Partitions advice

Drakey

Drakey

Drakey

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Joined
19 May 2007
Posts
6
Hey all!

I'll be building my new rig in a few days now, and have been looking for advice on how best to partition the hard drive. I'll only have 1 drive (500GB Western Digital 5000AAKS) in the system for now, so I can't split things up between physical drives.

From what I've read, I gather that it is worth having separate partitions for the OS (Vista), game installations, the page file, and general storage - is that right? Will this actually have an impact on performance given the fact I'll only be using 1 physical drive, or will it just keep things a bit tidier? Any advice on the actual partition sizes would also be welcome!

Sorry if this should all be obvious to me - I've just never bothered with partitions before so don't know the best way to go about dividing up my HDD space!
 
Make a 30-40GB partiton and put Vista (with programs) on it, and leave the rest as one partition for games etc, leave the pagefile on C:\. :)
 
I also bought a 500 AAKS but just for storage, how do i make partitions on it if i have misplaced the XP CD?
 
Sukh:

If you are referring to Disk Management in XP, there is no facility to partition an actual HDD, but there is in Vista.

You need 3rd party software, like Partition Magic 8, Partition Logic in the Partition/HDD Backup/Management section, or there are partitioning facilities on Ultimate BootCD in General Utilities etc. :)
 
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I thank you, got partition logic, just need to wait for the HD to arrive :)
500 gb in one drive just seems odd, need to split it up.
 
With a single drive I would just have one partition. Having several partitions will be slower (as windows sees pagefile as seperate drive) so when it swaps it'll physically be slower.

If possible buy another drive.
 
does it? basically, i have a 320gb .10 and now a 500gb AAKS, but the 320 has four partitions, but as im going to get the 500gb, i have a chance to change things around, thinking of splitting the AAKS into a 150/350 split.
Should i think about using the 320 .10 as a 80gb programs/windows and the rest in another partition now that i have the chance to change it as I am going to reformat soonish.
 
Drive 1- OS, and files that don't require heavy HD workload (ie music, video etc)

Drive 2-Games, and your "work" hard drive, ie ripping to.

If you're re-encoding music/video, make sure your source/destination files aren't on the same hard drive,

ie DVD Shrink, source ISO is on drive 2.
Output ISO is on drive 1.

or
drive 1, OS partition of 10GB, remaining space as partition for music/video
drive 2, games, single partition.
 
Ok i have about 450 gig of media i want to store, so i will have to have some on both drives if I want to keep it all defragged and stuff.
Planned:

320 gb --> 30gb OS & Remaining storage
500 gb --> 60gb Games n other programs & Remaining storage,,,yup?

It may seem a daft question but why does having games on a different HD to the OS help, surely it makes things slower having to have to disks "open" at the same time. I really dont know technically what im talking about just thinking in general sense... :confused:
 
Why should games on a different drive be slower? If OS is using files on one it'll be whilst accessing data on other drive. It'll be quicker. If Windows is working with files on one, during read/writing to the other it means less work on the same drive.

Try copying a 1GB directory from drive 1 to drive 2. Now copy 1GB from drive 1 to drive 1.

If you have 450GB of media, then I would use the 500GB as primary.

500GB
10GB partition for OS & program files (10GB should be plenty) but work out if that's ok
490GB partition for music, video, my documents etc.

320GB
Single partition, games.
 
OK i didnt really get your explanation, but basically as its doing two tasks on two HDs it wont have to queue stuff to work on 1 HD?

So 500 --> 10 gb OS partition and rest storage
320 --> 50 gb Games and programs? rest storage partition

dont programs have to be installed into the same drive as the OS, like itunes or anything, so the OS partition would have to be bigger?
 
OK i didnt really get your explanation, but basically as its doing two tasks on two HDs it wont have to queue stuff to work on 1 HD?
Click to expand...

correct, each HD is doing what a single drive would do cumulatively. Therefore less work.

320GB, single partition for games.

Programs can be intalled on any drive, but install them on the 10GB partition. Which should be plenty. If you have a computer already with the same applications that you'll install the new one total up c:\Windows, c:\program files, c:\documents and settings, and c:\pagefile.sys

If you're unsure, or need to install lots of large applications (photoshop, autoroute etc) create 15-20GB partition for OS.

The total (above) on my htpc is 4.7GB. That's without Office, Photoshop or things like Autoroute.
 
Well I was giving an example, I don't know how many games you have, but it's quite easy to fill 150GB of games. Plus you've got patches, my games patch directory is 10GB!
 
Ouch, well as of tomorrow i will have Battlefield 2142, and Northern strike and San Andreas.....i havnt played anything for a year due to uni and have 4 months of early mornings to kill until everyone normal wakes up :)
I also have the original GTA! :D
 
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