To partition, or not to partition...

[Paddy]

I have just got hold of an 80GB 'cuda IV and it is going to be the only HD in my XP rig.

I have never had a drive this big before, and I am not sure if it would be a good idea to partition it.
I normally have an OS + apps disk, a media disk, and a games disk. Are there any advantages of partitioning???

ta,
Evil Pedros

[Kosh Naranek]

I normally keep the OS and the most important apps running on a small 3 - 4 GB partition !
important apps ---> Eudora, Antivirus prgs. etc not photoshop etc.
Why ?

1. to avoid clutter
2. Easy to keep the OS defragmented and running at peak performance
3. when I reformat .. I only need to format the boot partiton 3-4 GB

The rest of the partition is where all my other programs/games etc is installed ( most of which need to be re-installed when i do a reformat fortunately most games only do a reg install and not a full install)

and then I have a DATA Drive where all the compressed programs/drivers etc. are stored.

So this gives me the following drive layout

C: boot partiton
D: Data drive / Swap drive
E: Program/Game partion on the same drive as C: partition

Why the C: to E: jump .... because those partitions are set as visible partitions. They are not logical/extended partitions and even though PartitionMagic says that multiple visible partitions may cause trouble .. it don't.


EDIT

Currently running XP and systemrestore is ONLY monitoring my C: drive which should be an easy task considering it's small size !

[Gurm]

I have ALWAYS maintained that the speed gains from having a well-optimized root partition (it won't be, really - since modern Windows variants all make a HUGE mess out of your system folder with alarming regularity) are VASTLY outweighed by the slowdown from making the drive seek way the hell to the other end just to get to "drive d".

I have three drives in my machine. Two identical 45GB IBM's - with a hardware mirror. And a 40GB Western Digital - with games and hard drive intensive apps on it... as well as some storage space.

- Gurm

[Kosh Naranek]

I disagree ... if you have enough RAM it's not that big a problem and HDD's do get faster and faster with better seek times and bigger cache's.

But yes ... Windoze do tend to mess itself up ... fragmentation wise.


And as I said ... the most used programs are on the same partition as the OS.

[Gurm]

Look, you want to make the machine as efficient as possible, right?

There will be near-continuous access of the root partition, mainly because Windows keeps user.dat open all the friggin' time (registry).

Additionally, your "program files" directory takes quite a beating.

So does wherever the swap files live.

Now, having a second partition, while it might seem like a swell idea, just makes it so that in ADDITION to having drive C: all cluttered and fragmented on a regular basis, drive D: will ALSO be fragmented - and the drive head will have to seek.

The argument that you can put all the "not often fragmented" stuff on the other partition became a moot point once defragmenters learned how to move the frequently accessed files to the end (or beginning), and how to mark system files as unmoveable, etc. etc.

Thus I would argue that a good defragmenting with Speed Disk or O&O or DiskKeeper will help just as much as partitioning... and won't add the overhead of seek times.

- Gurm

[cjolley]

I'm with Gurm on this one.
The supposed advantage of keeping your OS on one partition more or less by it's self so that you can re-install if need be is an illusion.
Once you re-install the OS you have orphaned all your programs anyway, and will have to re-install them too.
Steps for happy partitioning:
1, Backup your data and documents frequently. (You already do that, right?)
2, Defragment regularly.
Advantages to one-partition setup:
1, Neater
2, Faster
3, Easier on your drives.

My setup:
40 gig Maxtor primary drive for OS, programs & data.
65 gig mirror array shared on our home network for backup storage and attic duties.

Chuck

[Wombat]

There is something to be said for keeping data on a separate partition though. All of my downloads and MP3s are on a separate partition from either OS, so I can wipe out the OS with extreme prejudice.

[cjolley]

Originally posted by Wombat
There is something to be said for keeping data on a separate partition though. All of my downloads and MP3s are on a separate partition from either OS, so I can wipe out the OS with extreme prejudice.

That would explain why Becky keeps our shared drive full of her il-gotten Napster gains
Chuck

[Kosh Naranek]

Originally posted by cjolley
Steps for happy partitioning:
1, Backup your data and documents frequently. (You already do that, right?)
2, Defragment regularly.
Advantages to one-partition setup:
1, Neater
2, Faster
3, Easier on your drives.
Chuck

Neater .... huh !?! depends on the eye of the beholder I guess

faster ... I doubt that - defragmentation is waaaaaay faster on smaller partitions / drives and if defragmentation takes very long you tend to skip it giving overall worse performance.

