Partitions

joroma

joroma

joroma

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I am in the process of doing a fresh install of XP and in a seprate thread on a different topic there was a suggestion of having a 20gb Partition for XP and moving My Documents folder to a different partition. I will have a 160gb hard drive so what is the best/safest way of setting my PC up?

I will have 2 160GB SATA Drives so could look at a Raid set up but I don't really want to get to complicated and I like to have a seperate HD to back everything on to (especially my photos!).
 
I have 2 80gig drives (IDE) I have windows and default installs C: drive on 1 and movies, music, page file and back ups etc on the other. It's a personal thing. I like it like this. :)
 
You've opened a can of worms now. Everyone seems to do something different when it comes to partitioning lol. So instead of telling you what you should do, I will tell you what I have done:

I have a 120GB Seagate and an 80GB Maxtor

On the Seagate I have 3 partitions. C, D and E.

C and D are both 50GB and E is 20GB

Windows, software and games are all on C. As is my pagefile.
My Docs, web downloads are on D. I also have backups of my music and photos on here
BitTorrent/Usenet are on E

on the Maxtor I have split it down the middle to give H and I both 40GB

On H I have my media [Music + Photos]
On I I have backups for the contents of D [minus the media backups]

SO thats how I do it. :D

SiriusB
 
I can see the benefit in having several partitions but does it cause any problems eg itunes, photoshop on C:drive but music and photo files are on D: or E: drive?? By separating programmes and documents on the same drive but on different partitions mean that I can reformat the C: part of the drive and reinstall windows without affecting all my document and photo files that are on the D: part of the same drive? Sorry if its a silly question!

What is a page file?
 
joroma said:
I can see the benefit in having several partitions but does it cause any problems eg itunes, photoshop on C:drive but music and photo files are on D: or E: drive?? By separating programmes and documents on the same drive but on different partitions mean that I can reformat the C: part of the drive and reinstall windows without affecting all my document and photo files that are on the D: part of the same drive? Sorry if its a silly question!

What is a page file?
Click to expand...
Over to Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_memory :) Tells it better than I can.
 
Having your photos and other files on a different partition or even different drive makes no difference to applications.

Also, if you do decide to reinstall Windows and format, it will only format C. The rest of your data will be fine. I do it all the time :D

As you can see its a big time saver and also gives you peace of mind in case you have to do a format unexpectedly.

SiriusB
 
I've always used seperate partitions, saves a LOT of time when you reinstall.

Drive 1:
C drive - Windows/installs/etc
D drive - Documents etc
E drive - Misc - I like to keep a folder of all the little apps I've downloaded and found a use for, like codecs or hard to find things. Folder is currently at around 1gb, and no, its all freeware/open source.

Drive 2

F Drive - Page file (usually around a 1-1.5gb partition) Its not noticeable but its nice to keep the page file off the main drive
G drive - Backup partition - I have set up some automatic backups to run each week which back up my documents and other things to here.
H drive - Downloads - All the stuff I download usually goes here to start with
I drive - Movie and music

Bit OTT but its served me well, and keeps things organised.

I hate it when my friends only have a huge 200gb C drive or whatever. I reinstalled my mates pc with XP and repartitioned it to 3 partitions. It took 2 hours to burn all his stuff onto DVD to transfer because it was all on 1 partition. Now we can reinstall in 10 minutes + time to load XP.
 
I've got 2 sata hdd's and have them as such:

c: 15gb Windows
d: 100gb My docs including music
e: 40gb movies
f: 40gb programs

g: 80gb games

Although I have been tempted to put d & e together as I'm not using anywhere near capacity on d, wheras e I keep getting close.
 
I have that problem with my H drive. I am close to capacity at the moment lol. Shame there isn't a way of making dynamic partitions lol

SiriusB
 
I've got 2 sata hdd's and have them as such:

c: 15gb Windows
d: 100gb My docs including music
e: 40gb movies
f: 40gb programs

g: 80gb games

Although I have been tempted to put d & e together as I'm not using anywhere near capacity on d, wheras e I keep getting close.
 
R0551 said:
I've got 2 sata hdd's and have them as such:

c: 15gb Windows
d: 100gb My docs including music
e: 40gb movies
f: 40gb programs

g: 80gb games

Although I have been tempted to put d & e together as I'm not using anywhere near capacity on d, wheras e I keep getting close.
Click to expand...

didnt you just post that?! :confused:
 
Right thanks for the advice guys. I'll think about what partitions I'll have. Do I partition the drive as I install windows or using disk manager after the install? Which is easiest?
 
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