Advice regarding hard drive partitioning

Is there any benefit in dividing up the drive for a vista partition and data partition? I was thinking of putting the OS, office 2007, and all regular programs in C: drive and everything else such as games into a D: drive. Is there any benefit in doing this? Does it speed up the system?

 

In terms of speeding up the system, if I recall correctly, there might be some benefit of putting the pagefile near the middle of the HDD, or is on the outer side of the HDD, I don't remember. Otherwise, there is no benefit what so ever.

On the other hand, if you put your data on drive D:, if anything happens fatal happens to drive C:, you might be able to just format drive C: without worrying about moving your data. Maybe you already know that, which in that case, as far as I know, there is no benefit what so ever in doing what you were asking earlier.

 

It won't "speed up" the system, but there are several benefits to it:

If something corrupts your C drive, you won't lose saved games, programs, storage ect.

You can reinstall Vista on the C drive, and won't necessarily lose all your programs. (mind you, you will still need reinstall certain things still because of the paths).

It makes organization much easier, no more hunting through program files blah blah to find things.

I've been partitioning for years now, would never do it any other way.

 

Post clean installation with all my programs loaded, I used 26GB. Apparently, 4GB gets used as page file from what I read. Do you guys think 40GB is enough for C: drive?

 

Well i install all programs to my "D" partition, so my "C" drive is only 18GB which leaves me about 6GB free for updates/whatever Vista needs (which i'm still feeling out, because the space seems to fluctuate unlike XP).

For you, if you want to install all your programs to the C drive, you need to figure about ~18GB for Vista to be safe, and then however much your programs use. Also take into account for future growth. But yes, 40GB for a Windows drive would be waaaaay more than enough for me, but then again you and I might do it differently

 

Cheers for the advice. Repped you. I'm in the midst of installing everything again. 40GB partition. That would leave about 15GB empty for SP1 when it arrives

I don't have that many programs. Office 2007 / zone alarm suite / nero / tune up utilities / and anti spyware stuff. All in all takes up about 26gb. The bulk of it would be office 2007.

 

Using up 26GB? I have 155GB of 179GB free on my C drive. I have been thinking of partitioning a small portion of it as the D drive to keep files on in case something bad happens but I have less than 2GB of files/etc and I frequently back it up on a USB. For bigger files I group them and every month or so I burn them onto a disc. This is mostly for movies/etc. My friend told me there isnt really a need to partition a HDD unless you are going to boot up another OS.

 

I am not sure I agree with the idea of installing programs on the D: partition. The reason I say this is because of all the registry entries associated with a program installation. If you image your C: drive in June, and then latter in July you install a couple of programs, and then in August you have to restore the C: drive from the image, the programs you installed in July will no longer function and you have to install them again. I prefer to install the OS and Programs on C: point any data directories the programs might use to the D: drive and treat them just like any other of my data. That way any image I have of the C: drive is totally in sync with the applications I had installed at the time the image was made.

Now you COULD install programs on D: and make sure every time you install a new program you create a new image of your C: drive. That would also keep things in synch.

My $.02.

Gary

 

The problem with your thought process there is, if everything is installed on the C drive, and it fails, or you reinstall you lose EVERYTHING regardless. If you have anything installed on the D drive, you can save projects from editing programs, game saves, game configs, and many programs will work despite not having the path as you explain. As i mentioned earlier, some things need to be re-installed to recreate those paths, but other things you don't need to re-install. For instance, if you use uTorrent and save the files in there, and you lose the C drive, that's gone. It doesn't need a path to work since it's an .exe, therefore you saved all the info in the event of a crash/reinstall. That's just one example of many i could make. I've been installing everything on a D partition for years, it's saved my butt many times, and has never caused a setback in anyway. If there's a downside to it, i haven't come across it. My .02

Perfect example happened not long ago. I suffered a BSOD, and when i tried to boot, system files were missing. Luckily for me, this wasn't a big deal because all i was losing was the Windows partition, and not everything else.

 

Yes I should have been a little more complete in my description because indeed there are apps that decide they know where to store their data. Any program that lets ME control where it stores data gets installed on my C: drive. Any program that insists on storing data in its own folder and doesn't give me any control does get installed on my D: drive just like you do. My mantra is ALL data is on my D: drive. I take that literally, all my data.

This means I always install the application initially on the C: drive and if I then find it won't allow me to specify where the data is stored, I copy the data, uninstall it, reinstall it on D: and copy the data.

Yes, you are right there are SOME (but few) applications that are standalone EXE files and require no DLL's or registry entries. Those can be installed anywhere without repercussions. But too many Windows apps require those pesky registry entries and system DLL's that will put some info on the C: drive even if you do install them on the C: drive. I used to use install watch anytime I installed any application on the D: drive just so I knew if I needed to reimage my C: drive. Instal watch would tell me if the installer wrote to the registry or added system DLL's.That way I never had to worry. I knew that my C: image was always compatible with the current list of "rouge" apps that needed to be on my D: drive.

A bit anal-retentive perhaps, but since this is also my development machine and therefore my source of income, I take the extra precautions.

Gary

 

At the end of the day, i still can't find fault in installing programs on another partition. If you need to reinstall the C drive, you're losing everything to begin with, so why not give yourself a fighting chance to save something on another partition? I know exactly what you mean with paths and registry entires, because i've gone through it before. But those few things you don't need to reinstall, and those few things you recovered, are more than worth their weight in gold.

It's the way i've done it for years, and i don't see myself departing from it anytime soon. But i do appreciate your input on the subject.

 

We're really in agreement here. The only REAL difference is I put on the C: drive all the apps that give me control of where they put data. For the others (the ones that decide themselves where the data goes) I do exactly what you do and install them on my D: drive. And then anytime I do install an app on the D: drive, I create a new C: image to capture the registry and DLL changes. Then I have MORE than a fighting chance... big ol' grin...

Gary