Re: Partition Planning

Kerry Brown wrote:
contrapositive wrote:
Hi. I just built a new PC with a 250 GB SATA hard drive, and I'm
installing Windows XP, SP2. I want to partition the drive in some
practical way, but without going completely overboard. My thought was
to have four partitions as follows:

C: Windows XP, Program Files (19 GB)
D: Temporary system/internet files (1 GB, disposable)
E: Essential data (30 GB, to be backed up regularly)
F: Non-essential data (200 GB, mostly disposable multimedia files
such as my iTunes library)

Some questions:
1. Any thoughts on a dedicated partition for the swap file? I decided
against it, as I read it only makes sense if you have more than one
physical drive.
2. I decided to keep Windows and program files on the same partition.
Again, I read that the cost outweighs the benefit for most of us. Any
thoughts? 3. Should I use FAT32 on C and NTFS on the others?
4. When designating partition sizes, should the sizes be a multiple
of some magic number, or is there some other means for calculating
efficient partition sizes? Or is it completely arbitrary?


Thanks in advance. Any other thoughts are welcome.

C: may be a little small. It is a waste of time dedicating 1 GB to
temp files. Programs will often put them where ever they want anyway.
FAT32 only makes sense for a data partition that will be accessed by
an older OS. With XP the only valid reason for partitioning a single
drive is for organizing data for backups. In your case I would
allocate at least 30 GB for C:, skip the 1 GB partition, and allocate
the other two as you see fit. You may want to redirect My Documents
to one of the data partitions so it gets backed up.

Forgot to mention you'll also want to redirect your email store to one of
the data partitions.

--
Kerry
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User


.

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