[Nocko]

Hy!

Today I received my Hitachi T7K250 250G drive and I would like to ask you how should I partition it?

I was thinking about:

PARTITION C: 20-30GB for System and Program Files
PARTITION D: 220.230GB for my archive

What is with pagie file, should I leave it of C: or should I make a hidden partition so big how much pagie file I have, I have 512MB RAM ?

For partitioning should I use Partition magic or is there any better solution, should I make C partition active and what is different between primary and logical?

For first it would be the only drive in my computer, but i have also a rack drive 60GB, are there any changes if i have one ore two drives?

Please help me!

THX

[Dark Biene]

the page file should have an own partition and x2-x3 of ram = 1000MB - 1500MB
so, create an own with 1600MB
20GB for Windows only is more than enough
u can also create an own Parition for TEMP!
u can edit ur system where the temp folder is....in an own part ur C: won't be fragmented as fast as normal, same reason for an own part for Pagefile
i would recommend a size of 3GB for temp
if u have many programms to install....also, an extra part
my is about 3 GB, and that's also more than enough

C: Windows:20GB
D: Swap: 1,6 GB
E: Temp: 3 GB
F: Progz: 3 GB
G: rest of HD


that's the way i would part this big HD

[Mertsch]

I don't think that it does make any sense to put temp files or swap file anywhere else

my partitions are:

c: 10GB for windows and everything that belongs to it
any program is installed in program files as normal
all my personal files and every day apps also most are in a seperate folder called Programme ... which are those that do not need any install ...
I do regular full backups of C: (full disk images with acronis true image)
so that I always have data and apps as backup ... the most important stuff together

d: 40GB
here is my archiv ... which is a collection of everything that you really need for PC ...
e.g. drivers windows updates and so on
also every programm you need as daemon tools AV tool and other stuff
+ all my MP3s

e: 100GB this is a pure games drive I only have games here + folders for patches and a bit other stuff like 5.1 music

f: 136GB
is fully dedicated to downloads ... everything that I download is stored here

so in case of an emergency ...
F: and E: could get lost without serious consequences
D: would be bad because of the music
c: would be fatal thats why I do backups here

[Dark Biene]

the sense of putting temp and pagefile in an extra partition is the fragmenting of C:!
it's longer less fragmented than using temp there also
and: there is a theoretical speed improvment

[megatron]

I had my page file on a separate 40Gb hard drive, the first partition. Ive had it as the D: partition on the main disk before too. I believe I tried moving the temp folder but it created problems when downloading files. I think u should partition ur drive for page file based on a memory size that u may get in future. Ive tried partition magic and it works sometimes others not.

Best time to partition is on a blank disk, with either a win98 boot disk or the windows OS CD.

[Mertsch]

hmmmmm I don't what what you temp folder size is ... but threr is always just a few MB in there ... and that is obsolute data no longer used so basically I don't see the fragmentation agument here ...

2nd a fixed page file does not fragment ... a pagefile created without fragment will stay without fragments forever if it is fixed which is recommended anyway
if yours is fragmented you can do an offline defrag
or just set you pagefile to zero size
defragment you disk and set it back to e.g. 1000MB windows will always use a free zone to avoid fragmentation if one is available

[Dark Biene]

right, a fixed PF won't fragment....
but:
if u work with windows the PF is working also...
and now there are "2" actions working on C:....but if u use another partition..
there is 1 action here and the other 1 there....
should be better than all actions in one partition

[Hancoque]

right, a fixed PF won't fragment....
but:
if u work with windows the PF is working also...
and now there are "2" actions working on C:....but if u use another partition..
there is 1 action here and the other 1 there....
should be better than all actions in one partition

Well, if the two partions are all on the same physical disk then it makes no difference. You were right if you had two separate hard disks but that isn't the case here.

[Nocko]

THX to all! I'm a littel bit confused about this! Why can't I have on my C: partition SYSTEM & PROGRAM files, I will make a new sxstem with all necesary programs, when the system is working well I will maka a Ghost image to my old 60GB disk and if something goes wrong I can just rewrite the partition with this image!

I don't play and games on this computer, because the computer isn't new and I would like to rplaice them with a new one in the end of this year, but I will also use this computer for web and sharing files so I think that 2 partitions are OK, but I don't know what to do with page file, it's a big different when this files are on they own partition or not, should I make a hidden partition befor C: ar what?

