New 80GB HD!! But ...

[Radgam]

Hello !!

I got an 80gb hard drive today (at last! Been using a 3gb until now) but i'm not sure if i should partition it (and how many partitions to make and what size) to get the best performance from my computer... Obviously using a 3gb hd drive there's not much you could do with it.

I'm going to be installing WindowsXP Home (i know, i should have gone for XP Pro, but i believe XP2003 is coming out late next year so i plan an on upgrade if it looks good) and i will be dual booting so i can use some old games in '98.

If it helps i've got about 3.5gb of programs i am planning to install including some big graphics programs and some music editing ones (which i do in my spare time). And i am getting Diskeeper 7 this week to keep fragmentation of my HD low

Thanks for your help and sorry if my english is a little bad

[Iman74]

I don't think there really is a performance difference whether you go with one large partition or have 2 or more partitions.
Things to consider when determing on how to partition a drive:
-Do you want to have one partition for the OS and apps, and another for data storage?
-Are you planning to implement some type of backup system?
-Is data not such a big issue with you?
-Do you not want to be bothered on choosing partitions?

Ask yourself these questions and then choose for yourself on what would best fit your needs.

Personally I have an 80gig drive with my XP Pro on it and everything else on one partition. Then I have a seperate PC running 2000 Server on a 6gig, which has a slave drive which is another 80gig drive that is my data storage drive which is nothing more than a backup of all my data on my XP box.

[edge345]

If you are going to duel-boot then i would make 2 partitions.
Also remember to install 98 first then win-xp....

[Radgam]

back up isn't too major, possibly backup my personal files every month so if my computer does break i'm not going to loose a year work for example, but it wouldn't be once a week back up...

If i were to have 3 partitions say, one for '98 one for the XpOS and one for my files would that be likely to keep my system running smootly ? I was usually under the impression having the pagefile on the same drive as the OS can cause a lot of frag and system slow down... Would it be worth my while to create a partition for the OS only? i have 512MB of DDR ram btw but graphics program can often use a lot of memory and page file as you know, so i usually set a very big pagefile...

Thanks for your advice

[reboot]

I have found that 5 gig is a nice size for 98, 10 gig is a nice size for XP, and then split the remaining into about 2 or 3 nice sized chunks. One for programs (which you can share between 98 and XP if done right) one for data stuff (MP3's, movies, pics etc) and one for backups, drivers, and swapfile.
If you're going to install programs in each os separately, then I would triple the size suggested, to about 15 gig for 98, 30 gig for XP, the rest for storage/swap. Then you've got lots of room to install tons of software in each (probably overkill).
I like to have lots of smaller partitions, each dedicated to a specific topic, but that's just me. With over 150 gig available, I have 3 drives, 4 OS's, MP3's, downloaded programs, movies and pics, swap file(s), OSbackups, etc...
Partition Magic is my friend

[Radgam]

Originally posted by reboot Then you've got lots of room to install tons of software in each (probably overkill).

Thanks for the advice reboot 4 OS, certainly looks like you know what you are doing And i like overkill Overkill is good!

Hopefully i'll get everything sorted this next week so thanks again to everyone for their advice! I was feeling a little unsure on partitions because i tried to do it once and got it very wrong! My system performance went from quite good to really bad!!!