Hard drive partitioning

[pitsi]

I am getting next week a WD1200JB HDD. I will be using WinXP Pro so I would like to know, whether the way I will partition this hard drive can have an impact on my system's performance (either positive or negative).

Firstly, what's better to use, NTFS or FAT32 on my OS? I know each one has its advantages so having all that in mind, which of the two do you suggest? Also, will it make any difference if I split up this drive to 4 or 5 partitions instead of having just one 120GB partition?

 

[Teq]

With Win XP and 2k your best bet is to use NTFS. While both are about comperable with NTFS at it's defaults, there are a number of tweaks you can use with NTFS to really pick it up. Also there are additional features in NTFS, such as file compression (to save disk space) and security that can be very usefull if you are not the only person using your computer.

As for partitioning, I generally recommend that you make one smaller partition for your OS and software. The size you pick will depend on how much stuff you are installing... Office, Games, shareware etc. but something around 6 to 8 gigs is usually more than adequate.

The rest of your disk can be split up however you prefer, but usually one big partition for your data files, downloads, etc is adequate.

The advantage of separating your OS from your data is that should you ever need to reload your operating system (which happens all too often these days) you won't end up wiping out your data files to do it. You can just format your C: drive and reinstall everyting, while the data on D: (E: etc) is left untouched.



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