How big should by C drive be?

[starbuck]

Going to install my new 300gb SATA drive and use it as my main drive and use my existing 200gig drive for general storage(programs, games etc or maybe use another partion on the 300 gig for programs etc if it's faster). Was thinking of partitioning the 300gig and having a partion just for the OS and pagefile. How big should this main partition be?

Am doing a clean install of XP on the new drive as think it will be better and faster then transfer any files I need from the 200gig to the new one.

[ikkitousen]

i dont know how big it should be but oh my god who needs that much space lol 0.5tb thats nice

[nvening]

I got mine at 10GB and its much more than I need, but, especially as you have plenty space, I would go with the 10GB. Also make sure you format it in NTFS as thats better for windows.

[nichomach]

Actually, I'd say that if your new boot drive's going to be 300GB, then allow plenty of space for the C: drive. I wouldn't have said there's any advantage in putting your programs on a separate partition to your OS; if your OS goes belly up, you'd need to reinstall the programs anyway, they'll load faster from the fastest disk, and even if they're in a separate partition on the same disk, you're still going to be doing the same read operations on the same drive.

If your drives were of broadly equivalent speed, I'd say put the pagefile on the other physical drive; that can help performance significantly, since it splits out pageing operations to a separate channel from your other I/O. As a general rule, it belongs on the fastest disk, but even if your 200GB is only an adequately fast SATA it should help.

OS and programs'd quite happily live on C:, but I'd allow plenty of space for that (50 or so at least, I'd probably go for 100 or even a 50/50 split, depending on how much actual data you needed to store on the disk as opposed to programs you needed to install) since the C: drive has a tendency to fragment, and only 10GB may leave you with problems if Windows doesn't think you have enough free space to defrag.

[starbuck]

how much diff in spedd would extra cache make to a drive and is there much diff between an IDE drive and a SATA in terms of speed. I have a 200gb IDE which has 8mb cache and a 300gb SATA drive which has 16mb cache.

[zaphod]

one big 300Gb patition..Partitioning is only for old FAT16 machines with HDD to large for the file system.

The 300 will be a slight be faster than th 200 I'd imagine

[noah]

Partitioning is only for old FAT16 machines with HDD to large for the file system.

maybe......but it makes re-installing windows a damn sight easier if there is a 10gb partition there for just it

[arthurleung]

one big 300Gb patition..Partitioning is only for old FAT16 machines with HDD to large for the file system.

The 300 will be a slight be faster than th 200 I'd imagine

Do you know too big of a partition is HORRIBLE to defrag. I have a RAID5 array of 600G on a 3Ware 7506-8 and it takes 1 WHOLE WEEK to defrag (1.03Mi fragments)

[wasabi]

You should put your pagefile onto a separate partition so it doesn't get fragmented by all the system file activity.

I generally say about 8 gig for c drive (assuming you don't install other apps there), twice you ram size for pagefile partition (so if you've a gig of ram make it two gig, just in case you upgrade).

[tom deloford]

I think your all mad, 10gb is no where near big enough for a c drive, after about 6months of use you will want to make it bigger and this is a real pain (if you dont have partition magic). I had this problem. I would recommend at least 20gb given you have 500gb available.

But your best bet is to buy a 74gb WD Raptor and use that as you're c drive!

[nichomach]

one big 300Gb patition..Partitioning is only for old FAT16 machines with HDD to large for the file system.

The 300 will be a slight be faster than th 200 I'd imagine

The 300 should be a faster drive, no question, but there isn't much actual difference between SATA and UDMA133 drives. The 16MB cache would make a difference, but I would actually still put the pagefile on the 200GB drive on the basis that it is less likely to be being continually accessed for program loading and other OS operations. Consequently, pageing performance ought to be better. If user data as opposed to just OS and programs are going to be on the 300GB drive, then I would definitely partition into two partitions; programs and OS on one, data on the other, so that in the event of having to reformat and reinstall, you wouldn't lose the user data, just the OS and programs (both of which you'd have to reinstall anyway).

[scotty6435]

I've got a 160gig HDD split into 3 sections; 10gig for system, 50 gig for programs and games and 90gig for downloads. I must say that the 10gig partition is just too small - I'm constantly fighting to keep it about 30% free. When I come to reformat again I'll make a dedicated page file partition and 20 gig for windows.

Scotty

[Kumagoro]

I prefer not to put progs in with c for defragging and virus checking reasons.
Also move the temp internet files if using Ie to a different partition. I just hate
when i do a v check or defrag and i forgot to clear the rubbish out.

[buzz_lips]

I set mine to 10 gig, I don't put anything else in there except windows, games dl's etc etc go in my other partition. Just thought Windows would work better that way.

[Starburn]

I think your all mad, 10gb is no where near big enough for a c drive, after about 6months of use you will want to make it bigger and this is a real pain (if you dont have partition magic). I had this problem. I would recommend at least 20gb given you have 500gb available.

? :| I have about 4/5gig for my C: drive and its plenty... I use about 75% of it..
and 60 odd gig in the other partition.

[zaphod]

That a good idea, putting your apps on a different partitoin than C. But what if you reformat c and all the registery enteries on C of the apps on the other partition are lost..the apps are usless? is there a way around this?