Partition Drive Size for Vista Ultimate

G

Guest

Hello Everyone,
I have a Toshiba Tablet M200 with a 60GB hard drive. I purchased Vista
Ultimate and installed it over XP Tablet. I would like to partition the
drive. I considered making 1 partition for the system files, 1 partition for
the page file and 1 partition for the Recovery Environment (Since you might
have recovery problems if the WinRE is installed on the same partition as the
sytem files http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938316/en-us ).
All of my Docs, photos, movies, I would like to put on an external drive
which is formatted to NTFS.

Can anyone tell me;
1. What is the optimum partition size for the O/S?
2. Can I create a partition specifically for "updates" Is this advisable?
3. Can I put both the WinRE and the pagefile on the same partition?
4. What is the best way to tell Vista to place the docs, photos, etc. onto
the external?

Any information on this would be great !!
 
C

Carey Frisch [MVP]

Windows Vista was designed to perform best when
installed on a single partition. If you slice-and dice
your hard drive into more partitions, Vista will not
perform as well since added seek time will be required.

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows Shell/User

---------------------------------------------------------------

Hello Everyone,
I have a Toshiba Tablet M200 with a 60GB hard drive. I purchased Vista
Ultimate and installed it over XP Tablet. I would like to partition the
drive. I considered making 1 partition for the system files, 1 partition for
the page file and 1 partition for the Recovery Environment (Since you might
have recovery problems if the WinRE is installed on the same partition as the
sytem files http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938316/en-us ).
All of my Docs, photos, movies, I would like to put on an external drive
which is formatted to NTFS.

Can anyone tell me;
1. What is the optimum partition size for the O/S?
2. Can I create a partition specifically for "updates" Is this advisable?
3. Can I put both the WinRE and the pagefile on the same partition?
4. What is the best way to tell Vista to place the docs, photos, etc. onto
the external?

Any information on this would be great !!
 
G

Guest

Thank you for your response.
I was considering this scenario for recovery purposes.
Are you saying that there is no need to place O/S boot files on a seperate
partition? How would the recovery process work given the info in the
knowledge base? ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938316/en-us ).
I am still wondering about the page file - can you tell me what has changed
from XP to Vista regarding the seek time ? Or is there Microsoft information
that you can direct me to ?
 
R

Richard Urban

If you install Vista on partition 1, and have all of your personal data
moved to partition 2, Vista **is** on one partition. I have never heard of a
Vista install spanning partitions. The saved data is accessed infrequently
in most home users computers and will not impact the operating system much
at all.

This also make recovery an easier job if you have to roll back to a system
image you have created of your system partition. Your data will not be
touched in any way.

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)
 
G

Guest

Dave,
Thank you for your input. I guess I was reading articles that explain the
"pros" for moving it such as
http://www.windvis.com/using-a-partition-for-your-swap-file . There are
several articles written that basically support this, so I thought it was a
good idea. Why do suggest a separate drive altogether versus a separate
partition ? I am very interested in learning more about this, so if you have
any information that can shed some light - please share !!
 
G

Guest

Richard,
Thank you for your response. I'm not sure I understand the info though. If
O/S is on 1 partition and Personal Docs, photos, etc. are on 2nd partition -
how is this the same partition? I guess that I have read a lot about
recovering the O/S if it resides on a separate partition. I'm not sure that I
fully understand why Vista has a "partition on the fly" option now. What
would you use the partitioning for - other than a dual boot scenario ?
Microsoft Technet also speaks about organizing files by partitioning
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Windo...-86c7-4e78-b908-551f4949697e1033.mspx?pf=true
- I really would like to learn as much as I can about it, so if you can pass
along any info or resources that I can read, please share them here.
 
R

Richard Urban

What I said is that you partition the drive and move all of your personal
files to "another" partition, the Vista operating system is still on the
original (one) partition.

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)
 
D

David B.

If the swap file is on a separate physical drive, then Windows can access it
at the same time as data on the system drive, 2 read/write heads at work, in
theory it's faster, real world, depends on what your doing.
 

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