fldash

I normally create two/three partitions on my drives, depending on how many physical drives are in the PC. In my last PC, I had a WD Raptor 36GB that I had split in two (C: and D. Installed XP and most of my non-game applications on to C: and all my games and gaming type applications (xfire, vent, ts, etc) on to D:. I also had a 120GB drive that I used as Z: for all my file storage.

Since I'm building a new PC with all new component and giving the old one to the wife, I wanted to move the Raptor to my new PC. So I rebuild her box with Vista, and split up the 120GB drive into a C: and D:. I haven't installed much on to it yet. Right now I have data on D: and programs on C:.

When I get my parts in Wednesday, I'll put the Raptor in my new box as the C: - but should I split it like I had it in my old system? I have a 250GB coming also, but it's not a Raptor so I'll probably use it for data storage in my new box.

I recently read that it's okay to split your data to a different physical drive or partition but that it's not smart to install programs to a different partition because it's simply slower.

I just wanted to see how everyone else configures their drives and perhaps get some ideas on the best way to do it.

__________________
It is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast. Ephesians 2:8-9/NIV

Hambergler

My general impression is that partitions don't make anything faster, but I may be wrong. The only reason I can think of to partition is to ghost drives.

__________________

=Sarc=

I have a 120GB drive dedicated to games. They're on a separate drive because I have a lot of games, it's a dedicated drive for data access, and some don't really need a registry entry to run. I definitely don't complain about load times and it's just a regular IDE drive, 8MB cache.

I install apps to my C: drive just because. No particular reason. If I reformat, I'd have to reinstall that stuff anyway. There's another D: partition for data (music, videos, downloads). If I reformat, all my data is intact and it's only the apps that need a reinstall. You can even set your My Documents directory to another partition/drive so that stuff is saved too. When I moved to Vista, my R6: Vegas save games and keybinds were all saved.

I don't really see the need to partition a 36GB drive. I have a 40GB partition for C: and it's 10GB free now. You'll need a bit of extra space for defragging and you never know when you might install another huge app.

__________________
JO Guides & Tutorials
Team Element - It's who you game with.

icky

I don't partition. I always use 2 drives and I keep the OS on the first along with stuff which is mostly static. I use the 2nd drive for stuff which changes alot and as a general data drive.

When I upgrade, I move everything I need backed up onto one of the drives and then I install a new drive with a fresh OS and my regular apps.

__________________
Peace through fear... since 1947!

fldash

Okay, I think I'll use the 36GB Raptor as my main drive for both applications and games. I normally only have 1-2 games installed at a time anyway. Then use the incoming 250GB as data storage, movies, MP3's, etc...

I'm worried that 36GB is going to fill up pretty fast thought with games that are out recently. So maybe I'll use the 36GB just for games and partition out the 250GB for OS and data... bleh... decisions...

__________________
It is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast. Ephesians 2:8-9/NIV

=Sarc=

I would keep the 36GB as the main drive, one partition. If it fills up, you can always install games to the second drive. If you have more cash when that happens, you can get a third drive that's dedicated for games.

__________________
JO Guides & Tutorials
Team Element - It's who you game with.

Zoopy

I'm not sure 36GB is big enough for anything. I have two hard drives, one fro games and another for OS and non game applications, and my OS/application drive is well over 70 GB from a clean install 2 weeks ago (and I still have a couple more applications I need to put on). If I had a 36GB drive, I would only put the OS and some apps on it.

But that's me, you know your limits, and if 36 GB is good for you, then I guess it's alright.

TheBigC

Partitions mean nothing. There is no advantage to having two partitions with just one OS anymore. The reverse is actually true now, you take two matching physical hard drives and create one logical hard drive and you have RAID 0. Now that will spead up your computer drastically. My current setup has me running 2- Raptor 150s and 2 -Raptors 74. On my OS they show up as 1- 300GB and one 1-148GB (minus the bootsector).

Me personally, I would keep the 36GB Raptor as your primary boot drive because unless you go with another Raptor, you will not find another 10,000 RPM hard drive with wicked seek speeds. This will give you better performance overall. If you can fit your main program files and games, I would keep them on there as well. Eventually you will run out of space and the slower hard drives will be your bottleneck. Use that as your document (music, movies, Word Docs etc) repository.

__________________

The Meek shall inherit the earth..... after we're through with it!

The Wounded Warrior Project, help support my friends

Twisted_Firestarter

Not true. There are partitioning strategies that will give you some performance benefits using a single drive with multiple partitons. For example, if you create a partition at the outer edge of your drive and install your operating system and applications there, the majority of the drive's seeks will be on the fastest part of the drive.

If you have more than one partition across several physical drives you can also see improved performance gains. Your hard drive is typically handling multiple I/O requests at a time. Any time your hard drive is performing an implicit I/O request (such as caching) concurrent with an explicit I/O request (such as launching an app), you will be sharing performance bandwidth with those requests. Having more than one partition will decrease this contention. In effect, for scenarios where you are using two drives simultaneously, you are doubling your I/O bandwidth. And that is exactly why a RAID 0 configuration is so fast, although the RAID 0 will obviously have better performance since it is almost always using both drives simultaneously.

Multiple partitions have other benefits, such as being able to defrag only the partitons that need it. Also, if you are using backup strategies such as Norton Ghost, you will typically not be allowed to set your source and destination partition to be the same.

__________________
Twisted Firestarter
a.k.a |TG| Harkonian

Acreo Aeneas

I almost never partition (unless it's a file server).

Honestly, with XP, if the partition your XP is installed on is less than 40 GBs then performance increases by about 20% (according to some). The best is to have seperate physical hard drives if you want better performance rather than partitioning a single drive into several partitions.

__________________

El_Gringo_Grande

Isn't this only true some of the time? Maybe only a small fraction of the time? When the OS writes to the partition what is the likelyhood of writing to the multiple disks? For most files wouldn't it just write to one disk? Or does windows see that there are multiple disks in the partition and take advantage of it?

And if it is true wouldn't this increase the cost of one disk failing? Like raid 0?

__________________
I’m not racists, I have republican friends. Radio show host.
- "The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity". -Jacob Burkhardt
- "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson
- "People should not be afraid of it's government, government should be afraid of it's People." - Line from V for Vendetta
- If software were as unreliable as economic theory, there wouldn't be a plane made of anything other than paper that could get off the ground. Jim Fawcette

Acreo Aeneas

If it is in RAID 0, the partition is more or less divided into two parts, one on each physical drive. So when you write to that partition, both drives are being used.

__________________

=Sarc=

The chance of one disk failing is still the same because adding another drive drive does not affect the failure rate of the first drive. It's also different from RAID 0 because if one disk fails, only the data on that disk is gone, not the data on both disks (as is with RAID 0).

__________________
JO Guides & Tutorials
Team Element - It's who you game with.