Best partition size

[Tatar]

What would be the best partition size for a 40 GB hard disk drive. At the
moment I have 8 GB for system which is almost full and 32 MB for my data
which is almost empty.

I would have Windows XP and Office 2003 in the first partition. Is it better
to have Windows and Office in separate partitions and personal data in the
third partition. What sizes would be suitable for first two partitions?

 

[R. McCarty]

Just a tip about separating some Programs from the O/S.
Any type of "Reference" program (Encarta, Streets, GPS)
have very large data modules. From a defragmenting stand
point, they can slow down defrag from re-positioning the
those data modules, so I would install them on a different
partition from Windows XP.

 

[Scott M.]

It really depends on how your ratio of programs to data files. If you do a
lot of video editing, you'd want a larger partition for your data files. If
you just make Word and Excels docs and such then you'll need a lot less data
storage.

I generally think about the most space I'll need for programes and then
everything else goes to the data partition. Now, I have a 80GB drive, so
I've got more room to work with but I have 30 GB for progames and the rest
for data.

 

[Guest]

First, What are your system specifications? do you have a fast computer or a slow one? Do you have a fast or slow HDD? Then, ask yourself this; What is your reason for having a second partition? How important is your data to you? If you are creating a second partition for fault tolerance I suggest that you use backup software and removable media or a number of separate physical drives in a raid array plus backups rather than a second partition. If you are creating partitions to improve speed, a separate partition on a reasonably fast computer won't give you a very large increase in perfomance if any at all, we're talking milliseconds here, again to increase performance use a separate physical drive and put it on a separate channel so that read write operations are on separate cables but you're still looking at milliseconds. If your data is that important to you, use other methods for fault tolerance than just a second partition ( if your one and only Hard drive goes south on you you've lost everything anyway whether you have on partition or twenty). If it's a speed issue, the administration of the different drives and program properties isn't woth the effort compared to the performance gain in my opinion. Just use one large partition.