Drive Partitions

[FlynMonkeez]

Im gonna reformat my drivee soon and was gonna install xp again. i jsut wanna no if i shood make 2 partions, i no alot of people that do dat but not sure y, and if i make 2 partitions shood i just install the os on one and the program files and other stuff on the second?

[FlynMonkeez]

one more question, i have a 15 gig hdd how many gigs should i make each partition?

[jteffo]

i have mine in 2 partitions, one with the OS and all my prog. files and the other with my music, downloads, and anything i want backed up so that if the OS crashes i can simply reinstall windows and all my downloads and shit will still be there that's my reasoning

about how big you should make each one, i suppose it depends on if you're going to just put the OS on one and everything else on the other or like mine - with os and prog. files on one and everything else on the other, i have an 80 gb hd and i split it 40-40

jteffo

[nivek_k2020]

Originally posted by FlynMonkeez
one more question, i have a 15 gig hdd how many gigs should i make each partition?

Whatever u decide don't put less than 5GB for the C drive or u won't have enough space in the future (ur OS won't run smoothly either). Unless ur running win98 with limited apps.

[ThAD0oD]

if you only have a 15 gigger, you shouldnt split that up.. its much too small

[A Murder of Crows]

part of the reason people partition is to get the best use out of thier drives, especially if you still use FAT based file systems. i used to have a 6gb drive, and i split it to get the best use of the physical space.

now, i have an 80 GB drive that i have split into 7 partitions of all different sizes.

my C: is for the OS and program files, my D for my documents and pictures. i set each one for 5 GB when i did the partitions. but they came out 4.88 GB. My cluster size on these drives is 4kb. this means that any file i have on either drive takes space equal to it's size in KB, rounded to the next number that happens to be dividable by 4. So, if i have a 1kb file, and it takes up 1 cluster on the drive with nothing else in that cluster (fragmented and unoptimized), the 1kb file will physically take up 4kb of drive space.

my E and F drives are set to store my downloads (e) and cd images (f). i set the size for each at 10 GB and they came out to be 9.77 GB. the cluster size for these partitions is 8kb. so if i have a file on either drive that is only 1kb, it takes up 1 cluster, and therefore takes up 8kb of physical space.

my G drive is set to hold game files and programs, my H is for movies, tv shows, mp3s and other media and media related projects. i set the size for 20 GB each, and they came out 19.55 GB with a cluster size of a whopping 16kb, so that same lil 1kb file is now taking up 16 times it's size in physical space on the hard drive.

i threw the remaining free space together and made the I drive my backup drive, the place where all my downloaded programs, key email, bookmarks, fonts, documents, other such "Must not lose these" items goes....the place i turn to if something messes up and i have to start all over. size ended up 6.06 GB, cluster size of 4kb just like the C and D drives.

it seems that for roughly every 5 GB the cluster size goes up by 4. So technically, if you do not partion up an 80 GB drive, your 1kb files could take up as much as 64kb of physical space. Mind you, this is only if you have *JUST* the 1kb file there on that cluster. if you defragment your drive often, the clusters will be used more effeciently.

[precisionmods]

You should always split up a drive if you can. Anything over 10 gigs can and should be split up. Because it's not a matter of if you will reinstall Windows, but a matter of when. For the 15 giger, do a 10 gig System partition and the remaining for your files, etc. If you want performance, get 2 or more drives and then split up the swap file and put the swap file and temp files on the same physical drive. I have my swap file spanning 2 drives, almost in a RAID type configuration.

Take it from a system admin.

[FlynMonkeez]

I partition my drive before i read this thread, heres what i did. I made 3 partitions- 1 for my OS (XP Pro), 2 for my Program Files, 3 for everything else ( movies mp3s ps2 images, stuff like dat) I made my OS 2 gigs program files 2 gigs and my last partition 101 gigs. Is this fine or should i change it?

[Sapherz]

with regard to cluster size, every file on your computer wastes on average half a cluster
wasted space= no. of files x (1/2 cluster size)
so the smaller the partitian size, small clusters, less wasted space, and when you have loads of files on an unpartitianed large hdd, you will waste A LOT of space

my 2 cents, its already been said but hey