Installing 3rd party programs in a non-system partition

hi everyone:

i am planning to reformat my home office pc (Pentium 4 2gh, 80gb HD, 512 ddram, 128mb vcard) because i have been getting too many windows xp errors lately and last night, the inevitable barrage of BSODs and reboots!

well, i have been installing, uninstalling and reinstalling many 3rd-party programs that i have been testing in the past few months and i may have had unknowingly deleted and altered some system files and settings.

anyway, right now my pc has 3-partition scheme (system & program, 40gb + data & backup, 35gb + page file, 4gb) and i think i have to discard it for good.

nonetheless, i have devised in my mind this 5-partition scheme:

drive c: system (windows xp, MS office, essential Videocard & Mobo files and utilities, and Returnil) = 5gb
drive d: programs (security solutions, internet programs, and other applications) = 40gb
drive e: data (frequently used files like office documents and some music) = 20gb
drive f: page file = 4gb
drive g: backup (rarely used files which i usually zipped) = 10gb

i really intend to keep the system partition as clutter-free as possible and exclusive to windows xp and some essential programs and eventually secure it with Returnil to avoid messing it up again.


and now my questions are:

1. is my partition scheme workable?

2. will i compromise, or cause conflict to, those 3rd party programs: antivirus, antispyware, firewall, multi media players, chat etc., if i install those in a non-system partition and not in the system partition?

3. is turning off and unplugging my pc, if i am not using it, a bad practice? well, i do notice a significant decrease in my recent electric bills since i started doing that.

hope you guys can help me out on this one.

thank you in advance.

 

Good idea and not because I do it but because you lose the least if you have to reformat.

#1) 5GB is too small for XP + MSOffice, I'd go for 10GB at a bare minimum as C is used for temp files of all sorts plus recycle bin. I'm currently at 4.5GB with just XP, drivers and other assorted junk.

#2) I haven't had any issues

#3) It's not a bad practice as long as you close down properly before hitting the power switch. I can't see you saving that much to be noticable. CRT TV's and other electronics consume much more power on standby than does a computer.

 

Just an afterthought here, have you tested your RAM yet. It might not be the culprit but it was in my case with more and more BSOD's as time went on. Try Memtest86+ just to make sure it's clean. Easy to use, and you can boot to it either from floppy or CD. If your your RAM is bad, you should start getting errors within a minute but do run it overnight to make sure.

 

I think your partition scheme is good but I agree with augiedoggie on the size for C. Make it at least 10GB.

I'm no expert on paging file management but I had this thought: With your scheme providing basically for just the OS on C, I wonder whether you might just also let Windows use C for the paging file; you could still control the size of the paging file by setting a fixed minimum and maximum size for it. If you put the paging file on C, making C a little larger than 10GB might be best.

 

i guess, i have to dedicate 10gb for the system partition just to give windows xp enough space and for stability purposes.

as regards pagefile, may be i should turn on pagefile in the system partition this time around since 3rd party programs and data will be in separate partitions.

the static pagefile partition really helps a lot since i couldn't find compatible or working ram sticks to replace the 512 ram (2x 256 ram sticks) because my pc is like 4 years old.

anyway, i have been very busy with work and stuff these past months and out of the house a lot...so i guess that would explain the lower electric bills lately.

well, i have to setup my pc now...thank you everyone!

cheers ^_^