[Hancoque]

I just use two partitions on my first hard disk: The first is a very small system partition with nothing but the system. I install all extra software on the second partition. That way I can do a fresh (re)installation (format) of the system without losing any sensitive data. There are ways to relocate folders such as "My Documents" (which I don't use myself by the way) so you really don't have to store any relevant data on the system partition. There's no need to create separate partitions for the pagefile and/or temp stuff. That would only make sense if you had another physical hard disk. Otherwise it doesn't matter where you put the pagefile. Just make sure it has a fixed size and is defragmented.

PS: Theoretically it should even be faster if you put the pagefile closer to the installed program files than to put it on an extra partition because the read and write heads of the hard disk have shorter ways then.

[Dark Biene]

put aren't there more than 1 read/write heads? :-)
and the partition is always fragmenting when writing files....(btw: that's why linux don't need to be defraged...it's simply the better filesystem)
but normaly the partitions are extra HD's, that's why moving temp to an extra, ur system part is fragmenting slower....because ever s.. u install or browsing the web is writing windows to temp folders....


u can do what u want ..
but my example for partitioning is best for me and my lesser fragmented,faster system

[Nocko]

So If I have C partition and D partition for my program, when I will make a reinstal the system will all program work as befor?

In my rack I have also 120GB drive and sometimes I will use them to!

[Hancoque]

If you reinstall the system by deleting the system partition then your programs on the data partition will still be there but some of them won't run anymore (missing system files and/or registry settings) and they have no startmenu or desktop shortcuts.

[Mertsch]

It is 100% sure that a page file stored somewhere else does not bring any advantage.
the only way you could gain a SMALL improvement would be to store the page file on a differen phsical drive BUT this one needs to as fast as the other drive or even fast else you will have a negative effect

[garikfox]

Partition always by division. Like math class

[Old_Fart]

right, a fixed PF won't fragment....
but:
if u work with windows the PF is working also...
and now there are "2" actions working on C:....but if u use another partition..
there is 1 action here and the other 1 there....
should be better than all actions in one partition

Well, if the two partions are all on the same physical disk then it makes no difference. You were right if you had two separate hard disks but that isn't the case here.

Exactly. Thanks for pointing that out, Hancoque.

As stated above, if you only have ONE hard drive, don't bother partitioning it at all, unless you're doing it just for the sake of organization. From the standpoint of performance though, it won't make ANY difference how you partition it since it's all just one physical drive.

If you want to talk about multiple physical drives, then your options become significant and there ARE performance benefits depending upon how you lay things out.

Later.

[NIN9]

HDD1 (sATA): The System
/dev/hda0/ 4GB [raiserFS] freeBSD6-AMD64
/dev/hda1/ 4GB [ext3] UBuntu5-AMD64
/dev/hda2/ 4GB [NTFS] winxp x64
/dev/hda3/ 110GB [FAT32] for downloads etc.
/dev/hda4/ 2GB [FAT32 bootable] for bios updates,drivers,software you really need

HDD2 (sATA): The Temp
/dev/hda0/ 3GB swap for freeBSD6-AMD64
/dev/hda1/ 3GB swap for UBuntu5-AMD64
/dev/hda2/ 3GB swap for winxp x64
/dev/hda3/ 40GB swap for temporary internet files & temp downloads


Sensitive data is stored to external usb2 maxtor 200GB

[sotos]

Any tips about how to create a bootable SATA and how Windows recognise a HD above 120GB with it's true size so to make it bootable

I have used a tool from Maxtor to make a Bootable FULL 250GB sized and format (without partitions) it's name is MAXBLAST 4 from www.maxtor.com and it is for Maxtor H.disks of course but i noticed i can not enter the Safe mode screen with F8 after that

It keeps saying Error with OS



In normal mode Windows XP enters fine without problems

[Mertsch]

WinXP definitivly supports HDDs with more space then 120GB
it seems that you do have an XP upgrade version right ???
When upgrading from 98 you will have this 120GB limitation
but if you have a real XP (best of all with SP2 integrated) you should have no problem with the size of HDD's when installing XP
the only thing that could cause something like this is a bugged raid controller driver you may use (if you have to)

[Dark Biene]

and ur using Fat32 maybe??