Partioning HDD in Windows7

[mike1]

Yesterday I ordered the following PC from COSTCO:
ZT Sysytems 7391Mi
Intel® Core™ i7 Processor 870 (2.93GHz)
8GB DDR3RAM
sataII 1.5TB HDD
ati 4350 video card (not considering crossfire at this time)
350watt PSU
Windows 7 64bit Home Edition

I want to create at least five paritions on the SATAII 1.5TB HDD.

I'm not familiar w/ Windows7 but i believe I can do this w/o third party software.
Is this correct?

Thanks

 

[Alsenor]

Yesterday I ordered the following PC from COSTCO:
ZT Sysytems 7391Mi
Intel® Core™ i7 Processor 870 (2.93GHz)
8GB DDR3RAM
sataII 1.5TB HDD
ati 4350 video card (not considering crossfire at this time)
350watt PSU
Windows 7 64bit Home Edition

I want to create at least five paritions on the SATAII 1.5TB HDD.

I'm not familiar w/ Windows7 but i believe I can do this w/o third party software.
Is this correct?

Thanks

Yes, in Disk management>create and format hard disk partitions.

 

[mike1]

Where can I find instructions on how to add partition using disk management in Win7

 

[Alsenor]

Where can I find instructions on how to add partition using disk management in Win7

go to
start button
type "disk management" into the search line
click on "Create and format hard disk partitions" in the suggestions window.

 

[Paperdoc]

WATCH for a particular detail. The area of a HDD reserved for creating the Partition Table has limited space - enough to create no more the 4 Primary Partitions. IF you want more Partitions that that, you CAN create a larger number using a less-common feature. Among the (up to 4) Primary Partitions, ONE of them can be instead an Extended Partition, which is a special type. Then that Extended Partition can have defined within it several Logical Partitions. Each Primary Partition and each Logical Partition will be treated by Windows as a completely separate "drive" with its own letter name. See this Wiki page for more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning

 

[mike1]

WATCH for a particular detail. The area of a HDD reserved for creating the Partition Table has limited space - enough to create no more the 4 Primary Partitions. IF you want more Partitions that that, you CAN create a larger number using a less-common feature. Among the (up to 4) Primary Partitions, ONE of them can be instead an Extended Partition, which is a special type. Then that Extended Partition can have defined within it several Logical Partitions. Each Primary Partition and each Logical Partition will be treated by Windows as a completely separate "drive" with its own letter name. See this Wiki page for more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning

My plan is to have a partition for programs and another for data.
How would you create them? The disk currently has a C;, a system partition which is 100MB.
do i need to create another primary partition or can I create one logical with another partition inside of it for C,D,E?

 

[ricno]

How would you create them? The disk currently has a C;, a system partition which is 100MB.
do i need to create another primary partition or can I create one logical with another partition inside of it for C,D,E?

This disk with a 100MB C:, is that the new 1.5 TB disk you are speaking about, or another disk you already own?

 

[mike1]

The PC has one 1.5TB HDD. On the HDD it has one primary partition "sytem" 100MB and the rest of the HDD is another primary partition that consists of the rest of the HDD.

Another reason for creating the multiple partitions is to decrease not increase I/O.
What it make sense to create a logical partition off of "C" partition then create an Extended partition
from the logical partition thus only having two "primary" partitions?

One partition for OS, one for programs and another for data?

How would you partition the 1.5TB drive?

 

[mike1]

Using Win7 Disk Manager i created a 350GB primary partition "D" and a logical partition "E" about 340GB.

is there a downside to creating three primary partitions? Will I be better off converting the new primary partition to logical if I can do that?

 

[ricno]

is there a downside to creating three primary partitions? Will I be better off converting the new primary partition to logical if I can do that?

It does not matter performance wise if the partitions are primary or extended/logical. You only have to care about logical partitions if you need to have more than four partitions on a single disk.

As for performance - I think there are several sides to this:

The disk IO is much higher on the outer edges on the disk than to the end of it. By creating the first partition and making it perhaps 300 GB you could be sure that the files you place there will get the highest IO.

If you want you can then create several other partitions, but the performance will be slightly lower as you get closer to the end of the disk.

More things to concider: If you must often read/write from both the first and second partition, then the disk head has to move more, which will cost performance.

Also note that newer operating systems like Windows 7 will try to optimize also by placing the mostly used files closer to the edges.

I have myself two 1TB disk (Samsung F3) which I have partitioned as follows:

C: 300 GB - operating system files - on 1th drive
D: 300 GB - data partition for most important files - on 2nd drive

M: 700 GB - data partition for not used much files - on 1th drive
N: 700 GB - data partition for not used much files - on 2th drive

I belive this is the most optimal for me. Having the os and the primary data on partitions close to the outher edges on both disk would give the best performance in total, and it also allows Win7 to place the files at the best places physicaly. On the M and N partition I will place file that I will not use often, so I should get no performance penalty for the moving arms.

Please note that I "like" partitions, so this could perhaps not be for everyone.

 

[mike1]

last night I assigned "Y" the DVD drive, disabled all USB drives, then using Win7 disk manager on 1.5TB HDD I created drive "D" 350GB (primary partition) and drive "E" logical partition, 340GB. Reenabled the UBS drives .

Now I have C,D,E,F,G,H and "Y" is DVD drive. I had only installed one program using the DVD drive so I'm too concerned about reasigning the drive.

Even after deleting the page file the "C" partition would not shrink below 700GB at some point I need to figure out how to shrink it smaller and I might add another partition to the HDD.

Thanks all for your explanations and other help.

 

[jovcenaum]

You don't need to delete page drive.
Try this:
1. Turn off System Restore - Control Panel, System, Advanced System Setting,
System Protection, mark system partition and click Configure. Check Turn off
system protection, click Apply and OK.
2. Defragment system partition (twice)
3. Check Disk - open Computer, right click on "C" , Properties, Tools, Check now,
sign both, Start, restart computer...
4. Defragment again "C"
See now is possible to shrink "C". This usually works for me.

 

[jovcenaum]

If you have some Anti-virus program or some utility uninstall it.
When you finish job turn on System Restore

 

[mike1]

Much thanks, I'll try it this week.

 

[ricno]

I can also recommend that you look at a software called Perfectdisk. There are some situation where Windows have placed NTFS metadata files at the end of the partition, and those can never the builtin defragment tool move. However Perfectdisk allowed me to shrink a volume be moving these files also.

It is not freeware, but there is a 30-day trial you could check out.

http://perfectdisk.raxco.com

 

[mike1]

I'll check out perfect Disk and another one is Partition manager although I'm not sure it has the feature you just described.

 

[jovcenaum]

Ok, ricno knows the purpose of fixing disk in this process, it is just to clean
free space. After that Defragmenter can sort and move all files to lower
addresses of hard disk partition. It is same with some anti-virus software,
you must uninstall it and perform fix disk to clean free space. Same issue is
with some tools and utility software.
But i saw with Windows 7 on some laptops another issue. There was "Backup
Image" within system partition and in that case it reserves 120 GB for its
own purpose.

 

[mike1]

In another thread i read disk manager probably won't reduce the 700GB "C: partition anymore.
besides, i need to move some partitions so i'm going to buy a third party software or use perfect disk to
move the partions and shrink them more.

thanks