Should I partition?

[buzz_]

About to build a system for video & photo work, I have 2x 500Gb SATA drives and will be installing Vista, Photoshop & Premiere Elements along with the usual office and internet programs.

What would be my best set-up? Programs on 1 drive, data on another. Or partition the drives to keep different data seperate?

Thanks.

 

[buzz_]

Wow EffBee, partitions everywhere!

Is 24Gb enough for all system files? My current PC (running XP) has a 60Gb drive with all system files on it and is more than half full. I had assumed Vista would be even more bloated. Does performance suffer when partitions fill up in the same way it does when a physical drive gets full?

I am not a serious gamer, so am not concerned about keeping them seperate - but would photoshop and movie software benefit from being partitioned in this way?

As for back-up, I intend to set-up an NAS at some point so all multimedia files are available to all computers and my wife can back-up her laptop. Until then I will cope with external drives and DVDs.

ndellar - no plans for dual boot and I'll leave playing with RAID for my NAS!

Thanks.

 

[buzz_]

Rambling is good!

Can I just clarify, when you say 24Gb partition for OS, is that OS only, or OS + Program Files, or OS + Basic Program Files excluding video & photo software and data, or some other combination?

Can I stick basic office documents on the OS partition, or should I keep all my user files separate. And on that subject, my old PC has 1 drive with standard XP install (i.e. all user setting and My Documents folders for all users on it) but I store all data on a 2nd drive. Is there an easy way to point the default My Documents folder to the 2nd drive? At the moment I just have a shortcut link in the My Documents folder, which is not ideal.

 

[buzz_]

EDIT: Forgot to mention that if you do stuff like video editing it might help to put those files on their own partition too.

So for this would you suggest application and data on a separate partition/drive from the OS and all other data.

At the moment I'm thinking
Drive1 Part1 - OS, ALL programs files, basic office files
Drive1 Part2 - working area for video/photo
Drive2 - all media and large data files

 

[buzz_]

I'm all for K.I.S.S. !

My current PC is 5 years old so I'm hoping to be blown away whatever I do. I think I'll stick with my original plan and partition drive1 for OS + programs and store data on drive2 -that is how I work today. Just need to decide how big to make the partition, on the basis it might be another 5 years before I replace this machine, room for expansion probably required...

Thanks all for your comments/advice/ramblings.