Optimal Partition Setup on XP Home

[Denaes]

I have a 37 gb hard drive in my Laptop (Dell Inspirion 8500) and Im going to install XP Home tomorrow or the next day.

I hear that its best to have a seperate partition for your paging files (virtual memory) because it prevents them from being fragmented.

I also keep seeing that its best to have your Windows XP on its own partition and everything else on another.

Makes sense in theory, you wont have to worry about XP system resources getting fragmented. I tried this once with a 2gb partition, but some apps kept installing on Windows 2000 (it was a while ago) partition and filled it up.

I know the memory partition makes sense. How about having an OS and Application partition? practical? If so, how much would be a good size for XP Home?

 

[Jay1b]

You could just run Defragmenter? Its a lot less hassle!

I would put half of it a side to run programs from and then half for your files. I do this atm, but with separate HDs

 

[Nerseus]

I havent used a separate partition for a pagefile though I heard it might help.

Heres what I like to do:
C: I like 20 gig, but 10 gig if thats all you can spare. Contains the windows and any extra programs that must run on the C drive. For example, when you install Visual Studio to D:\ it will still put some files in C:\Program Files.

D: The rest of the main drive (in your case). Everything I install goes here: Office, Visual Studio, UltraEdit, etc.

I prefere a P: partition (or drive) for personal stuff: mp3s and anything I want to save if I have to restore.

I use E:\ for all my Visual Studio projects and any related files (data files, test files, databases, etc.).

Once a week, I copy everything from c:\windows and c:\program files onto a backup folder (currently an M: partition because it was free). Only once have I had to use it, but it was really nice. I reinstalled windows to C:\ then copied everything back and wham! everything worked just fine. That restored everything I had installed, the registry, etc. Worked out pretty nice - a friend had told me about it.

Of course, if you have some kind of backup/restore plan already then you can probably do whatever you want

-ner

 

[Denaes]

I havent used a separate partition for a pagefile though I heard it might help.

I was surprised. Microsoft used to be all against such things saying they were stupid. But it was Microsoft that suggests this for XP! (or one of their developers who has public say there)

Heres what I like to do:

Damn!

youre a lean mean partitioning machine!

It makes sense to keep things seperate like that though. Downloading things wont have a chance of fragmenting Visual Studio or any System settings.

Ive got a 37 gb hard drive internally on my laptop and a 180 gb hard drive externally via USB 2.0.

Im pretty sure Im going to repartition my external harddrive soon. Its in two partitions, 100gb and 80gb, mostly because Windows (as of win2k sp3) couldnt handle a single 180gb drive.

Right now I have two of my wedding videos captured to pure uncompressed avi... read: an hour and a half of video is taking up about 50gb. This is preventing me from messing with those partitions at the moment. Im going to get a filesplitter and move them to my wifes Mac where she is going to edit them into a movie to burn onto DVD for family and friends. Once thats done, I can drop the origional files (she can burn origional backups on 5 dvds. Im going to burn origional backups on 60 CDRs!!

Im probobly going to do my reformat tonite or tomorrow, so if anyone has advice on the sizes of the partitions or anything, that would be swell

 

[Denaes]

The deal is done.

10gb Windows drive
800mb Virtual Memory drive (only set for 250mb, but just in case I need more Virtual Memory)
10gb Program Files drive
2gb myFiles drive
17gb Blitz drive - Everything I download.

my computer now starts up in like 12 seconds (vs 2 minutes), both monitors work perfect out of the XP "box". I havnt even needed to install external software to manage them.

Im now networked to my wifes OSX machine and sending her our Wedding Videos Id grabbed to pure video (one is like 18gb for about an hour!!).

Actually if you have a large hard drive, it really seems optimal to seperate it like this.

You never need to worry about Windows fragging program files or your downloads messing with your system or applications. You can defrag any partition in about an hour rather than doing the whole thing in about 3 hours.

It was a bonus that when I was reformatting and installing I didnt need to wait an hour to format the entire hard drive, but only the 10gb partition to house Windows.

Bauldurs Gate just installed without error, so all in all, I think Im finally happy with XP.

As I watched XP crash in college opening MS Word or Excel I kept saying "Hey, it might be a good OS once they finish making it"

 

[wyrd]

Told ya you just needed a reformat. I try and make a point to reformat my system every 6 months to a year. When your system registry gets bloated and you have a bunch of crap that keeps getting installed on your puter, it tends to start chugging along and giving you errors for no reason what-so-ever. Reformat fixes those problems 90% of the time. The other 10% is usually hardware related.

