Partition strategy for these 3 disks (sys, scratch, data) ?

Hello,

In need of basic advise please.

I am building a new computer next weekend and have three drives and would appreciate your advice on a partitioning strategy for 3 drives:

- Drive 1: New 256GB SSD m.2 pci-e SSD for Win10 and apps (autocad, sketchup, Adobe CC, rendering apps)

- Drive 2: Old 2010 Vertex SSD which is 90-120gb (can't recall) for scratch disk/win page file for Adobe and apps

- Drive 3: New HGST 7200rpm 4TB 3.5" HDD for files, pics, video and possible system image ( necessary on Win10?)

1) I plan to format all 3 drives as NTFS unless there is strong suggestion to do otherwise?
2) what is best partition strategy for Drive 1? How much GBs for partitions for Win vs Apps?
3) I read on win website to create 3 partitions for sys in this order: utilities; sys; win recovery. Does default win setup do this automatically or must I specify how many partitions and in what order and in what size? I'm clueless on this.
4) Disk 2: how much risk am I taking by using 5 yr old SSD for scratch disk? The virtual memory is volatile anyway so am I just risking each current session? I plan to point page file, cache, scratch to this drive. If too risky, I presume that using boot SSD as scratch is better than using HDD #3?
5) Disk 3: does win10 still require that user do image of opsys for recovery (using acronis et al) and, if so, how many GBs do I partition on Disk 3 and if so does it matter if it is the first or last partition on this drive 3?
6) what win 10 should I get? At Fry's they have OEM and also USB flash drive?

Thank you you for any advice in advance!

Honestly i think your over complicating it....just install win 10 to the larger faster ssd. In my experience win 10 creates any and all partitions needed during install....the rest is just different preferences with hardly any difference. As far as buying windows 10? fuck people actually paying money for it? thought everyone been getting free upgrades lol but seriously if you dont have a good usb3 flash drive then thats handy to have in itself....but then again is very easy to put on a flash drive yourself if its a lot cheaper that way.

Use the new SSD for Windows and apps. Just format it with the Windows installer and don't bother setting up multiple partitions, it won't matter will just serve to cause you misery later when you want to resize partitions. You don't need a "partition strategy", that is 15 year old thinking process right there.

Use the small SSD as a scratch drive for Adobe, just use the whole drive. Don't bother trying to manage the Windows page file, you'll actually want that on your fastest drive and Windows does a good job of managing the size for you. The scratch drive won't just explode when you do this, I wouldn't worry about it.

Usually a good idea to take a system image of the C: disk after your OS and apps are installed and updated. Then you can go back to that if you break something.

Simplicity often yields the best results, you are trying much to hard to do things "correctly" when modern PCa don't have the same issues as PC from 10 years ago did.

I would agree with most of what's been said already: use the fastest SSD for the OS and apps, use the second SSD for a scratch purposes (although if you happen to have a ton of RAM using a RAMdisk for scratch purposes would be way way faster and not kill the SSD's lifespan that much sooner), and that's about it.

The one tip I would add would be put a page file on the second SSD and the large hard drive too: doing so gives Windows the ability to read/write page file contents at any time. Even in spite of SSDs and hard drives and even RAMdisks being incredibly fast nowadays, all of them are still limited to one simple fact: they can't read and write at the same time so, when a particular drive is being read from at any given moment you can't write to it simultaneously. Having multiple page files spread across multiple physical drives means Windows can operate more efficiently overall.

Something like a 2GB page file on each drive - that means setting a manual static page file size on the system drive too - will offer improved system performance even if you do have a ton of RAM in the machine.

No reason to partition single drives any more really, unless you use the other partition for data or apps that don't need the registry or have installers and your OS gets hosed and you can reinstall with out taking out that data.

Save your important data on a drive other than your OS drive and just install what you need on the SSD's and be done with it.

I'd load your OS on your 256gb drive (and just let Windows use the whole thing) I'd trash the little SSD, replace it with a 512gb SSD and use it for your apps.


I'd move the 4TB to a nas device.

Thanks to all for replying. Much appreciated. My conclusion is that the general theme is KISS, which is generally always a good thing. I would like to seek clarification about MrGuvernment's suggestion below:

MrGuvernment said:

No reason to partition single drives any more really, unless you use the other partition for data or apps that don't need the registry or have installers and your OS gets hosed and you can reinstall with out taking out that data.

