Help needed with new hard drive

[Robert Kent]

I just bought a new 160 gig hard drive for my Athlon system. I plan to use
it to replace an old 80 gig hard drive.

I have a couple questions before I start with the installation.

1. I want to have at least two partitions. One for programs, the other for
data. Would there be any advantage to a third smaller partition just for the
swap file? If so, should it be exactly the same size as the amount of RAM I
have installed?

2. Once I install all my software, including all Windows updates, I'd like
to burn a set of backup DVD's so I can restore my computer to this point the
next time Windows takes a dive. What is the best way to do this?

3. I may decide to play around with Linux. Are there any drivers that will
allow XP to read and write to a Linux partition? The NTFS drivers for Linux
still have lots of problems and I'd rather not use FAT or FAT32 unless there
is no other option..

 

[Robert Kent]

I just bought a new 160 gig hard drive for my Athlon system. I plan to use
it to replace an old 80 gig hard drive.

I have a couple questions before I start with the installation.

1. I want to have at least two partitions. One for programs, the other for
data. Would there be any advantage to a third smaller partition just for the
swap file? If so, should it be exactly the same size as the amount of RAM I
have installed?

Also, would it help to have a separate partition just for temporary files,
IE caches, etc?

 

[davexnet02]

Also, would it help to have a separate partition just for temporary files,
IE caches, etc?

It's not advised to have a swap file in a separate partition on
the *same* physical volume.
This causes extra R/W head activity than if you just had it in the
Windows partition, and this is a performance hit.
In general, let windows manage the size of the file.

Dave

 

[Guest]

Don't confuse different partitions on a hard drive with having software set
up on different physical drives. If you partition a drive into three areas
you'll only be setting the drive up to work three times as hard, if you want
to increase performance/stability, think about using your old drive as a
slave. You can also use this drive for backup purposes using the built in
backup software supplied with XP, it's fantastically easy to use and has
saved my bacon a couple of times since i started using it.

 

[root]

I just bought a new 160 gig hard drive for my Athlon system. I plan to use
it to replace an old 80 gig hard drive.

I have a couple questions before I start with the installation.

1. I want to have at least two partitions. One for programs, the other for
data. Would there be any advantage to a third smaller partition just for the
swap file?
No.

If so, should it be exactly the same size as the amount of RAM I
have installed?

No, bigger but get enough RAM so that the issue is mostly moot.

2. Once I install all my software, including all Windows updates, I'd like
to burn a set of backup DVD's so I can restore my computer to this point the
next time Windows takes a dive. What is the best way to do this?

Image Backup. See www.acronis.com

3. I may decide to play around with Linux. Are there any drivers that will
allow XP to read and write to a Linux partition? The NTFS drivers for Linux
still have lots of problems and I'd rather not use FAT or FAT32 unless there
is no other option..

There's nothing wrong with FAT32.

 

[root]

RAM
Also, would it help to have a separate partition just for temporary files,
IE caches, etc?

No.

 

[Robert Kent]

There's nothing wrong with FAT32.

No security. All users have access to the entire partition.