Help me partition my drives!

So. I’m about to reformat my computer and all of its drives, and I was thinking about doing a little repartitioning. I was curious as to how everybody else has their drives partitioned, and was wondering if anybody had any suggestions for me.

I have two separate IDE hard disks, consisting of a 140gb drive and a 40gb drive. I think I’m going to ditch the 40gb one, as I have two additional 500gb SATA harddrives on the way, and the 40gb one is getting pretty old and I just don’t trust it anymore. 4 separate hard disks in a single computer case is just a little much, too.

Originally Posted by My current setup

140gb – 3 drives:
Main – 20gb. (Mainly the Windows installation and all of the programs I have installed. Also includes many misc. MS Office documents I have and all of my pictures.)
Music – 35gb (Um. My music.)
Video – 85gb (Couple videos I have *cough*porn*cough*, and is also the designated drive for any temporary downloads from programs such as torrents or P2P programs.)

40gb - 1 drive:
Game – 40gb (Basically Quake III, PSP .iso’s and some emulators.)

I remember reading a while ago that it is generally a good idea to have a partition dedicated to only your operating system installation, and a separate partition for any programs you may want to install. I was curious about this, as I wondered if it would make my computer boot up faster, run more smoothly, or anything.

Anyways. I was basically just wondering what the best way to partition my drives would be. I understand that there is most likely no real answer and it is probably different for everybody, but I just want some suggestions or alternatives to how I’m doing it.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Personally, I find it's pretty useless to install the OS and it's programs on two separate partitions. However, it is much more efficient to partition some space for your pagefile. (2GB is more than enough.) Meanwhile, I simply haven't bothers to do that.

I run a small dedicated fileserver with Windows 2003 instead of loading up my gaming rig with hard drives. That, and the fact XP can't do RAID1 or 5. I don't have to deal with backing up if I need to format, or even worry about losing my data. I built the server for under $300 not including hard drives.

For partitioning... if you're going to format your drives anyways, use the Windows XP installer to partition. It's very straightforward.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

If you've already partitioned and formatted and you want to make some adjustments to your partition sizes and/or placement, I recommend Paragon Partition Manager. When I first set up my OS-only partition, I didn't allot enough space. Rather than re-format and do everything over again, I just used this program to give an extra 10 gigs from one of my larger partitions.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

My partitions are set up this way:

Hard Disk 1
System (C) : 25-30 GB - Windows and Program Files
Scratch (Q) : 4-6 GB - pagefile, all TEMP and Temporary Internet Files
Media (D) : what's left - all of My Documents, Desktop, incoming Bittorrent, DC++, and ED2K files, Holding Area for IE/FF downloads, Games

Hard Disk 2
Storage (E) : all of it - all videos, music, completed Bittorrent, DC++ and ED2K files.

If you wish to have separate partitions for video, audio, and such files, you can split the storage volume.

You can reconfigure your TEMP and Temporary Internet file directories by setting it in the appropriate location. My Documents and Desktop can be changed with TweakUI. In my setup, I enable System Restore only for Drive C, since I don't need to roll back the other drives. I don't recommend splitting your applications folder - when you reinstall Windows, you have to reinstall all of them anyway. I separate the cache, temp files, and pageflie to faciliate disk defragmentation.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I would raid 2 small drives for windows/games/swap (preferably hardware raid, easier and performs better than software). But preferably sata, ide is homogay.

10-15gb for windows/apps that use registry. at least 40gb for games. 100+ gb for music. 2+ gb for swap file. at least 150 gb for random downloads/videos.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Oh awesome. I think what I am mainly trying to accomplish here is improved system performance. I've never heard of this 'pagefile' you guys were talking about, but I researched it a little and it sounds like it is a pretty common practice to have a partition dedicated to this. Sounds like it really helps to have this separate from the systems partition. Would moving certain things like the TEMP folder and any temporary internet files onto this partition also help attain better performance as well?

I was also thinking about also setting up a RAID, but this is something I've never done before, and don't really know how to approach it. I would most likely go between a RAID level 0 or 1, but don't know which is better, or genuinely used more :/. And why can't you do a RAID1 with XP?

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I tried doing the whole OS on one drive, applications on another. I kind of doubt that it was any faster that way--I only did it to keep them separate from my OS drive since it used to get formatted fairly often. My current setup looks like this...

• Physical Drive 1: 80 gigs
  • Logical Drive 1: 40 gigs, NTFS for windows, applications
  • Logical Drive 2: 39 gigs, Ext3 for Linux, applications
  • Logical Drive 3: 1 gig, Linux Swap
• Physical Drive 2: 80 gigs
  • Logical Drive 1: 80 gigs, Ext3 for temporary storage
• Physical Drive 3: 300 gigs
  • Logical Drive 1: 300 gigs, Ext3 for music
• Physical Drive 4: 200 gigs
  • Logical Drive 1: 200 gigs, Ext3 for general storage
• Phyiscal Drive 5: 300 gigs
  • Logical Drive 1: 300 gigs, Ext3 for general storage
• Phyiscal Drive 6: 160 gigs
  • Logical Drive 1: 160 gigs, Ext3 for general storage

As you can see, I'm dual booting Linux and Windows right now, and I've got all of my storage drives formatted in Ext3 (which took a whole weekend a couple months ago). I'm not doing it here because I don't use Windows much, but it's definitely a good idea to give your Windows page file its own NTFS partition. I've yet to fool around with RAID arrays. They seem kind of wasteful outside of a dedicated server environment. If you've got the money, patience and real estate in your case though, go for it.

