Two HardDrives...Partioning Needed?

[DragonXI]

im planning on building my own PC, for the first time --- I ordered Two 250GB Seagate SATA Hard Drives...

Reason i got the 2nd hard drive was mainly to put all my Music, Videos, Movies etc into that Drive....and use my 1st hard drive for my OS, Applications, Games.

I never partioned my Drives before & was wondering if it would really be necessary for me to do....Do you think i would be fine without partioning my Drives or do you really reccommend that I do partioning to my drives?

Any type of reply will be appreciated. thanks

 

[slicessoul]

New drives aren't partitioned and formatted yet. So, YES, you must absolutely partition it and format it.

Depending on your drives, you can find tools to partition and format on each manufacturers.

 

[mkaibear]

You will need to partition your drives before you can use them.

I suspect the question you are *actually* asking is "do I really need to partition the drives into more than one partition per drive?", and the answer to that is "no, you don't really need to".

However, I would suggest the following partitioning scheme;

Drive 1:

Partition 1: 30Gb (Windows)
Partition 2: 50Gb (Applications)
Partition 3: Remainder (Games)

Drive 2:

Partition 1: 10Gb (Temporary files and pagefile)
Partition 2: Remainder (Music, Videos, Movies, etc)


Feel free to edit the size of the partitions - I've set it at the size I would use


If you really can't be fussed, I'd say do the following;

Drive 1:

Partition 1: 250Gb (Windows, Applications, Games)

Drive 2:

Partition 1: 250Gb (Music, Videos, Movies)

And let Windows sort out what it wants to put where.

 

[PCcashCow]

If your just using straight disks, put your OS and APPS on the first drive, then divide the second drive into three parts.

Pagefile
Games
Other Crap.

Make the Page file small, then just do some small math to figure out much game space you need verses how much data (music, photos..ect) per month. Partitioning is not a science, people only agree on two things, isolating the OS and moving the Pagefile off the OS partition, the rest is gravy.

 

[OldGoat]

It really depends on what you want, I presume that you will be using windows since you asked this question.
The first drive can be one partition, but the second drive needs two; One partition for the pagefile about 10gig will be all you need, one partition for everything else.

I would even recommend experimenting with different setup's if you have the time ofcourse.

 

[Doughbuy]

Partition magic is your friend.

I would say, put whatever you access daily on one partition, defrag often, once a week, and everything else on the other. You probably won't need more than 50 gigs for windows, apps and games (unless your the type that never uninstalls anything, then 100 gigs). Everything else can just be storage.

Partion magic will be there to change things around if you ever need be. I would recommend it since its a nice piece of software, but not really needed.

 

[HoldenMcGroin]

Partition magic is your friend.

Absolutely. Don't forget to partition before you install OS. I had a 250 GB hard drive and I tried reclaiming the lost space (135GB recognized by OS) with SP2. It then "found" the remaining space of the 250 GB drive, but all data there was quirky. Video files would suddenly stop, pictures would be messed up, numerous programs suddenly erroring out, etc.

Reloaded ENTIRE OS again after partition magic, all problems gone.

And don't forget to make a Ghost Image when you load OS and Apps.
Norton Ghost is your friend....

 

[yieldan]

Hi all,

I have a similar question that I think is relevant to this thread. I have a 250gig HDD that already has Windows installed on it. I just bought a 160gig HDD, both are currently formatted with single partitions that span the entire drive. I was wondering if I could possibly create extra partitions (at least on the second drive) to set it up so that only OS, games and apps are on the first drive and data and pagefile on the second. Is it too late for that? If not, how would I go about making the changes?

 

[HoldenMcGroin]

Wouldn't want you to hijack the thread, but I'm thinking you could make a ghost image of the drive with your OS on it. Then, boot from partition magic and setup your drives how you'd like them. Then load the ghost image onto the partition drive. I think that would work, though I have yet to try that.

 

[yieldan]

So there's no way to do it without purchasing Norton Ghost? There's no way to tell windows to use the other drive for say, the My Documents folder, or the pagefile?

Edit: I guess what I'm really trying to ask is: Is there a way that I can retroactively configure my computer to use drive 1 for the OS, apps and games and drive 2 for data?

 

[SciPunk]

You will need to partition your drives before you can use them.

I suspect the question you are *actually* asking is "do I really need to partition the drives into more than one partition per drive?", and the answer to that is "no, you don't really need to".

However, I would suggest the following partitioning scheme;

Drive 1:

Partition 1: 30Gb (Windows)
Partition 2: 50Gb (Applications)
Partition 3: Remainder (Games)

Drive 2:

Partition 1: 10Gb (Temporary files and pagefile)
Partition 2: Remainder (Music, Videos, Movies, etc)


Feel free to edit the size of the partitions - I've set it at the size I would use


If you really can't be fussed, I'd say do the following;

Drive 1:

Partition 1: 250Gb (Windows, Applications, Games)

Drive 2:

Partition 1: 250Gb (Music, Videos, Movies)

And let Windows sort out what it wants to put where.

That's a good layout, but I would keep in much more simple. Partion your primary dirve into two volumes (sometimes called logical drives)... 80GB (more or less) for windows, and the rest for data spare data (might never get used).

Then partion your 2nd drive into just one big volume w/ your page file, MP3s, CD images, anything you ever save from any application via the "file/save" menu...

More than that and you start to get "letter sprawl" in windows explorer.

Also (and more of an issue than "letter sprawl") is that some applications only want to be installed on the C: drive. During installation they give you a suggested path, and if you change that, somewhere down the line you may get an error when some component is looking for somthing that is hard-coded to look in that default director. This is less of a problem in this day and age where programmers are better about using the "modular programing" techniques, but it can still happen. Also, if there are ever any patches or 3rd party add-ons, they may get confused if you install games/apps anywhere else but the default directory on the C: drive.

 

[PCcashCow]

You mounted the 160 volume to your 250 volume? If this is the case you can move the data off that drive and use the disk part utility to unmount the the volume. Then you'll have a straight disk again to move your pagefile onto.

 

[SciPunk]

Hi all,

I have a similar question that I think is relevant to this thread. I have a 250gig HDD that already has Windows installed on it. I just bought a 160gig HDD, both are currently formatted with single partitions that span the entire drive. I was wondering if I could possibly create extra partitions (at least on the second drive) to set it up so that only OS, games and apps are on the first drive and data and pagefile on the second. Is it too late for that? If not, how would I go about making the changes?

I assume you don't want to do any formatting or re-installing of the OS and all your apps, right?

To do any of that stuff to your primary drive, you probably need to resort to Partion Magic (3rd party software).

The 2nd drive shouldn't be too hard to do what you want, with no additional software. You should back up all your data on it first !!!! (If you have space, just drag it to a flolder on your primary dirve.) Then you can use the windows tools to repartion at will, and then drag files back. Moving the page file can be done at any time without loss of any data... right click on "my computer" and choose properties... click on the advanced tab... click on performance "settings" button... click on the advanced tab... click on the virtual memmory "change" button... and make your selections.

 

[yieldan]

I'm not sure what you mean by unmounting or "disk part utility." I have all my programs and data on my 250 gig drive, and I would like to set it up so that only OS and apps and some data is on the 250 gig drive, and all the rest of my data is on the 160 gig drive.

Edit: disk part utility, I get it, where is my brain.