partition sizes

[Trekster]

Hi

The parts for my new computer are in the mail, and one of those parts is a 120gb hdd, so I was just wondering what size I should make the partitions.

I've heard that windows should have its own 5gb partition, and to just put everything on another partition. Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[Ice Czar]

Partitioning Strategies
its a very individual thing, highly dependent on the performance you might gain, and the safety\organization youd want

Originally posted by TyrranzzX
Actually, there are 4 good reason to partition:

1: You seperate the drives into logical units and hence each drive has a different addressing table. That way if the addressing table on one drive gets royally screwed, the other drives aren't effected.

2: Speeds up a lot of processes like scanning the drive for viruses, defragmenting, checking the drive for errors etc as you aren't scanning over 60 gigs, but 10 or 20 gigs at a time.

3: It makes for easier organization.

4: Allows you to install multiple OS's on a single disk.

5: Lets you have a physically seperate partition for backup so you don't have to worry about accidently formatting your C drive and with it all of your data.

6: Allows you to specify different performance levels (in linux). Some filesystems are better for data storage and security, and others are better for performance. In NTFS, I belief you can specify cluster size; the larger the better the performance but more inefficient the drive.

to which I'll add
for #6, performance, the very position of the partition effects its performance, those at the front (outer edge of the platter) having a distinct advantage

P2P > by the very nature of P2P, small incremental bits of information, written to the HDD over an extended period of time, with "typically" more than one download at a time, the file fragments beyond any "normal" use, to almost an astronomical level, by creating a P2P Quarantine partition, you isolate this from your OS and other data, then a simple cut and paste to a "data" partition will normally reassemble the file at least to a greater degreee than before. You can generally point any P2P program to a download location, and also to several "shared data" locations
and they dont have to be the same

Swapfile > Graphics apps will chew up all the RAM they can get whenever they are dealing with "history" or large files (not the wee littler jpegs, but high res .tiff ect) so employing a dedicated partition, located on the outer edge of the HDD where the transfer rate is the fastest can be an advantage, provided your also accessing the graphics application (if its on the same disk) nearby (less you loose the positional advantage)

Virtual Memory in XP-W2K (also known as scratchdisk (adobe) pagefile, swapfile)
Multiple Pagefiles