Need help partitioning

[GTRman]

I was wondering if anyone can give me advice in partitioning my hard drive in lamen's terms (i am not very computer literate). I have Windows XP Professional installed already, I have a 120 GB hardrive, and I have PartitionMagic 8.0 (so I don't have to reformat the hardrive).

Anyway, I have already made successful partitions on the drive but my question regards making a separate partition for optimizing the speed of the computer. I heard something about moving the "page-file" to a separate partition and something virtual memory. To be honest, I don't really understand how to do this or what it is. Can someone help me?

BTW, I have 4 partitions already...45 GB for the C: drive, 32 GB for multimedia and other data, 25 GB for Software, and 10 GB for a backup drive. Also, one more question: How can I separate all the OS files and put them in a separate partition (please pardon my computer retardedness :)).

[not important]

How to move the paging file:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307886
I, personally, would make the C: drive about 10 G's. Makes for quicker defragging.
What OS files do you want to move?

[GTRman]

Originally posted by not important
How to move the paging file:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307886
I, personally, would make the C: drive about 10 G's. Makes for quicker defragging.

Thank you very much!. :) That worked.

I will make the C: drive partition smaller once I finish moving all my software files from the C: to the software partition.

Originally posted by not important
What OS files do you want to move?
All of them, because I heard it is optimal to keep all the OS files by themselves in a single partition. Maybe it would be easier to just reinstall XP on a blank partition (but I don't think I know how to do that).

[andyms18a]

moveing the page file on your drive wont make much diffrence in proformance as the drive reading heads are still on the same drive as the operating system if you add a new second hard drive then move the page file you get better proformance

[Panama Red]

I just did what you are attempting, also with Patition Magic. I had successfully been running XP Home on the first partition of 6.5Gb (total HDD 80Gb). Since the MS app note suggests a separate partition for page file, I created a second partition equal to twice my memory size. The page file is set to 1.5 times your memory capacity with a smaller number set for page file on your primary (OS) drive. Did this with 3 computers we have, all with different configurations and they all work great. To clarify, my total ram is 1Gb, so my page file partition size is 2Gb and the page file min is 1534 & max at 1535. The page file partition is set right after the primary OS partition. Hope this isn't too cloudy.