Partitions and XP

[alanR]

Soon to build my first XP system and as regards partitioning HD, was planning to do the same as my previous W98 sys, namely 3 partitions, first for OS and apps, second (small) for page file only, third for all the rest. Seemd to work well with 98, seem ok for XP?

Also do you have any suggestions for sizes? Will be using a single Samsung 640Gig.

Alan.

[Steve B]

how much ram is in the system?

[alanR]

Hi Steve - there will be 2gig

thanks for your interest - off to bed now will lookin again 2moro

Alan.

[noveltylamp]

Hello Alan, I have a 640gb drive and have a 140gb partition for OS and Apps, a 140gb partition I use as a "workspace" and a 316gb partition for storage. The idea being the 140gb partition for OS and apps effectively short-strokes the drive, so they are confined to the fastest area of the disk. I have never seen the point of placing the swap file on another partition, having it in the middle of quite a full disk I suppose could be an advantage but I tend to leave it at default on the OS partition managed by the OS, if maintaining a contiguous page file is the point then use PageDefrag from Sysinternals (free, Sysinternals are now owned by MS so nothing to worry about). Installing applications on a separate partition from XP doesn't make sense either as they will be making calls on DLLs stored in the windows folder and so the disk will be seeking back and forth needlessly slowing down your user experience. If your swap file is on C and your apps on D then it will be bouncing between the two everytime you open a new program, if you put the page file on D then it will be bouncing between C and D when loading DLLs/windows components, and if you put a pagefile on both you're using up more space and I just can't see the point.
The "Workspace" partition I throw anything on i'm playing with temporarily, e.g. virtual machines, large zip files, and sometimes even install a second OS on there to tinker with. The storage partition is the big one taking up the rest of the disk, where performance tails off towards the end. I re-direct my user profile here so that when I wipe my OS partition all my documents and the like stay. I also store an image of my OS drive here along with any other files I wish to keep. Putting the page file on an additional hard drive that is no slower than your main HDD makes sense but that scenario isn't presented here and most people don't have a spare drive with the same performance of their main drive just to put the page file on.

[Zsev]

I have mine setup as follows on a 500 gig drive

OS = 80 Gigs
Games = 100 Gigs
Data = 320 Gigs

My OS partition has never exceeded 45 gigs with all programs installed so far. I follow by the rule that if the program is registry dependant and is wrecked after a reformat, put it in C: , otherwise it goes into D:

[Zak33]

DONT PUT THE PAGE FILE IN A SEPERATE PARTITION TO THE OS....cos the hard drive head needs to whack back and forwards to get to it anyway...so it wont be any faster.

IF you are doing that to save fragmentation, then instead, leave it in C drive with the OS BUT as soon as ther OS is installed set the PAGE FILE to a minimum size of something arounf 4 gig... and allow it to get bigger if it wants...it wont very often.

THEN defrag the partition and the page file will stay the same size and stop the drive fragmenting.

[alanR]

Thanks guys - most helpful.

Hadn't thought about the downside of a seperate partition for the page file, but your advice Zak makes sense - and I understand it not being funny but getting into XP as a newbie and I appreciate all your thoughts.

Built new system today - power new system tomorrow so will be getting into formatting and loading XP and things - all quite exciting really as this is my first own build.

Really appreciate all your thoughts.

Alan.

[hyperjedz]

I usually allot paging file to each partition, and I have 2 partition on my 2 hard drives, making it 4 partition in all.. with max page file size for each partition. is this ok?