Advice on Partitioning Strategy for Win XP Pro

[Guest]

I'm looking for advice on the partitioning strategy I should use when I install Win XP Pro on a machine I just inherited here at the office. My new system is an HP x4000 with two 36GB SCSI drives. It was upgraded from Win2K Pro, but retains the original partitioning:

Drive 0:
Partition 1 = 24 MB FAT Utility Partition for HP hardware diagnostics (eDiagTools)
Partition 2 = 9 GB FAT32 for OS and Program Files - this is the C: drive
Partition 3 = 25 GB NTFS extended partition - this is E:

Drive 1:
Partition 1 = 34 GB NTFS - this is D:

My preference would be to re-partition Drive 0 to create a single partition with NTFS called C: and to leave Drive 1 as it is. I should probably keep the small diagnostics partition, too. So I'm thinking of doing this:

Drive 0:
Partition 1 = 24 MB FAT Utility Partition for HP hardware diagnostics (eDiagTools)
Partition 2 = 34 GB NTFS primary partition - make this one big C: drive

Drive 1:
Partition 1 = 34 GB NTFS - this is D: (no change)

I searched this discussion group and the Web and I see that a lot of people still recommend partitioning big drives. In fact, many new computers come pre-configured with a single drive partitioned into a small C: and big D:. I always thought partitioning big drives was a throwback to earlier file systems that couldn't exceed a certain size. I find that having multiple drive letters just makes it more difficult to manage my free space. I have to be concerned with where I install programs, where I keep data, etc. I prefer to have one big pool of empty storage that can be drawn from as needed. In fact, I'd like to find a way to merge Drives 0 and 1 into one big partition.

My questions are:

1. What is a compelling reason to partition a single hard drive into multiple volumes? I don't plan to boot multiple OSes.

2. Why do PC vendors still partition a single hard drive into C: and D:?

3. Does anyone know what Microsoft recommends?

4. Is there a way to merge two physical hard drives into a single volume, like one big C: drive?

Thanks,

-Rob

 

[Scott M.]

My questions are:

1. What is a compelling reason to partition a single hard drive into

multiple volumes? I don't plan to boot multiple OSes.
Some people like to put software on one partition and data files on another.
This makes backing up your data very easy to do. It also makes reformatting
the OS drive a lot easier since you don't have to worry about losing any
data.

2. Why do PC vendors still partition a single hard drive into C: and D:?

Perhaps because of the large drive sizes, but your 34GB isn't considered
"large" when you conisder that there are 200 GB drives out there these days.

3. Does anyone know what Microsoft recommends?

I would think that MS would only make a recommendation when we are talking
about drives too large for the OS to recognize. Barring that, it really is
a subjective decision.

4. Is there a way to merge two physical hard drives into a single volume,

like one big C: drive?

RAID drives do this.

 

[Markeau]

Your drives are small, so I would keep each drive one part. I have my
200GB c: 50GB and rest (d 150GB - this makes backing up (and
restoring) c: easy using Drive Image 7.0. But, I'm a power user with
a huge amount of progs and even some whole cd's (ie, of xp, office xp,
etc) in a src folder on c: which makes it easy to re-install
components on-the-fly.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the advice.

-Rob