Ham said:
I am doing my first computer build and have several questions about
partitioning hard drives:
1. Several posts seem to indicate it is a good idea to have the OS on
a separate partition. Is this strongly recommended?
Different people have widely disparate views on this. My own view is that
your partitioning scheme should be designed to support your backup scheme.
If for example, you backup only data files, it's a good idea to put your
data files on a separate partition, since that facilitates their backup. If
you image or clone the entire drive, a lot of the rationale for that kind of
partitioning vanishes.
If you do separate data from the operating system, put your installed
programs on the same partition as the operating system. There's no benefit
to separating them, since if you ever have to reinstall Windows, you'll have
to reinstall the apps too.
How big should
the partition be (I have XP Pro)?
How big to make partitions doesn't have a single answer that's right for
everyone. It depends entirely on the size of your drive, what apps you have,
how much data you have, etc. You have to determine your own needs for
yourself.
What applications need/should be
on the partition with the OS (ie, firefox browser, security programs,
system utilities/testing programs)?
*All* of them, for the reason explained above. There's no benefit to
separating them.
2. Do I need a partition for a RAM swap file? If so, how big should
it be (I have 1GB RAM) and how do I set up RAM to access it?
Putting the Page File on a second partition is not a good idea, and can hurt
your performance. What it does is move the page file to a location on the
hard drive distant from the other frequently-used data on the drive. The
result is that every time Windows needs to use the page file, the time to
get to it and back from it is increased.
Putting the page file on a second *physical* drive is a good idea, since it
decreases head movement, but not to a second partition on a single drive. A
good rule of thumb is that the page file should be on the most-used
partition of the least-used physical drive. For almost everyone with a
single drive, that's C:.
If you have enough RAM, the penalty for moving the page file to a second
partition may be slight, since you won't use the page file much, but it
won't help you.
Also, the other problem with a separate partition like this is that you run
the risk of making it too small, in which case programs will fail for lack
of virtual memory, or too large, which is wasteful of disk space. If you
leave it on C:, it can expand or contract as needed.
3. I have a 2nd hard drive I will be using exclusively for storing
music files. It is 300GB. Is it okay to have this as a single
partition?
Yes.