 

[Jay1b]

I would like to reformat every 6 months or so, but the problem is - there is always a file or program tucked away somewher, that i think i have backed up - but it turns out i dont

 

[Denaes]

I would like to reformat every 6 months or so, but the problem is - there is always a file or program tucked away somewher, that i think i have backed up - but it turns out i dont

Well, thats one pro to the way I have things done.

I have an entire drive that Ill back up, my Documents drive.

Also it helps that I have an external hardrive thats hooked up to my laptop like 98% of the time, so I just need to put things on there.

I couldnt reccomend an external drive enough for these purposes.

Back to the days of my 10gb Archos MP3 player which saved immesurable amounts of work, effort and money between my PC and my wifes Mac (archos worked as a hard drive for both thank Goddess) and even acted as a "go between" for both machines. When she had OS 9, you couldnt network them together and she had no burner. Now she has OSX and we can network and she has a CDR/DVDR burner (damn her! had it for a year and hasnt burnt a single DVD!)

My next step, after I install VS.Net is to ghost my Windows and Program Files drive over to my external hard drive.

I spent so much time modifying things last night. XPs now only using like 10 system resources (as opposed to 50 by default) and takes like 8 seconds to boot... slowed down by the fact that I need to type in my password when I log on

 

[Divil]

I installed Windows XP on my main machine at home in late 2001 when it came out, and havent had to format since. This is the first time thats ever happened to me with any version of Windows - before, Id be looking at six months max before things would get slow/clogged up/corrupted and Id need a reinstall.

I used to be fairly partition happy, too. I have three on that machine - OS, Development and Games/Music/Graphics. However since then Ive regretted it, and Im now firmly of the opinion that setting up elaborate partition systems is pointless (although strangely fun) and Im going with one big one next time.

 

[Derek Stone]

Ive had pretty much the same experience as Tim. While I do keep my files on a separate partition (technically a separate drive) everything else tends to play better if installed on a single partition.

 

[Denaes]

Its all relative to how/what you use your machine for.

I download a lot as well as doing a lot of multimedia work - capturing pure avi video from tape (15gb for an hour!), ripping and encoding DVDs to AVI/MPG, a little music work...

this leaves a few side effects that this partition scheme should alieviate:

1. I can accidently fill up the ENTIRE hard drive down to 200k. Using this partition scheme, I cant easily fill up the entire drive. I can fill up my "Blitz" drive where I download/rip things, but Ill still have breathing space on my program files and windows drive. I dont have to worry about getting errors on those drives.

2. I can frag my harddrive beyond recognition if Im doing anything during a capture/edit/encode/rip. No matter what happens, Windows wont really get fragged. Programs that I use wont really get fragged. Yeah if Im downloading 3 things at once, theyll all be fragmented, but thats easy to solve.

3. Once I do defrag - it takes FOREVER. Its the entire drive. The way I have it set up now, I can defrag my windows partition in about 8 minutes and it should rarely need to be done. Same with the Program partition (yeah I know I could have just kept Program and Windows as the same partition). the partition getting the most use is the "Blitz" partition and that can be defragmented without dealing with the other partitions. Only fix what needs to be fixed.

I understand that in other cases, people will have different needs. My mother-in-law would never need this. Id set her up a swap partition and a C drive. to borrow from an infomercial "Set it and forget it"... because I know she hasnt defragged her computer ever and I got it for her about 2 years ago... (3 xmass ago).

Yes, this is a lot of strain I put my laptop through, but its what I got. Ideally this setup would be done in a towered desktop with 2-3 internal ultra <insert new catchphrases that indicate speed here> hard drives and really keep it all seperate. But I dont fancy encoding or ripping videos, nor running windows over a USB 2.0 cable, so I just have one hard drive internally.

 

[Derek Stone]

It sounds as if youd benefit from multiple physical drives, not partitions.

 

[Denaes]

It sounds as if youd benefit from multiple physical drives, not partitions.

Moreso from multiple drives than partitions. But Im on a laptop and I cant do a lot of my work through a USB 2.0 cable... or I could - very slowly. I wouldnt be surprised if there was some sort of docking station I could get with a hard drive - and because I have a widescreen laptop, it would only cost double the price of a normal dock - not that I can really afford even a 100 dock anyways.

I also benefit from partitions due to the fact that what is done on one partition doesnt fragment the files on another partition and if one partition becomes fragmented, I can defragment that particular partition.