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HD partitioning question

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Rolen27   10-15-2002 at 03:18:13 AM

I'm building a system where I'll have 160 GB of HD space (2 80GB drives in RAID 0). Is there any particular way I should partition the drives? I will be running Win XP with 512 MB DDR. I've heard some people suggest that a seperate partition should be made for Windows swap files. How large should that partition be? Is there a certain size that I should keep partitions below (does a really large or small partition hamper performance)?

Thanks

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HammerBot   10-15-2002 at 07:45:00 AM
- 0 +

I have 2*80GB in RAID0 partitionend as:

C: Boot, 5GB
D: Programs + applcations, 45 GB
E: Data1 50 GB
F: Data2 50 GB

I keep the swap file on the C drive. (I dont know why some prefer to move it to another partition). Further I keep the boot partition small and as the first one, since this speeds up access to the partition and makes it easy to make a drive image of.

The remaining space Ive just arbitrarely devided into some equal sized chunks. I prefer not to have too large partitions, since that will slow down defragmentation, undelete etc.

Reply to HammerBot
lhgpoobaa   10-16-2002 at 04:36:31 AM
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It all depends on if you are going to format as NTFS or FAT32.
Should you choose FAT32 i reccommend that you keep the partitions below 32Gb, otherwise the cluster sizes just get way to large.

Some poeple put the swapfile on a seperate partition to achieve optimal speed, however its not really necessary considering you have 512Mb of ram. Swap file accessing will be pretty rare.

I get by quite nicely with a 5Gb system partition containing my win2k OS, the swap file, hibernate file and program files.

One final thing. While the 800JB's are good drives (got one myself) remeber to backup your critical data once in a while. :smile:

<b>Plaid will NEVER go out of style! :cool: </b>

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Rolen27   10-16-2002 at 10:08:34 PM
- 0 +

What's the difference between NTFS and FAT32? I don't know anything about NTFS. Also, I thought I heard before that Linux doesn't recognize NTFS drives.

Thanks

Cards are done =(

Reply to Rolen27
Col_Kiwi   10-17-2002 at 01:16:09 AM
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NTFS is New Technologies Filing System, used by Windows NT and NT based OS's such as WinXP. Its a lot more efficient then FAT32 assigning clusters, and allows larger files. It's also slightly slower then FAT32. It is true that linux cannot read NTFS.

-Col.Kiwi

Reply to Col_Kiwi
lhgpoobaa   10-19-2002 at 07:06:04 AM
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Ive heard that Some versions of Linux can Read NTFS, but not write reliably (or at all)

But yes, on a PC system i prefer it over fat32 despite the slight performance loss.
Big Partitions, Small cluster sizes, robust behavior, and ability to handle files over 4gb in size.

<b>Microsoft is good for you. MS has your best intrests at heart. MS products are easy to use, Reliable, Bug free and Secure. MS says so. What possible reason would they have to lie to you?</b>

Reply to lhgpoobaa
marneus   10-22-2002 at 02:53:12 PM
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160GB hmmm, just remember the more drives your create, the slower the performance will get, so about 4-6 Partitions I would suggest & definately keep the swapfile n the C:

My personal suggestion is c:20GB d:80gb e:40 f:20 (but hey its just what I would do... 'pends what U need it for)


no-one shouts louder than someone who is being ignored, or in the case of techies, to be heard over the noise of their PC's ;-)

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elzt   10-23-2002 at 04:21:43 AM
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Is there any difference in performance under NTFS if I put windows o/s and programs in one partition rather than put them in different partitions? Thanks.

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HammerBot   10-23-2002 at 07:28:23 AM
- 0 +

Quote :

160GB hmmm, just remember the more drives your create, the slower the performance will get, so about 4-6 Partitions I would suggest


Huh? What makes you think performance suffer if you have many partitions?

Reply to HammerBot
HammerBot   10-23-2002 at 07:31:27 AM
- 0 +

NTFS is slightly slower than FAT(32) (I think its about 1-3%). I usually keep my boot partition small and as the first partition on the drive. This makes it faster since its located in the beginning of the disk. Further a small boot partition makes it faster to make and restore a drive image.

Reply to HammerBot
elzt   10-23-2002 at 08:32:51 AM
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Hammer,

Just curious what cluster size you set for the primary boot partition. Mine is the default 4096 bytes. It doesn't allow me to set the desired size when I installed Win2000 from CD.

Anyway, will the performance be affected by cluster size as well?

Thanks again.

Reply to elzt
HammerBot   10-23-2002 at 09:59:11 AM
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Yes, performance is affected by clustersize. Especially when usign RAID0. The default size of 4kB is about the worst you can choose for RAID0.
The optimal combination of clustersize/stripesize is a much debated issue. It is mostly affected on what you mostly use the drives for (e.g. large files, video streaming, small files etc.), but the harddrive type also affect this. (Some drives prefer a certain stripesize etc.) So I recommend you run a few test with various cluster and stripesizes. e.g. test stripesize of 8,16 and 32k and clustersize of 8,16 and 32k (Thats nine test)
I use 16k for both clustersize and stripesize.

If you choose to use NTFS, it is not possible to change the clustersize without reformatting the partition (At least I know of no tool that can do that). If you use eg. FAT32 the clustersize can be changed even if there is data on the partition with tools like partition magic.

To put the OS on a RAID0, I think the 3-disk approach is the most convenient. Especially if you want to do some tests with various stripe/cluster combinations.
You will need a third drive temporarily, where you install the OS and whatever benchmarking tools you prefer. Then you set up your RAID0 array, boot on the third drive and perform you benchmarks. When you found the optimum stripe/cluster size, you partition the RAID0 array format it and finally installs the OS. Make sure you do not choose format during OS install since that will reset the clustersize to 4k.

Reply to HammerBot
raging_redneck   11-02-2002 at 02:48:35 AM
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HI, I have 2x 80gb harddrives set to raid0, and I was thinking of partitioning them.
5gb Boot
144gb for games and apps
or should I just partition them like your harddrives

Reply to raging_redneck
HammerBot   11-02-2002 at 08:27:40 AM
- 0 +

Choose what you wish. I have listed what I consider advantages for a number of smaller partitions. If you dont agree, make one large partition if that will give you some advantages.

<i><b>Engineering is the fine art of making what you want from things you can get</b></i>
<A HREF="http://www.btvillarin.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=655" target="_new">My systems</A>

Reply to HammerBot
uther   12-07-2002 at 08:49:30 AM
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Hammer, in this post, you mention that you are using a 16K cluster size. From that, I assume you are running FAT and not NTFS, correct? According to the Microsoft web site, the largest cluster size available under NTFS is 4096. With that in mind, if I am building my RAID 0 array with an NTFS file structure, is there any benefit to changing the cluster size to something less than 4096, which is the XP default for fomatting, since NTFS cannot exceed the 4K limit?

Thanks.

Reply to uther
HammerBot   12-07-2002 at 11:54:20 AM
- 0 +

No. I use NTFS. The NTFS clustersize can be 16K or more if you wish. The default clustersize is 4K.


<i><b>Engineering is the fine art of making what you want from things you can get</b></i>
<A HREF="http://www.btvillarin.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=655" target="_new">My systems</A>

Reply to HammerBot
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