FELIPE NO

The idea of setting up a RAID on a home PC is rather a waste (Well, Raid 0 atleast). In Raid 0, your read and write speeds should theoretically be halved, but actuall performance in real-life applications is not as such. A performance increase would most likely be noticed on a server with a large network of arrays. On a home PC though, the few seconds gained (or lost) is not worth doubling the chance of losing data. In Raid 1, The pros outweigh the cons, but for many people, the actual gain is not worth it. Taken from the aforementioned article:

Quote:

The same feature that provides the protection can also be the user's downfall. RAID 1 maintains a faithful copy on the second disk of everything that's on the first. Warts and all. Mistakes made, files irrecoverably deleted, virus caused issues, shredding etc are all duplicated on the second disk. Users tend to forget that RAID 1 does not protect against errors, it protects only against one disk going faulty.

Raid is awesome, but take it with a grain of salt. For many people, a good set of drives without RAID is a much performance as they'd want. For others (users who do video/audio editing, or something where the harddrive is constantly being accessed), raid can prove more efficient and reliable.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

RAID 0 definitely doesn't halve your read and write speeds. It should be close to doubling them. It works like that because data and data transfer is split in half between the two drives. You have two drives reading or writing each half of the data simultaneously, instead of just one doing all the work. Keep in mind, that if one drive fails, you lose ALL the data in the setup.

RAID 1 is mirroring, essentially being just an exact copy of another drive. Read performance will greatly increase, but writing will be the same or slower than using no RAID at all. Like you quoted, RAID doesn't guard against any errors that might occur as a result of your RAID setup, just from one disk failing.

RAID 5 is the same as 1, but uses an extra drive for keeping track of data integrity. Read and write performance should be the worst out of all three setups.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Software raid0 nearly doubled my game load speed/pagefile access, someone's smoking some strong shit.

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Originally Posted by Render

RAID 0 definitely doesn't halve your read and write speeds. It should be close to doubling them.

Sorry, I had my words mixed up. What I meant was the time it takes to do things would [theoretically] be halved.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Ok - let me get this straight.

RAID will increase my read/write speeds and overall system performance, but not significantly enough to justify its use? What I got from everybody’s posts was that a major con of RAID is essentially doubling the chance of having a hard disk failure and losing data, and the costs involved from the purchase of an additional drive, right? How many people here actually use RAID on their home PC?

It sounds like what I might just end up doing is just creating a partition for my system installation and programs (since you guys said separating them doesn’t really do anything), and another for my pagefile. Would placing the TEMP folder as well as the temporary internet files into the same partition as the pagefile be of benefit, perhaps keep my system installation partition a little cleaner and more organized? How much space would be appropriate to allot to these two partitions?

Thanks a lot guys. You don’t know how much you’re helping me.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I don't think that you would see any benefit from moving your temp or temporary internet files folders to your swap partition. And that's assuming that IE/Windows will even let you do such a thing.

As for the sizes, I've heard lots of different rules of thumb. Some people say your swap file should be half the size of your installed RAM. Some say 2/3rds the size (which is what I'm doing--1.5 gigs of RAM and a 1 gig swap partition). Once you figure out how much swap space you want, give the rest of space on your physical disk to your OS partition unless you're planning to dual boot another OS.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Doubling your speed (or more depending on setup) doesn't justify its use?

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Well...I wasn't sure. I've heard so many positive things about RAID, but then Free.User gave that article saying that it may not be such a hot idea for a home pc :/. One of my buddies has it and absolutely loves it. Maybe I'll give it a try. What's the difference between a software RAID and a regular RAID? Or are they the same thing...

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by BlueBomber

Well...I wasn't sure. I've heard so many positive things about RAID, but then Free.User gave that article saying that it may not be such a hot idea for a home pc :/. One of my buddies has it and absolutely loves it. Maybe I'll give it a try. What's the difference between a software RAID and a regular RAID? Or are they the same thing...

If you're worried about losing data on your RAID0 array, either install a backup drive, use RAID1 or 5, or simply don't do it at all. RAID 1 and 5 will be null if you're looking for pure speed performance.

Software and hardware RAID are quite simple. Software RAID is handled by the OS. This results in some extra CPU power being required, but I've read it's next to none for a dual drive RAID0. Hardware RAID is when you're using the onboard RAID functions on your motherboard or you're using a PCI card that will add those functions.

The only reason you would consider software is if your motherboard doesn't have RAID capability. Unfortunately, I'm not certain if either method is more reliable than the other. Maybe someone else can shed some light on this.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Software raid is more flexible (though you can't stripe the os volume I believe), and uses more cpu I'd imagine. Software raid has compatibility issues.

If you're just using one OS, you'll be fine with software. If you're dual booting stuff like linux, go hardware raid.

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