Partitioning strategy 1 HDD

[Doc7]

Hey all,

I just finished building my (first) PC; well, outside of the case that is. I only ran the CPU, RAM, and gfx card to test the mobo/psu/obviously the aforementioned components, on a tabletop. Case arrives tomorrow and will be set up after work.

I am only going to be using one 320-gig HDD, and tomorrow after work I'll be installing that and then putting on Windows Vista 32-bit.

Does anyone have a suggested partition strategy for just one HDD? I was thinking:

20 Gig Windows Vista 32-bit Partition, created during initial set up of PC (installation of Vista)

After Vista is installed
- create 4 more 20-gig partitions for a) Vista 32-bit paging file, and b) future OS (64-bit Vista, Vienna in 2010), and possibly a foray into Linux, which I've never tried. These partitions can also be used for paging files of the new OSes if I have only 1 or 2 non-Vista OSes installed.

At this point I'll have something less than 220 gigs of HDD space left (because I don't start with that much really, right?). As I currently have a 120 gig HDD that I've had for 6 years, and have 60 gigs left, I think I can get away with something like this:

Split the remaining space evenly, and install ALL applications (from Microsoft Office to Bioshock) in one partition, with all Word, Excel, music/movies, etc files in the other; Quicken and game-save/user-profile files if possible to store them on a separate partition from their respective applications. In a year or so time, drop another $100 on whatever the most cost-effective HDD available is, and use for backup + increased efficiency (swap file reorganization, etc.)

Anything stupid here? Is my Vista partition big enough?? I see they recommend "40 gig hard drive with 15 gig available" ??

 

[Kursah]

Hey all,

I just finished building my (first) PC; well, outside of the case that is. I only ran the CPU, RAM, and gfx card to test the mobo/psu/obviously the aforementioned components, on a tabletop. Case arrives tomorrow and will be set up after work.

I am only going to be using one 320-gig HDD, and tomorrow after work I'll be installing that and then putting on Windows Vista 32-bit.

Does anyone have a suggested partition strategy for just one HDD? I was thinking:

20 Gig Windows Vista 32-bit Partition, created during initial set up of PC (installation of Vista)

After Vista is installed
- create 4 more 20-gig partitions for a) Vista 32-bit paging file, and b) future OS (64-bit Vista, Vienna in 2010), and possibly a foray into Linux, which I've never tried. These partitions can also be used for paging files of the new OSes if I have only 1 or 2 non-Vista OSes installed.

At this point I'll have something less than 220 gigs of HDD space left (because I don't start with that much really, right?). As I currently have a 120 gig HDD that I've had for 6 years, and have 60 gigs left, I think I can get away with something like this:

Split the remaining space evenly, and install ALL applications (from Microsoft Office to Bioshock) in one partition, with all Word, Excel, music/movies, etc files in the other; Quicken and game-save/user-profile files if possible to store them on a separate partition from their respective applications. In a year or so time, drop another $100 on whatever the most cost-effective HDD available is, and use for backup + increased efficiency (swap file reorganization, etc.)

Anything stupid here? Is my Vista partition big enough?? I see they recommend "40 gig hard drive with 15 gig available" ??

I did one 20gb drive for Windows whether XP or Vista, and left it for updates, cache and such.

Then my second partition goes for gaming, music, programs, and such, granted I've done the divvy the HDD up into 3-5 chunks, it doesn't help in performance like it did a few years ago, especially with SATA2. I've been treated very well with my Seagate 500gb, 1st partiton 20 gb, second is like 460gb (ntfs on both of course). Just remember that just because the box says 320gb, that filesystems and formatting programs will read less due to how their advertised measurement is (1000) compared to actual reading from Windows/disc utilities (1024).

If you want a backup drive, I recommend using an external or seperate drive just in case.

Hope that helps!

 

[largon]

Dedicating a partition for pagefile/programs/whatever yields no performance unless it's on a different HDD than the OS.

 

[Doc7]

Dedicating a partition for pagefile/programs/whatever yields no performance unless it's on a different HDD than the OS.

Performance perhaps, but what about fragmentation, and ease of formatting? In addition to ability to install various OSes if I am so inclined. I already know I want to partition, I just don't know what strategy to follow.

 

[georges]

you want performance u need to RAID 0 or stripe. use Systool and you will be pissed that your single HDD rated at 3.0G =300mb per sec is bursting at 140 and sustaining 70-80 if you are lucky. partitioning is for organization not performance. RAID stripe em and you will see it go to 240 with Opsys installed or 299 if no opsys installed.

<------------ my sys specs
2x80 gig raid 0 =3 partitions both OPSYS on this 220MB sustained.

2x 250 gig raid 0= 5 partitions for everything else.. 270-299 sustained. depends on my computer's mood.