Win2K Hard Drive Size Question

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bill
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B

Bill

I know that, for Win98SE, you get smaller cluster sizes for small
partitions.

If I'm building a Win2000 computer, is there any advantage at all to
separate partitions, and partition sizes?
 
For win2k it is reccommended to use NTFS structure as opposed to FAT, more
efficient/secure
If everything is installed on a single partition and you format you lose
everything. At the very least a seperate partition for Data. Personnally I
partitioned to Win2K / Apps / Utilities / Data / Games at least everything
can be easily located and I can format any partition. With seperate
partitions you can keep the sys partition down to about 5gb - I have swap
file on seperate partition -
 
Bill said:
I know that, for Win98SE, you get smaller cluster sizes for small
partitions.

If I'm building a Win2000 computer, is there any advantage at all to
separate partitions, and partition sizes?
Click to expand...

IMO, the single biggest advantage to partitioning a hard drive that
you're installing NTx to is to separate the OS/apps from data. You can
backup data using traditional means, such as ZIP or tape, and image the
OS/app partition.

For my servers, I use a 3rd partition for a separate parallel NTx
install so I can get to the HD in case the server install goes belly up.

In NT4 and W2K, converting an existing FAT partition results in 512byte
clusters, which, while more efficient for disk space, is much worse in
terms of performance/fragmentation.

Formatting a drive defaults to 2K clusters for anything over 512MB I
think. You have the option to go larger, but most defraggers (except
Symantec) cannot handle the larger cluster sizes because of the MS
api's.

hth
 
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