Seeking Advice on Partition Scheme for New PC

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Urbanitus

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Sep 27, 2012
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I'll start by saying that I'm not sure whether this belongs in the Systems or Storage category, but I'm going with Systems since it's a question applying to a new system build. I figure others may have similar questions for their system builds. So...

This weekend I completed the build of my new gaming PC as discussed over here (photos to come shortly). All of my hardware appears to be running fine, and I've got Windows 8.1 and drivers installed. However, I'm coming from a dying laptop on which I just reinstalled Windows 7 as my last unsuccessful attempt to fix its sluggishness, and I'm debating the best use of partitions to help avoid unnecessary pain in the event I ever need to reinstall Windows on my new PC.

My new PC has a 250GB SSD (Samsung 840 EVO) and a 1TB HDD (WD Black), and I'm thinking about creating two partitions on each. The SSD would have a partition for OS/drivers/etc as well as a partition for programs that would benefit the most from the SSD speed like Adobe CS4, open-world games, etc. The HDD would have a partition for other programs and data as well as a partition for backing up a few key system images (1 for the current fresh OS/driver only install, 1 for the install after I load all of my programs, games, system tweaks, etc.).

So, my main question is: Does this seem like a good setup? (Or is any of it unnecessary?)

If I move forward with this plan (or if you have alternatives to suggest), I'm also curious if anyone can answer the following more detail-oriented questions:

    ■ How large should the OS/drivers partition be? Right now, I'm at about 13GB used, but I'm sure that future patches will add to that size considerably over time. What size partition would be enough to ensure adequate space in the future: 30GB, 50GB, ???
    ■ With a 250GB SSD, is there any reason not to just install all of my programs on the 2nd partition? On my laptop, all of my programs like MS Office, Adobe CS4, games, etc. didn't get anywhere close to even 100GB in total size, but I plan to install many more games now that I have a PC that can play them.
    ■ How large should my backup partition for system images be? All of my data files are already being backed up to an external drive on my home network as well as CrashPlan, so the main purpose of the 2+ "clean" images is to avoid needing to wipe the SSD in the future. Although, if my data is already on a separate partition, maybe this wouldn't be the problem that it was on my laptop...
    ■ I debated a third partition on the HDD, but I see no reason why I couldn't accomplish the same sort of division in an easier way by starting with a "Data" folder and a "Programs" folder within the non-backup partition that then contains all of the folder trees for those purposes. Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance for the advice!

 
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S
Here is my way of handling a SSD +HDD combo.
I installed the OS on my SSD and keep most of the programs such as browser, skype, antivirus etc.. on it. With Microsoft Office, I have tried installing it on the SSD and HDD and found that you can install it on the HDD and it is quite quick to load. Documents, images, downloaded files are stored on the HDD.
You probably still want Abode on your SSD though. I keep my steam and steam games on my hard drive so whenever i reinstall, i don't need to redownload games. Steam will still work fine.
Since you have a 250GB SSD drive, you don't need to worry too much since you have a 1TB hard drive as well.

To be fair reinstalling windows on a SSD is quite quick compared to a HDD.
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Suztera

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Mar 18, 2014
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I don't see the point of creating partitions on the SSD. Your system image backup is fine been on the HDD or on DVDs as long you don't reformat the whole drive/partition. Technically you don't need to partition the drives. Putting it in folders in a single partition is fine.
For when reinstalling your windows, its still best to reformat the drive/partition of the SSD.
Since installing programs often relies on the registry, there is no need to installing programs on a different partition and a separate partition for windows.
 
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Urbanitus

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That's a good point about the registry. I hadn't really thought about reinstalling the programs basically being a requirement of reinstalling Windows. That is so obvious to me know that I'm embarrassed I even proposed that in the first place. Really, the best way to save time is just to separate my data from the OS which I'm already doing with the separate drive.



I'd probably still prefer a separate partition for the images solely because it completely differentiates that space in my mind. I've had a "Recovery" partition on my laptop for the last 4 years that I just ignored as a separate drive letter. I know that I should trust myself not to delete a folder containing the images because I'm very careful about those things, but I'd still have an irrational fear of accidentally deleting it.
 
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Suztera

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Mar 18, 2014
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Here is my way of handling a SSD +HDD combo.
I installed the OS on my SSD and keep most of the programs such as browser, skype, antivirus etc.. on it. With Microsoft Office, I have tried installing it on the SSD and HDD and found that you can install it on the HDD and it is quite quick to load. Documents, images, downloaded files are stored on the HDD.
You probably still want Abode on your SSD though. I keep my steam and steam games on my hard drive so whenever i reinstall, i don't need to redownload games. Steam will still work fine.
Since you have a 250GB SSD drive, you don't need to worry too much since you have a 1TB hard drive as well.

To be fair reinstalling windows on a SSD is quite quick compared to a HDD.
 
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