Preferred Location for "Program Files" Folder?

[Ronald Rey]

I've read that it may be prudent to locate data files like the My Documents Folder and
Outlook *.pst files on a separate logical HD partition (or a separate HD if you have
multiple physical HDs) from my C Drive booting partition where Windows XP Pro and Office XP
Pro is installed. Does this logic also apply to program files?

Question:

Should I keep installing new programs to the default C Drive location or could I start
manually specifying a different drive letter for the program installation .... especially if
space on C drive ever starts getting tight?

I have two separate 80 Gb physical Hard Drives each with two or three partitions as
follows:

Drive 0:
C: Primary ~50 Gb w/NTFS 4kb clusters (Active Booting Partition with WinXP)
D: Logical ~30 Gb w/NTFS 4kb clusters (for storing backup images of E)

Drive 1:
E: Logical ~ 5 Gb w/NTFS 4kb clusters (System Paging File and IE6 Temp Files)
F: Logical ~50 Gb w/NTFS 4kb clusters (My Documents Folder and Outlook *.pst files)
G: Logical ~25 Gb w/NTFS 4kb clusters (for storing backup images of C)

Any thoughts here would be appreciated .... thanks, RR

 

[Pavel]

Providing that the programs you are installing are not games then install
them to C. Even with some of the bigger programs, such as Microsoft Office,
your total space will be around 3-6 gigabytes. Install games to drive other
than C.
What this will do is give you the opportunity to make Image with such
program as DriveImage, Ghost or some other program where the image will be
manageable size that can easily fit on just few CD's or a single DVD. You
seem to be already be using one of theses since your G drive is reserved for
Images.
In addition, if you do decide to use one of these Image programs then you
can further reduce the size of your OS by disabling the System Restore.
I noticed that you list your D drive as backup of E - why?

 

[Ronald Rey]

Thanks ... that should have read "backup of F"

RR

 

[James Martin]

Hey Ronald,

The main reason you want to keep your user or data files on a separate
partition or ideally hard drive is so that you can wipe out your OS when you
want to and not have to worry about losing anything important. A lot of
people never wipe their OS, and wonder why after 2 years it takes so long
for everything to work. Technically, your program files don't really change
that much, so it's not necessary to have them elsewhere and the benifit of
moving them onto another partition within the same HD won't be noticable.
On the other hand, In my opinion, the way MS sets up the whole Program Files
folder is crap--it seems like everywhere MS promotes disorganization.
Nothing stupider than seeing someone with a desktop filled with icons and no
organization. Same thing with the programs folder, can you really navigate
well with 300 programs listed there? From your listings, you might be over
doing it a little bit, perhaps just for peace of mind .. In your case,
yes, do it for the organization factor. Personally, I've found a 5 gig OS
Partition (C) 5-10 gig Programs Partition (D) and whatever size Data
Partition (E) work pretty well.

For your average user, this is way over their head, as they still haven't
figured out not to open virii in e-mail. (Or to use a program other than
Outlook & IE for that matter).

 

[noone]

lots of sources promote putting just the core XP stuff on drive C: (or
whatever your system drive is), and putting your docs and other programs
on a seperate partition(s). The logic behind this is that you can then
make images of these drives (using ghost or drive-image), and they'll be
smaller and easier to manage.

This is true, to a certain extent.

But, your registry will always be on the system drive, and all your
programs keep their settings in the registry. if you need to restore the
system drive, you will most likely have to reinstall the programs again,
even tho they're already on the other HD. So, splitting out the programs
may not buy you very much.

However, having a seperate partition for your larger data files is a good
idea. Keep your mp3 and videos/images on a seperate drive, use TweakUI to
change to location of your My Documents f(and other) folders, and set your
browser and any download app to keep their temps (ie, the cache) on a
seperate drive. Put your swap file on a sep drive too. Then the system
drive won't change very much daya-to-day, and it'll be fairly easy to
restore from an image if necessary.