partitioning

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chew

should I partition my harddrive or leave it whole?

I hear yes and no's

I have a new 160gb 7200 8mb 2platters
some people say partition
some say not to partition because the heads must move back-
and -forth between both/multiple partitions

.....what should I do ?
 
Partitioning a HDD as such does not have any physical benefits other than
virtual convenience (like why we create folders within a partition. We can
always store all the files in the root. But we dont)
Generally, I make 2 partitions. A small 'C' drive about 5-10 GB for OS and
application installations, so that whenever the OS needs to be reinstalled
or repaired, you can even format it, and your data is somewhat safe on the
'D' partition.

and the 2nd 'D' partition is solely for the data.

A third smaller partition can be thought of only for the swap file (Virtual
Memory) if the applications are memory intensive and if the OS relies
heavily on swapping the memory between the RAM and the HDD. For e.g. if you
have 512 MB RAM, than u can consider keeping the last 2 GB as the third
partition and after the OS is installed, change the virtual memory settings
to occupy the whole of that partition. By doing this your performance will
not increase, but becoz u have a swap file which does not need to grow as
and when required, it will be in a contiguous state and give you a
consistent performance than a fragmented swap file on the 'C' partition.
 
should I partition my harddrive or leave it whole?

I hear yes and no's

I have a new 160gb 7200 8mb 2platters
some people say partition
some say not to partition because the heads must move back-
and -forth between both/multiple partitions

.....what should I do ?
Click to expand...

You should do whatever you want. :-)

I do _not_ like humungous, single partition drives. Although W2K/XP is very
stable compared to earlier versions of Windows, it is still not state of the
art, and sooner or later you will need to do some repair. In that case, you
risk data loss. So at the very least, I would create a data-backup partition.

Other reasons for creating two or more partitions:

a) the swap (page) file works better if it's on its own partition instead of
the system partition.

b) it's easier to organise data if you have a partition for each type,
whether defined by data-type (image, doc, etc) or by content. It's like
having several file cabinets in an office. And file searches run _much_
faster on smaller partitions - so if you know the lost file is Type X, just
search the Type X partition, instead of all 160GB of the full drive. How do I
know this? Well, why do you think I advise different data partitions? :-)

c) disk maintenance chores run faster on smaller partitions;

d) it's often useful to have a copy of an application's installation disk on
a HD partition (this doesn't work with all of them, since directory
structures may be hard coded, and the installers handle running from a folder
instead of the "root" of the partition.)

e) it's safer to have the system state back-up on a separate partition.

BTW, really sensitive data should not be stored on the HD. Put it on a tape,
or on a CD (but at present I don't trust the longevity of the typical CD-R/RW
disk.)

Your W2K partition should be at least 4GB. If you also want to run a few
basic apps (such as Office) from it, you should make it larger, but I
wouldn't go over 10GB for it.

HTH
 
Depends on the file structure, if FAT32 your not going to
get the full use of your available space, the directory
will fill before the actual space does.
If NTFS, you really should break it into smaller parts
give 4 Gig for the OS and what ever you like for data,
I personally created a special partition for backups about
20-30gig, but that's me.
 
This is actually a very good response Devendra. Without knowing what OS you
will be installing on it or will be used to access it, it is harder to say,
but like Devendra stated it is purely cosmetic in terms of how you want to
partition the drive. If I do at all, I just 2 partitions, depending on what
I'm going to be doing with it.

Creating a 3rd partition on the same drive for the swap file will help a
little, but probably nothing noticable. Drives are so fast nowadays that
its not really noticable unless speed tests are run.

--
Doug Allen
Windows 2000 MCSE
Microsoft Enterprise Support

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
 
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