A question on hard drive partitioning

[deuces wild]

My son's new computer has a 250gb serial ATA hard drive. He also has an external 80gb hard drive for storing his music and backups of his main drive.

He presently has a couple of resource hungry games on the main drive, along with his operating system (XP home) and other programs such as Word and Excel,

Will partitioning the main 250gb drive improve performance when playing games or operating other programs?

If so, how would you suggest it be partitioned and what programs would you suggest moving to the partition?

TIA! :)

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Good morning, D.W.

Partitioning a hard drive is a very useful feature, and there are many reasons to break up a HD into multiple partitions. Performance, however, is rarely one of them. I have a very large Outlook PST file that has been accumulating email since 1995. This PST resides on its own partition, and it will therefore never fragment. This is the only occasion that I see it helping performance. (This NTFS partition has a cluster size of 32KB because it contains only one large file).

Another instance where partitioning is useful is on a multi-boot system, where a data partition can share data between the systems. Or plain data storing, e.g. multimedia files. Or a backup partition, but in your (son's) case the external (separate) HD is much more practical.

At our office we install all new PCs with a main C: partition and a smaller D: data partition. Most PCs become obsolete after about 3 years, and I have seen many where the D: drive was virtually untouched during its life. Especially PCs of non-technical staff.

I would say that if there is no specific reason to make separate partitions, leave it alone. All applications install by default into C:\Program Files, and many do not even give you a choice. Documents and data files mostly go onto the C: drive without giving you a choice, so most of the used disk space will accumulate on the C: drive.

[deuces wild]

Thank you Pat. You have always provided useful and relevant replies to my queries and I appreciate it. :)

[scuzzman]

It is not really necessary to carve up a drive into seperate partitions. I would, and here's how and why:

100GB Primary - contains OS, etc

150GB mounted at C:\Documents and Settings\ - will contain all user settings and personal files. This way, should you ever need to reinstall the OS all users can retain their settings.

[-pops-]

Instead of partitioning drives, I much prefer to have separate hard drives for the different uses in my machines.

Normally I have an 80GB (or thereabouts) "C" drive with the O/S and programs then a separate 80GB (possibly larger) drive for my personal data, files and everything else. If I intend to use the machine for video processing or television recording, I will install a third large drive to store and manipulate all the video files.

The machines I build for my son's business normally have four hard drives, three as above and another for daily backups.

The reason I have physically separate drives is because of the possibility of drive failure (rare, but I have had it happen). Failure of a multi-partitioned single drive means the loss of all the contents. Failure of one of a multi-set of drives means much less loss. OK, you will be protected by backups but it's much less of a problem restoring just the one drive.

System backups are made to external drives.

[andsome]

Instead of partitioning drives, I much prefer to have separate hard drives for the different uses in my machines.

Normally I have an 80GB (or thereabouts) "C" drive with the O/S and programs then a separate 80GB (possibly larger) drive for my personal data, files and everything else. If I intend to use the machine for video processing or television recording, I will install a third large drive to store and manipulate all the video files.

The machines I build for my son's business normally have four hard drives, three as above and another for daily backups.

The reason I have physically separate drives is because of the possibility of drive failure (rare, but I have had it happen). Failure of a multi-partitioned single drive means the loss of all the contents. Failure of one of a multi-set of drives means much less loss. OK, you will be protected by backups but it's much less of a problem restoring just the one drive.

System backups are made to external drives.

Exactly what I thought when I had my computer made for me. I have 80GB for the main drive and 40 to store my photo's on. Then my external plug in drive for back ups is 80GB.

[r4may]

I configured my system so that all drives have two partitions.

The first has the windows O/S and all it's applications. The second has data only.

The third has the Linux O/S and all it's applications. The fourth has graphics and video only

The fifth has the all upgrades and patches etc . The sixth has backup only.

I also do periodic backups to DVD.

This suits me fine.

[Kevin]

I have a main 80gb where my OS is installed, although it is partitioned to take 5gb for recovery and i also installed a 30gb HDD, to store my data on (such as pics, documents, etc.) so it does not clutter my main HD, and make it slower. I'm pretty happy with the way i have my PC set up. As for D.W. Most games out there now, require very high requirements. I always install my games on my bigger HD, so they have more space to run on. Since your son has a 250gb hard drive, and the programs you mentioned sounds like he's just a normal operator, and will take a while to fill 250gb, I would not partition the HD. As big as it is, the programs and documents that he has, along with his games, should not conflict. I see no reason to partition that hard drive. Things should run very smoothly on that PC for at least a couple years. I've had this particular PC for about a year, and i haven't even used half of my 80gb. My storage drive (30gb) still has about half of it remaining, and i have many programs installed, and many documents as well. I think your son will have a hard time filling his 250gb. As i said, i would not partition it.