[help] Partition and Files Placement

[sevendp]

Hi...
Suppose I have 3 HD 7200RPM:
250GB SATA WDC (in order)
120GB IDE SEAGATE
40GB IDE MAXTOR

AFAIK Windows and PageFile must put on different physical of HD for better performance, my plan:
250GB -> Games and Movies
120GB -> Windows, Programs, Data, Music and Pictures
40GB -> PageFile, temporary file and File Master

If I'm using WinXP only... Is that placement ok? Should I divide the 250GB to 2 partitions?
or it is ok with 1 partition?

But, If I'm using Dual Boot XP and Vista? then how to put my files placement and HD partitions?
any information or suggestion will be appreciated...

thanks
dp

nb: sorry for my english

 

[Eru]

even though the drives are the same rotation speed the densities would be different, so the access and transfer speeds would differ between these drives.
you might want to move your pagefile to the fastest drive which i assume would be the WDC.

 

[FTCold]

I would just keep my life simple and use the 250 for os/software, the 120 for a backup and the 40 for testing purposes or as a mobile unit. If you are going to dual boot like you were asking I'd take a small portion of the 250 for whichever os you will use the least. Probably around 30GB should do the trick.

If you put your software and applications on a different partition/hdd than windows, should something happen to windows and you have to start over chances are 90% of your software will no longer work. Think of all the registry keys and dll's that will no longer be there.

It makes no sense to divide up your hard drives in a user environment (except as I said dual booting), it just adds another level of complexity that doesn't need to be there. In the end you're really only shooting yourself in the foot. You won't get any improvement by partitioning a single hard drive, and you'll even lose performance by putting anything on that 40. I would just keep your life simple and setup something like I have above. The more drives you spread data out on, the better chance you have of losing some of that data whether it be apps/games/os/pictures.

 

[sevendp]

thanks everyone for the information and suggestion ....

Sure I will use NTFS to all my HD...and i set static size for the pagefile usually at 1768MB.

I agree with most of you....
my plan is Dual Boot XP and Vista, XP only for games. Vista for application and multimedia player.

i want to know about:
1. if i have 2 GB RAM, and i set pagefile to 2 GB static size, is that really important to put pagefile into the fastest one? i think if i got 2 GB ram, pagefile utilization will be small right? maybe under 300 MB after i play games for hours and see pagefile usage on 'performance tab on task manager'. why not put games files to the fastest one to gain more speed when loading games? correct me if im wrong

2. how about this?
250gb for Vista+programs & games, Vista's pagefile on 120gb
120gb for XP + multimedia files. Xp's pagefile on 250gb
40gb for master
data on 250gb and backup on 120gb

note: pagefile always in static size

im seldom to format HD, if i want to reinstall windows, usually i just delete windows and program files directory.

3. how about temp ? where i shoulp put it? usually i put it on same hd with pagefile.

any suggestion are welcome
thanks
dp

 

[runswindows95]

My thinking is this:

40GB for Vista
120GB for XP and Games
250GB for your files

 

[sevendp]

ok pals
let me try that.....

thx a lot

 

[alcattle]

use the same pagefile for all OS'es, as they overwrite themselves anyway. The purpose of putting the pagefile on a different drive is they tend to mess up your normal drives when they rewrite so often, use a small partition or small drive and use it for temporary files and the pagefiles. when it dies, replace it with a different small drive. Most you should need is 5 gb or 2 times RAM size