Easier - dunno about that one.

It's not an illusion ...I'm doing it.

My data Drive is only accesed when I store something on it or decompress something from it.

There is no near-continues acces on the root partition and the swap file is always 0 bytes in size.

The program Files DIR is where I keep my most used programs .. so yes it's being used quite often and thus tends to clutter .. but since the partition is so small I defrag it often.

As I said ... it's also a question on how much ram you have .. I have 512 MB .. which is enough for the kernel and for a very efficient DiskCache ! I have NEVER seen any serious diskswapping while using XP, no matter how many programs I have used at the same time.

[rugger]

I am with the single partitioners

There are things called directories that you store data and programs separately in. That is what they are for.

It may seem glamourous to have multiple partitions, but in the end, you will always be wishing for the space on one partition to be on another partition. Happened to me countless times, and will probably happen to me countless times more (since I am forced to partition because I have 4 operating systems on my hard drive)

What you do is:

For win98-me

C:\Program files
Store programs here, no exceptions, then you can find out what you have installed when you reinstall.

C:\My Documents
Store your work in here, use subdirectories to split the work up if you need to. You can backup this directory before you reinstall if you wish.

C:\windows
This is where windows is stored, and all you have to delete when you want to do a nice, new reinstall

For win2000-XP

If possible use fat32. It is faster in most cases than NTFS and easier to manipulate (since you can use win98 disks and linux to do so). However, if you know you will need NTFS, you better use it.

C:\Program Files
Store programs here as in win98

C:\Documents and Settings
Save your work in this directory (your home dir in here) and backup it up (if you want to).

C:\WINNT
Delete this dir when you want a full, clean reinstall. You may need to use the recovery console to do this if you are running NTFS or don't have any other means of accessing your disk outside of NT.

That is really all there is to it. Nice, simple, stable.

[Wombat]

Except that half of the things in Program Files won't run because they are missing the files they installed in your Windows directory.

And you can always resize partitions.

[rugger]

Originally posted by Wombat
Except that half of the things in Program Files won't run because they are missing the files they installed in your Windows directory.

And you can always resize partitions.

So, you simply reinstall your programs, like you would have to anyway if you had deleted them outright, or had them on another partition. (you could also delete the program files directory for a REALLY REALLY clean setup, after saving your save game files ect)

Resizing partitions is a serious pain in the butt, and in the worst case, could take up to half an hour to complete. It also means buying more software, for a problem that wouldn't exist if you use a single partition.

[Kosh Naranek]

So what you are saying is ... keep all your files on a single partition / drive ?

Even rarly used / modified datafiles or archived programs ?

Bad idea ... why move around data which is hardly ever used just because a defragmentation program needs to make room for a 4 k file !

RE-partitioning can take some time, yes !
However it is, in most cases, faster than a defragmentation under W2K / XP and in most cases you don't need to do it. ( only in the extreme cases ).

No matter how you do it ... multiple partitions or single partitions .. you will always end up reinstalling programs after a reformat.
Of course there is always the option of ghosting , which in most cases can bring back an entire system in matter of minutes after a reformat regardless of the number of partitions you might have - it all depends on how much updating/reorganizing you have done since the ghost image was made)

[cjolley]

Originally posted by cking4@ford.com


Not if you restore the partition from an image backup.

Very true.
That does take care of some cases.
But then you do not get a clean install, which is why OS drives are usually reformatted.
chuck

[rugger]

Originally posted by Kosh Naranek
So what you are saying is ... keep all your files on a single partition / drive ?

Even rarly used / modified datafiles or archived programs ?

Bad idea ... why move around data which is hardly ever used just because a defragmentation program needs to make room for a 4 k file !

RE-partitioning can take some time, yes !
However it is, in most cases, faster than a defragmentation under W2K / XP and in most cases you don't need to do it. ( only in the extreme cases ).

No matter how you do it ... multiple partitions or single partitions .. you will always end up reinstalling programs after a reformat.
Of course there is always the option of ghosting , which in most cases can bring back an entire system in matter of minutes after a reformat regardless of the number of partitions you might have - it all depends on how much updating/reorganizing you have done since the ghost image was made)

I guess shorter defrag time is one benefit of mutlitple partitions, but who ever bothers defragmenting anymore (I certainly only do it very rarely). If you want/need to defragment your drives regularly, you should be using something just a little better than the builtin POS defragmenter. Or you could simply run your defrag while you sleep.