To partition or not to partition

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jon Davis
  • Start date Start date
Ken said:
My personal view is that, whether you're talking about FAT16,
FAT32, or NTFS, if you calculate the amount of space wasted to
slack in dollars (substitute your local currency, if not
dollars), it doesn't amount to very much. All those megabytes or
gigabytes sound like a lot of space, but as hard drive prices per
gigabyte continue to decline partitioning to save slack space
makes little sense.
Click to expand...

The other consideration in XP is the desirability of having the cluster
size match the internal 4K page used by the hardware of an Intel
architecture CPU. That allows program loads, program files used for
paging in of code, and the page file itself, to be accessed by direct
transfer from disk to RAM, without need for buffering. You get that
size on FAT 32 partitions up to 8GB, and practically any NTFS one.
which is an argument for switching to NTFS above 8GB, except perhaps for
a partition used solely for *very* large data files (eg movies).

I think the OP is going over the top in making so many small partitions;
my feeling is at most to have one for system and core material (like the
parts of Office that go into Program Files no matter what). Back this
up by imaging. And myself, doing a lot of test installs, I have a
separate, identically sized partition for those, dual booted and
mutually invisible. Then beyond that one for other programs (that may
not need such a rigorous backup - and gets shared in the dual boot); one
for small but vital data files, and a fourth for the big stuff;
preferably on a second physical drive.
 
In
Alex Nichol said:
The other consideration in XP is the desirability of having the
cluster size match the internal 4K page used by the hardware of an
Intel architecture CPU. That allows program loads, program files
used for paging in of code, and the page file itself, to be accessed
by direct transfer from disk to RAM, without need for
Click to expand...
buffering.


Yes, that's an important issue. I wasn't trying to address all
the arguments for or against multiple partitions, just trying to
discount the argument for multiple partitions based solely on the
slack savings.
 
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