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Question about partitioning

F

frostx

n00b
Joined
Mar 8, 2005
Messages
7
Building new system, 1st one. Have a question about partitioning a new drive.

System will be mostly gaming and surfing. HDD is 160 gb. Wondering if I should partition the HDD, with one part for OS, and another for games and what-not, or if I would be just fine going with one large partition?
 
One large partition would be just fine. Partitions don't really add performance (in fact they can take some away), they are used mostly for organization. If you had an extra hd, that would be a different story.
 
Thanks for your feedback. Sounds like 1 big partition might be the best option for me
 
serbiaNem said:
One large partition would be just fine. Partitions don't really add performance (in fact they can take some away), they are used mostly for organization. If you had an extra hd, that would be a different story.
Click to expand...

Id beg to differ
they can add considerable performance,
but then you do need to understand what partitioning is doing in relation to your typical access pattern

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=741512 (and embedded links)
 
Feel free to tell the guy how to write every bit to be in the exact place for performance. Your guide only covered physical drives. On one drive it would take a considerable amount of time to configure the partition table to see any performance gain, as slight as it would be...
 
personally, i prefer to make 2 partitions; ONe for OS and the other for storage. When (not if) Windows needs a reformat then you wont lose all your data such as documents,songs, and pictures that you have on the other partition.
 
go with 2.. i went with 1 and now 10 months later my XP install is starting to act funny.. i wish i could just reformat a partition and reinstall but i can't because i have one big parition now..

for that reason alone i would make 2 paritions.. probably something like 36gb and 120gb..

eventually i am going to figure out how to back up 120 gb worth of stuff so i can reformat this thing and partition it this time..
 
serbiaNem said:
Feel free to tell the guy how to write every bit to be in the exact place for performance. Your guide only covered physical drives. On one drive it would take a considerable amount of time to configure the partition table to see any performance gain, as slight as it would be...
Click to expand...

again dependent on the access required

turning a world full of shades of grey however into a black and white,
yes or no answer though is a disservice to the membership ;)

a single drive with a smaller partition limiting the most highly accesssed data to the OD can pay immediate and longterm benefits

heres an example, does he run P2P ap?
that would fragment the holy hell out of the main OS partition if the download location is on it, a perfect senerio for an additional partition to forstall fragmentation, of course with a performance penalty which may or maynot be acceptable dependent on how heavily accessed the OS partition is.

the guide covers (and links to) the information you need to determine what your doing with your drive or drives,
of course ignorance is always an option but the question asked about optimizing.
 
Appreciate the info from the posts here. I think in the end I will do 2 partitions, one small one for the OS, the other for the rest of the stuff.

I like the idea of having the OS on its own partition, and doing downloading, like P2P stuff, and putting all my games, on a seperate partition. Not really looking for a performance increase (although not looking to decrease performance either). If using 2 partitions will help separate my OS from the rest of my data, and help with fragmentation while at the same time not decreasing performance, thats really what I'm hoping to accomplish.

As this is my 1st system build, trying to get as much info as I can before putting it all together. One last question. If I end up using 2 partitions, one for OS, other for the rest, on a 160gb HDD, how many gb's should I give the the OS partition? Obviously don't want it too small, but also don't want to allocate to many gb's and have wasted space for just the OS.
 
well that again really depends on how many aps you load on it
I perfer to load the aps with the OS, and some of the graphics aps add up to a fair bit of space (CAD, adobe suite ect)

people go from 5 or 6GB to 10GB for a minimal install
I have partition magic and generally dont worry about that much till a partition starts to get tight, since I often switch the roles a given box has I change that when I need to

all in all a second drive offer alot more advantages in concurrent access not to mention its (limited*) backup usefulness

(Ghost images, ect, not a true replacement for hard media backup)
 
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