can screw things up. In fact, you cant move the windows folder at all. You will just have to make new folders.

Or you could re format and create a partition just big enough for windows, and then have the rest of the drive for your other stuff.
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Well, i have my 80gb partioned through the BIOS.

I have 20gb with windows on
and 60gb with nothing


and a spare 500gb HD
 
I gave up on partitioning a long time ago, I just use a 150GB Raptor for the OS and programs then a 500GB drive for any data.
 
50 gig for vista (40.5 is in use by Vista Ultimate+SP1),
200 gig for games,
10 gig for Temp, incl page file
rest is storage

You change your paths through system properties if you are adament to do so, never just move them :p
 
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Don't really see the point of partitioning in this case, it's still only one physical drive so it's not going to read/write any quicker. It's a little tidier, but it's also less flexible when it turns out a partition isn't big enough, and it's also a less efficient use of the space (since for instance the space took up by your 'music' partition is only used if you have enough music to fill it, whereas general space can be used by anything). Just let games install in the default path in program files, or if you need them all in one place for some reason just make a 'games' folder in the root of your drive and install games in there.
 
Partitions each maintain their own file record and are more robust for it. If you ever get a drive 75% full its easier to defrag and rearrange files with partitions
 
why partition? firstly there IS a fairly big difference in read speed from inside to outside of a platter. it reads outside first, so first files will be fastest. If your drive has 300gigs of films on it then you install a game, the game will be on a slower part of the disk.

Smack on 100gig for windows, 100gig for games and 300gig partition for the rest. music/films/backup work files don't need the best read speed, windows, page file and games will benefit from being on the faster part of the drive.

Biggest reason to partition? windows gets virus or goes **** up, you can during install format the windows partition easily , reinstall and not have lost any of your other files. Sure a dead hard drive would take it all, but it would in any setup. But most of the time a hosed windows install will only screw up its own partition and reinstalling or formatting that partition is 100 times easier when you separate windows. You can get fancy and try and make a windows folder very accurate on space. But i tend to just give it plenty of space and install most of the random non game programs in there and also keep it defragged and download to it, then move stuff i download to the slow partition, helps keep downloaded stuff nice and together as it can download in bits and be fragmented, be moved to another partition in one large defragmented lump and then windows partition is clean again once thats deleted.

Frankly because hard drives are cheap and big the actual sizes you choose aren't so important, just as long as you have enough space on windows and games, worst comes to worst, you run out and install stuff to the other partitions, won't be any worse off than if it was all installed in one partition anyway.

Haven't used linux in ages but it used to be that FAT32 or that "other" file system was best to format with if you were wanting to access that partition from both windows and linux, ntfs was not good for linux access to a partition IIRC. Thats most likely changed though, was quite a while ago.
 
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