Is this a good partition set-up?

[rustomac]

I have a 500gb SATA hhd.
and a 160gb (for backup) EIDE in JBOD of course.

So I am going to reformat my 500gb hdd to accommodate windows 7 and windows xp.

I currently have a dual boot with xp/vista. But I will not be using vista anymore.

So I want to know is this a good partition set-up?

C:\ Windows 7 - 14gb
D:\ Windows XP - 6gb
E:\ Program Files (win7) - 100gb
F:\ Program Files (XP) - 100gb
G:\ My Documents/Media - 280gb

1) anything to modify or change?
2) are the OS partitions large enough (swap files included)
3) could anyone give me link or tell me how to move program files and environment variables so that windows recognizes that the program files are in a different partition.
4) is it worth splitting my program files from there respectable OS(s)? (My reason is if my OS crashes, i dont have to re-download, and for organization)

 

[louarnold]

No. I would not recommend this partition design.
You will want much more space (say 90-100 GB) for each Windows installation. Installing alot of programs will eat this up rather quickly.

I also recommend sizing the data partitions to something that will fit on a backup device without compression. I use several 4GB data partitions so I send all the files to a DVD without worrying about room on the DVD. And when the 4GB partition is full, then its time to clean it up and back it up.

If the design implies that you require the space for media files alone and will not install many large programs into the Windows partitions, then I perhaps your design is sufficient, but I never set up even a Windows 2000 Pro system on less that a dedicated 20GB drive.

 

[louarnold]

Just one more comment. I would almost like to suggest two separate computers, networked for convenience. The drawback is speed for media work, I assume, but its advantage is simplicity - the splitting of a single failure point.