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Fresh Install of XP Pro, a few questions.

Matt18

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My parts from newegg are getting delivered on monday. I have a few questions:

I have been reading about the page file, I understand what it does. I remember reading that you want it to be on the outside of the disk so it will be read faster.
I am getting a 320gb seagate barracuda, should I put XP on a seperate small partition?
Will this keep the page file on the outside of the disk? Is it really a benefit to partition the drive? I have no plans of of a second internal drive, or doing RAID. I have a external 250gb I will be using for backup.

On my current setup I have a small partition for backup purposes. But if the drive crashes I will lose it anyways correct?
 

Jimmy 2004

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There is no point putting it on a different partition on the same drive, and the external drive would be too slow so you'll have to put it on the main drive. TBH, there isn't much performance difference anyway.

As for whether there is any point in partitioning the drive, I personally would put a partition at the end for your personal files/music. That way, next time you install Windows you won't need to back everything up, you can just chuck it on that partition and only format the partition with Windows on.
 

Matt18

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As for whether there is any point in partitioning the drive, I personally would put a partition at the end for your personal files/music. That way, next time you install Windows you won't need to back everything up, you can just chuck it on that partition and only format the partition with Windows on.

That is an excellent idea. So to get a partition at the end, i would format the drive and install windows first(say 200gb). Then format the rest of the drive for my music, video etc.?
 
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You will need the larger part of the drive for your files.




Also note that some games do not like being installed out of the home directory, IE, C:\Program Files
Really it is all up to you and what you have and what you do. I have over 300Gb of crap I tote from system to system now, movies, music, pictures, etc...


My game installations are almost 60GB of data too, so were I to do a install I would set aside 120Gb for the windows installation, as well as games and page, and programs.



And have the remaining for my personal stuff.
 

Jimmy 2004

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I only have about 800 or so songs, and don't download movies and stuff so I only use 10GB for my own files, and the rest of the drive is for Windows and program files. For me, 120GB would be plenty, but as Steevo points out, you could well have way more stuff like that than I do, so if 120GB will allow for everything you already have and room for anything else that's likely to come, that would be good. Games are getting quite space hungry, so 200GB sounds like a nice size for the main partition to me - that would allow for at least 20 big games by today's standards (games like Medieval II need 8GB or so, C&C 3 needs a lot too) and way more of your average 4GB games like Half Life 2.

Just makes it a lot easier when it comes to a fresh install and doesn't take much longer to setup - you could easily move your "My Documents" folder onto that partition, that's what I've done.
 

Casheti

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Here's how I did my 320GB.



Hope it helps somehow.
 

GIGGLA

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Hey all i've been wondering for some time what program people use to get there page file on the fastest part of the hard drive? Or can you just set up a #1partition before you setup partition #2 for windows when formatting? The partition #1 being where the page file would go.(?)

Another question- Which part of the hard disk is the fastest the beginning? or the end? If someone says inside or outside track of hard disk being the fastest I will not understand unless you tell me the beginning or the end.thanks:D
 
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Jimmy 2004

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Hey all i've been wondering for some time what program people use to get there page file on the fastest part of the hard drive? Or can you just set up a #1partition before you setup partition #2 for windows when formatting? The partition #1 being where the page file would go.(?)

Another question- Which part of the hard disk is the fastest the beginning? or the end? If someone says inside or outside track of hard disk being the fastest I will not understand unless you tell me the beginning or the end.:D

This is a subject where there is so much BS floating around the net that you don't know what to do. The outside of the drive would be faster (the outside is doing the same number of revolutions over a set time period as the inside, but because it is further from the centre it has a greater circumference so therefore must be going faster) and from watching hard drives in operation, I believe that the inside is the start of the drive (someone please correct me if I'm wrong on that, I don't actually know for sure). So when most sites say put the page file at the start of the drive because it's faster, I believe they are talking rubbish.

But anyway, in my opinion having the pagefile at one end of the drive is rubbish anyway, because the read-heads will have further to move if you're loading an application towards the end of the drive, and will be constantly going back and forth over a longer distance. Therefore, it would surely be more practical to have the page file in amongst your files so that the heads will have the least average distance to move.

So my view is that you shouldn't worry about where the pagefile ends up - I've never noticed any performance impact and I think the benefits would be negligible. If anyone has any better reason for why the pagefile should be in a certain location I would be pleased to hear it, but that's my theory on the matter. :)
 

GIGGLA

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Hi Jimmy I don't really have knowledge on the subject but when I have thought about it before I agree I would think that it would be almost just as good or the same in the middle it would seem like. When i've done hard drive benchmarks the beginning I think was the fastest and then moving along the gigabytes it would slowly get slower. But like I said in my first sentence in the middle somewhere might be a good balance for all the programs installed I would think. I've noticed that windows usually puts it in the middle somewhere if it can. :)
 

TheShadowFL

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You can go crazy worrying about stuff like that.

There are so many other things that can make some real difference in the way that XP runs.

Now I'm really going to drive you nuts: I have my XP hard drive formatted FAT-32 and several times a week I boot up my PC with my Ghost 2003 (DOS) boot disk and delete all the garbage off of my HD, prior to running Ghost.
I delete every temp file or other garbage file on the HD, then I delete all my old System Restore files, then finally I delete my 1.5 gig Pagefile.(all with three batch files)
Who needs all that crap in a Backup Image File? I reduce the size of my backup file by almost 2 gig's, by doing the cleanup first.

Then after the backup is done (about six minutes on my SATA II HD) I verify my Image File and then do a Restore of the Backup file, from my second HD, back onto C:. When I'm done, my HD is completely rewritten and perfectly ordered. When I boot back up to XP, windows makes a new Pagefile and of course, puts it at the end of the data, giving me a HD that looks like this:



My computer outperforms most of the more expensive computers I work on in my computer business. I boot up in 15 sec's and shutdown in 5 sec's. No loss in performance here, due to the Pagefile being at the end of the data. Your mileage may vary! :nutkick:

The Shadow :cool:
 
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