Should I partition 120 G hard drive?

[Sandy Marks]

I'm getting a new computer with XP pre-installed. I would like to
partition the huge 120 G hard drive before transferring my old
documents. I am very nervous about the process and need some advice.

Does XP come with a program that can do this without uninstalling or
changing the pre-installed stuff?

If I decide to use Partition Magic (I don't know anything about the
process), will that be safer?

Can I wait until later after I have loaded all my documents and then
just move them to a new partition??

ANY advice will help. (I'm afraid this large hard drive will be
difficult to defraf and scan.)

Thanks,
Sandy

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I'm getting a new computer with XP pre-installed. I would like to
partition the huge 120 G hard drive before transferring my old
documents. I am very nervous about the process and need some advice.

Does XP come with a program that can do this without uninstalling or
changing the pre-installed stuff?

If I decide to use Partition Magic (I don't know anything about the
process), will that be safer?

Can I wait until later after I have loaded all my documents and then
just move them to a new partition??

ANY advice will help. (I'm afraid this large hard drive will be
difficult to defrag and scan.)

Leave it one large partition.

You probably wouldn't see much benefit (other than organizational) to
splitting the drive.

Defragmenting two 60GB partitions vs. defragmenting one 120GB partition
won't be that different.

No - you cannot change the partition information on Windows XP with any
built in tools. Not to mention, Dell/Compaq will have some of that space
taken up by their sneaky hidden partition. You would have to purchase
something like Partition Magic.

 

[ras]

I've read Shenan's post and I disagree with leaving the large drive
unpartitioned. There are advantages to partitioning. I like to have just
mainly the operating system on drive C along with approximately 4 to 6 gigs
of extra room. Upon downloading any new software choose to download into
Program Files of another partition. Sometimes there is not an option to
download to a different directory other than C. This is why you leave some
extra room. Also setup your paging file (virtual memory) on a partition
other than the one the operating system is on and if you have a large HDD
like you do you can setup a partition just for the paging file (which will
speed things up). Use some common sense: Isn't is easier and faster to
defrag a 10 gig drive vs. a 30, 40, or 50 gig or more drive? Sure it is!
And what about backing up the files you deem very important? By
partitioning you now have the capability to choose which drives to back up
and which ones you don't.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I've read Shenan's post and I disagree with leaving the large drive
unpartitioned. There are advantages to partitioning. I like to have
just mainly the operating system on drive C along with approximately
4 to 6 gigs of extra room. Upon downloading any new software choose
to download into Program Files of another partition. Sometimes there
is not an option to download to a different directory other than C.
This is why you leave some extra room. Also setup your paging file
(virtual memory) on a partition other than the one the operating
system is on and if you have a large HDD like you do you can setup a
partition just for the paging file (which will speed things up). Use
some common sense: Isn't is easier and faster to defrag a 10 gig
drive vs. a 30, 40, or 50 gig or more drive? Sure it is! And what
about backing up the files you deem very important? By partitioning
you now have the capability to choose which drives to back up and
which ones you don't.

While you have some points, you do not gain much by putting the PageFile on
another partition, because it's still a single physical IDE drive and it can
still only READ or WRITE at any given moment. You *do* gain a performance
increase (albeit slight) if you put your swap file on a different physical
drive.

Yes.. It is faster to defragment a 10GB drive. But if you have 20GB
physical split into two 10GB virtual and you defragment both of these
drives, the difference in time to defragment both (not just one) vs. if you
defragmented one large 20GB partition is likely negligible. Although - that
could be an incorrect assumption that you want to defragment both all the
time on my part.

Also, any backup method you use worth its salt could as easily backup
individual folders/files as it could whole partitions. Unless you are
speaking of products like Symantec Ghost, where you are backing up entire
partitions so you don't have to reinstall everything later.

Also, if you are going to partition, I would suggest at least having a 8 to
15GB system partition. I have seen it too many times where "Oh, I will
never need 4GB." turns into a panicked "Oh God, I've ran out of space, can I
resize?" or "I'm trying to install the (insert latest OS here) and it says I
need more space.."

You can go either way - I just never have seen much need. Of course, I have
a 40GB SATA boot/system drive (one partition) and a 480GB RAID (also one
partition) for three of my systems, so I do see the advantage in separate
physical drives very well. *grin*

 

[Dale Walker]

While you have some points, you do not gain much by putting the PageFile on
another partition, because it's still a single physical IDE drive and it can
still only READ or WRITE at any given moment. You *do* gain a performance
increase (albeit slight) if you put your swap file on a different physical
drive.

Not quite. Pagefiles when managed by the OS can change size over time
and get fragmented resulting in slower disk accesses. It's better to
put a pagefile in it's own partition on another drive, with enough
space to grow if needed. However, the performance gain is slight. The
alternative is to fix the pagefile at a certain size. Some memory
intensive applications may not like a fixed partition size though.

Yes.. It is faster to defragment a 10GB drive. But if you have 20GB
physical split into two 10GB virtual and you defragment both of these
drives, the difference in time to defragment both (not just one) vs. if you
defragmented one large 20GB partition is likely negligible. Although - that
could be an incorrect assumption that you want to defragment both all the
time on my part.

Not always. By keeping the applications separate from the data, you
can decrease the amount of defragmentation time. Applications files
typically tend to stay the same size and the files only rarely get
added to/deleted. defragmenting these would be extremely quick after
time. In fact, you probably wouldn't even need to defrag thet
application pertition that often. Data files on the other hand are
always being added/modified/deleted. By splitting the two, you can
decrease the defragmentation time by anything up to a half simply due
to the fact that the application files don't need moving about.

However, the biggest reason to have partitions is to protect essential
disk space being used by the system from being gobbled up by data
files. For example, video editing applications use huge amounts of
memory. Having these files saved on a separate partition means that if
memory runs out, it's only the video application that craps out, not
the whole system. Of course 120GB give you plenty of room to maneuveur
so this may not be a problem in this particualr case. However, more
modest drives could do with this kind of protection.

Anyone that uses MS Exchange or SQL Server in ernest will know exactly
what kind of problems can be avoided by putting data files for these
apps on separate partitions.

Of course, separate drives are always better.

 

[Guest]

Hi, you don't have to worry. Just before making partitions, you must have a bootable CD, winxp. Also, before making partitions in your hard disk save all your work. Try it......... han bye