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Hard Disk Partitioning.

macbeth

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May 25, 2006
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A friend of mine plan to buy a WD2500KS(SATA2) 250GB/7200RPM/16MB Buffer. What is the best way to partition it? And what advantage do 16MB of Buffer offer over 8MB of Buffer? Will there be much performance gain? He is currently using XP but intend to up grade to Vista when the time is right.
 
Well, this I'd partition it this way:

20 GB drive C
whatever is left (230GB) drive D

There is a slight performance gain from 8 to 16mb data, it depends on what size of data you are working with.
 
Good tip from DoS. However, I'd go with 30GB for the OS partition. Gives you more room for programs. Don't go over 30GB otherwise your sector size changes and becomes less efficient for OS files.

The second partition I would have is then for games, call it the T:/ drive. Make it as big as the number of games you want to have on it.

Why a separate partition? So you can manage it and defrag this separately from your OS drive...

The remaining space call drive d:/ for data.

(I have a second HDD which I have as M:/ for media with all movies and MP3)
 
depends on the operating system, i still support the 20-30gb por the OS, then another 10-20 for swap, and then the rest for general use
 
Will be using XP for the moment but will up grade to Vista in the future. But Vista need 40GB so how to upgrade in the future if partition is only 30GB?
 
I really see no performance gain from partitioning in my eyes, but all I did was put the pagefile on it's own partition. My system seems to run faster since I made it one partition again oddly enough..
 
I've never understood why everyone partitions their OS drive. I just have one drive that holds my OS and anything that installs. My other two drives hold various information, music and movies and such.

Always worked for me without any problem /shrug
 
Its to make reformat windows faster and easier. Since it takes less time to reformat a smaller partition. And takes less time to defrag the partition as well too.
 
I understand that, but you need to defrag the other partitions as well anyways. You might as well do it all at one time, and if you are reformatting so often that time is a problem, then you have a problem.

It takes me less then a day to reformat and reinstall everything up to date. Cutting off a few hours isn't going to make me feel any better. I just don't see the point.
 
yeah i followed peeps advice and put in a small drive to use as a swap , really not seen any dif? i think the raid array is the ticket full format of a 150 gig array about 20 minutes but a ouick format is faster maybe five minutes and then the instal is 19 minutes. So your not outta a lot of time.
 
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