XP Professional HDD Partition Strategy

[Paul]

Hi,

I have XP Professional and Office XP installed on an 80GB HDD.
Currently I have the following partitions:

C: 5GB Contains XP Professional and a few programs that are
reluctant to be installed elsewhere
D: 70GB Contains Office XP, other apps and data

The balance of the space is allocated to another OS.

Is this partition strategy optimum for performance?

Any thoughts/opinions welcome.

Many thanks,

Paul

 

[MS]

Hi,

I have XP Professional and Office XP installed on an 80GB HDD.
Currently I have the following partitions:

C: 5GB Contains XP Professional and a few programs that are
reluctant to be installed elsewhere
D: 70GB Contains Office XP, other apps and data

The balance of the space is allocated to another OS.

Is this partition strategy optimum for performance?

Any thoughts/opinions welcome.

Many thanks,

Paul

Well, whatever you are comfortable with is fine - you could leave it as one
big partition if you wanted and probably have no problems.
However, I prefer to have three partitions - O/S, Progs and Data. I no
longer have a second O/S installed - I'm happy with XP.
I would allow a bit more headroom on the XP partition, even if you have your
pagefile on another partition.
5G is a bit tight and could adversely affect defrag, which needs a good deal
of spare space to move files when defragging.
I have quote a few programs that will only install on C, so I have it up
around 19G, with 5G used.
I also like to separate my programs and data, so I have a third partition
for data, which includes a second pagefile and the My Documents folder.
This lets me do a data backup easily - I just backup the data partition. I
only need to backup the Progs partition when I add new programs.
Most programs I use let me tell them where to save my data - even MS ones
like Word!!.

But hey, get Partition Magic and if you don't like what you've got, change
it on the fly without losing data.

I also have a second HDD exclusively for archives (downloaded
programs/drivers/updates etc) and system/data backups. (two partitions:
Archives and Backups). The backup partition is big enough to hold two
complete Ghost image backups of my first HDD, for rapid restoration of my
total system if the first HDD karks it, as well as various data backups. I
split the Ghost images so I can transfer them periodically to CDs to store
off site for even safer backup.

Hope that helps, but remember that everyone's requirements are individual -
don't change your system just because someone else says to do it - have a
logical reason for any change, and that includes ease of admin and
maintenance. have too many partitions and it can become a nightmare to
maintain!

 

[Crusty \(-: Old B@stard :-\)]

I would go with 10 gig for the Windows XP partition. Mine is currently using
6.2 gig out of 10.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

I have XP Professional and Office XP installed on an 80GB HDD.
Currently I have the following partitions:

C: 5GB Contains XP Professional and a few programs that are
reluctant to be installed elsewhere
D: 70GB Contains Office XP, other apps and data

The balance of the space is allocated to another OS.

Is this partition strategy optimum for performance?

From a performance standpoint, a single partition is usually
best, although any differences are likely to be small. There are
many different viewpoints about the best way to partition, but
performance is not generally a factor.

Each person needs to determine for himself what his best
partition strategy is. If what you have works for you, then it's
fine (although I think it's likely that in the not too distant
future, you will run out of space on C: while still having lots
left on D.

 

[Paul]

Thanks everyone for your thoughts.

Much appreciated.

Paul