Newbee Needs Partitioning HDD help

Hi,

I am trying to partition an 80 GB Hard Drive into 6 Partitions of ( 20 + 20 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 ) namely C, D, E, F, G, H

I am going to install Win XP Pro SP2 on it.

My questions & concerns are as follows :

(1) I like to organize different folders into as many different groups as possible in order to find them quickly so I am opting for so many partitions. Are there any disadvantages of having so many partitions?

(2) I am thinking about leaving one 10 GB partition empty because last time I ran out of space on C & D partition & even though I had lots of room on last two partitions I had a lot of trouble allocating the space from last two G & H partitions to C & D Partitions. So which partitions should I leave empty this time so that in future I can easily allocate room to any partition that needs it?

(3) Last time I had C partition formatted as NTFS & rest all as FAT 32. This time I am thinking about making them all as NTFS partitions. Are there any advantages or disadvantages of doing so ?

(4) I have heard a lot of professionals leaving a separate partition for swap files. I do not know what that is & have never done it. Should I do that this time & if yes which one, how big & how?

Any help & Comments would be highly appreciated.

Thank You.
Mike

 

A single hard drive can only support 4 primary partitions or 3 primary partitions and the last extended with logical drives (with seperate drive letters). Go with NTFT unless you need to run dual boot for older applications.

I'd agree this is a somewhat small drive, I also have an 80 Gig but recently added a second to allow backups on a seperate drive. Keep in mind no matter how many partitions you have that its still only a single HDD... lose that and your screwed.

 

Regarding allocating only 4 Gigs for OS, I saw a discussion sometime ago somewhere ( Can't remember where ) & some people recommended not to install programs ona seperate partition.

Does that hold true still ? OR new innovations let you do that?

Thank you.
Mike

 

Actually, hard drives can contain up to four primary partitions (because the partition table only supports four record entries), or up to three primary partitions and infinite logical partitions.

Extended partitions were then developed to overcome the primary partition limit.

 

Mike, check out
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=64582
and
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=63971

for an idea that I have implemented on my laptop. Works well in theory and in practice.
You end up only "Keepers" the stuff you actually want. Not the stuff you download, try out and forget about. Bazza

PS: Some/most programs try and install on C:\Program Files, so you have to have your wits about you to install them on D:|........... or whatever.
I usually let Microsoft stuff install where it wants to, on C:\drive, but I try to choose where all other stuff goes. Baz
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Those were some great suggestions & took a while to digest.

BB,

I read the links you gave me.

I like your idea on installing programs at 3 different places & would like to give it a try.


Is it still working for you?

Thanks
mike

 

I have my Win 2k installation on logical drives C: thru M: on two physical drives totaling 45GB. You want partitions? Well, I got partitions! . A third physical drive contains Linux.
. I have one Primary and one Extended partition (with numerous Logical drive letters) on the primary drive, and one Extended partition with many Logical Drive leters on the secondary drive. The two physical drives are on separate channels of my IDE controller for optimal transfer rates between them. I use the logical drive label feature as sort of a top-level directory structure.

For the Layout you suggested, create: One primary partition of 20GB, One Extended partition that contains the rest of the drive space, then creeate Logical drives (drive letters beyond "C:" ) within the Extended partition (extended partitions don't have Drive Letters of their own) for the rest of your "partitions" of which you can have a many as you want within the Extended partitions.
. I would use only 5 or 10GB for the Primary partition (logical drive letter "C:" ), and then make sure as many programs as possible are installed to OTHER than C: - I install only the OS and Critical utilities to C:. ALL other application programs are installed to other logical drives.
. I also move the Temp/Temp. Internet Files/Printer Spooling files etc. file folders off from C: (usually requires editing the registry) to limit the amount of disk writes to the C: partition. And if possible I will move any Virtual (Swap) drive space to another Drive Letter than C: for the same reason - I create a logical drive Letter just for the scratch file folders and another just for holding the "build files and folders" and/or .ISOs for burning CDs and DVDs as well as one or more logical drives for Application programs, and other(s) for the Data that I create. Having all the files that I create on one or two logical drives makes keeping the important stuff backed up very easy. It works for me - YMMV.

.bh.

Here, if you've read and understood all of that, you need a beer...

 

Yes it is still working for me. The sizes of the various partitions depend on each users requirements. If you burn lots of movies and music you will have different partition size requirements than if you only work with Documents and Spreadsheets, for example.

I don't use XP as much as I ought to, but that is a driver/BIOS problem that I have put on hold for the time being, not related to partitioning. Once again I state that we download and try out many more programs than we actually end up using, in the long run.

Keep your "Keepers" on a separate drive, or partition, or Folder, from those you are "Testing", will keep your system leaner and meaner. Bazza
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