Click to expand...

Can someone help me understand this a little better. It sounds like it is a thing of the past, but some folks use to set up a separate partition for the Op Sys another for the Apps in order to facilitate a recovery of just the op sys while avoiding to have to deal with the apps.

Is this no longer necessary on Win10 because it gives the user some flexibility in recovering just the op sys versus the apps? Or is MrGuvernment's comment implying that most Apps have windows registry entries and therefore, in practice, one must recover both the operating system and apps should one need to reinstall the opsys, therefore defeating the purpose of dedicating a partition to just the opsys?

riotubes said:

Can someone help me understand this a little better. It sounds like it is a thing of the past, but some folks use to set up a separate partition for the Op Sys another for the Apps in order to facilitate a recovery of just the op sys while avoiding to have to deal with the apps.

Is this no longer necessary on Win10 because it gives the user some flexibility in recovering just the op sys versus the apps? Or is MrGuvernment's comment implying that most Apps have windows registry entries and therefore, in practice, one must recover both the operating system and apps should one need to reinstall the opsys, therefore defeating the purpose of dedicating a partition to just the opsys?

Click to expand...

He's saying you may want to partition to store items on a separate volume so if you need to wipe your OS you don't lose your data.

In your scenario I would just install the OS and applications on the 250GB drive and use the 4TB hard drive for things like pictures, movies, mp3's, etc that don't require the fast access time. What to do with the second SSD is really up to you. As you pointed out the application may require additional space for scratch, so maybe put your page file and Adobe scratch on the second SSD.

When you install your OS on the larger one you don't need to create partitions, just click unallocated space and press next.

Thanks for the reply. My question was not focused on the large HDD for data, but rather on the fast SSD for win10 and the applications.

If one needed to use one disk for both operating system and applications (not data), it used to be "best practice" to make two partitions on this disk; one for OS and one for applications. That way, if the OS failed one could reinstall windows with a backup image without screwing with the apps, and vice versa.

I am trying to read into MrGuverment's statement about the registry entries. I think he is saying that one should keep win10 + apps together on the same partition because it would be necessary to reinstall the apps if the OS needs reinstalling because the apps are so intertwined with OS (i.e. registry entries). I am trying to understand if this was in fact his point and true. Others can respond. Can one reinstall just windows without touching the apps even if those apps have registry entries?

Why not do this:

- 256GB SSD = system drive for the OS and all your most commonly used applications including games if necessary (if they're really large games they may prove more useful on the 4TB drive which should be relatively fast even considering it's a physical hard drive

- the 4TB drive as the second drive in the system for raw storage of audio/video/etc aka static files with unchanging content, and perhaps some games depending on the size as noted

- the remaining SSD as the third drive in the system and use that exclusively for images of the system drive itself considering when you decide to do an image of the system drive this will be damned fast indeed

That's how I'd set those 3 drives up but that's just me. I use True Image for imaging purposes and I do images offline using bootable media aka a CD, and with the normal compression mode (high compression only gives you like 5% better compression most of the time and takes 3x longer so it's not worth using) you're looking at roughly 2:1 compression so, as long as you're not filling that 256GB SSD completely (a bad idea to fill any drive or partition more than 85% full, even SSDs) you shouldn't have any issues with fitting the contents of the image on the SSD, can even probably do some incremental images if so desired.

Using such a setup with SSD to SSD imaging you should be able to image even as much as 100-150GB in minutes without any issues - the speed of the SSDs will make fast work of such a process.

And you can still put a page file as I noted above on each of these, 2GB per drive static page files, and still get some benefits of better system performance overall. Splitting the 256GB for OS and applications is a bit pointless nowadays because you can have this type of setup and make full system drive images in minutes without any problems. If it was strictly hard drives I might suggest a splitting of the drive into two partitions but even so, if you do have to restore the OS for some reason you may find yourself in a situation where the applications on the secondary partition may need to be reinstalled anyway because of some Registry issues.

You bought a 256GB SSD, use it and be done with it.

Tiberian, thanks for the clarity in addressing my Qs. I appreciate your feedback and the others who took the time to respond. Thank you.