Basic Partitioning Question

[masterofunlocking]

I'm planning on reformatting soon and just had a quick question about partitioning my hard drive. I plan to install windows on my current 120GB hard drive, and use a second 250GB hard drive for storage. Now my question is if I should make a partition on the 120GB hard drive for just windows, and then leave the rest for programs, or if i should create another partition for programs and then the little extra for more storage, or if i should do nothing at all. What are the benefits for creating separate partitions for windows or programs?

 

[bombasschicken]

Now my question is if I should make a partition on the 120GB hard drive for just windows, and then leave the rest for programs, or if i should create another partition for programs and then the little extra for more storagequote]

in my experience its user prefrence.. You should deff have a partition for windows.. but as for a diff partition for your programs.. i dont like that idea personally.. if something happens to your OS then you have to reformat.. and now all the DLLs and stuff are not linking to the second partiton with all your programs on it.. so you have to reinstall them anyways..

like i said its really to prefrence but your your not really saving any time.. and its not a performance increase (although it might be a performance hit since your program files are on a diff partition..)

just my thoughts..

 

[Anoobis]

It does help when keeping things tidy. It's a lot quicker to defrag a smaller partition for your data or for your program files than to defrag the entire drive. I also set up a separate partition for media burning. "Backing Up" DVDs fragments a drive quite heavily. Again, defragging a smaller partition is less time consuming than the entire drive. If I remember correctly, you can have up to 4 partitions on one drive (I could be wrong) so make a list of the things you do and plan from there.

As far as performance gains, I don't think there is much. You have the option of setting aside the first partition of your 250GB for your swap file since your using 2 separate drives. It doesn't need to be large. 3 GB should cover it. This will put the swap file at the very beginning decreasing access time (generally put) and giving a small increase in speed. But don't expect any kind of effect like overclocking the processor and memory has by doing this.

 

[bombasschicken]

It does help when keeping things tidy. It's a lot quicker to defrag a smaller partition for your data or for your program files than to defrag the entire drive. I also set up a separate partition for media burning. "Backing Up" DVDs fragments a drive quite heavily. Again, defragging a smaller partition is less time consuming than the entire drive. If I remember correctly, you can have up to 4 partitions on one drive (I could be wrong) so make a list of the things you do and plan from there.

As far as performance gains, I don't think there is much. You have the option of setting aside the first partition of your 250GB for your swap file since your using 2 separate drives. It doesn't need to be large. 3 GB should cover it. This will put the swap file at the very beginning decreasing access time (generally put) and giving a small increase in speed. But don't expect any kind of effect like overclocking the processor and memory has by doing this.

well its quicker to defrag a smaller drive but you now have 2+ drives to defrag... so.. it ends up being around the same time ..

and you can have as many partitions as you want on a drive...

i do however agree with the swap being on another drive.. something like 4 gigs if you have 4 gigs of ram....