I have a 200gb (master) and a 250gb (slave) that i'm going to install. Is it better to have a partition with OS only or programs and OS? Can you tell me how to partition both of my drives like the example (120gb only system drive) below:



1. 4-GB FAT32 primary partition. FAT32 is DOS-compatible. Never know when you might need to load some DOS disk utilities, or install a legacy version of Windows. It's nice to be able to if need be. [C: drive]
2. 4-GB EXT3 primary partition for Linux. I prefer Mandrake. [Windows won't see this partition]
3. 128-MB Linux swap, primary [Windows won't see this partition either]
4. 15-GB NTFS extended/logical for WinXP & all normal programs/apps [D: drive]
5. 10-GB NTFS extended/logical for WinXP dedicated solely for video-editing. If you don't plan to edit video, you don't need this separate partition. [E: drive]
6. 12-GB NTFS ext/logical deciated solely for games. The size of this drive will obviously depend on how many games you have. This can easily grow to be a huge partition. Keeping your games in a separate partition means your back-up images of your system partition will be much smaller. If you don't play video games, you wouldn't need this extra partition. [F: drive]
7. 6-GB NTFS ext/logical dedicated for beta OS'es, such as the newest version of Windows. If you never plan to try out a beta operating system, you obviously wouldn't need this partition. But it's nice to have one standing by, just in case. If you don't use it for Longhorn, you could use the space for other things. [G: drive]
8. 40-GB NTFS ext/logical for digital media such as lossless audio, MP3s, jpegs, graphics, scans, photos from digital cameras. [H: drive]
9. 20-GB FAT32 ext/logical for back-up Norton Ghost images. If you have more space, this partition could be bigger, allowing you more back-up space for more images. I use 30-GB here, and I never defrag the partition that contains my images. [I: drive]
10. 4-GB NTFS ext/logical for downloads, drivers, back-up files, etc. [J: drive]


Thanks.

Hi and be welcome aboard!

It's a pretty hard question you are asking there. Partitioning itsself is really easy, but doing it smart takes experience and some insight. As it really depends on what your needs are, I can hardly tell.

May I assume that you'll only be using Windows? If so, let me give an example of what I believe to be a good way of partitioning.

First, you need a primary partition for installing your operating system. I wouldn't recommend on making that a huge partition; for most common setups, about 25gb should be fine. This should allow most standard programs to be installed and you should have plenty of space left. Then we need to make some logical drives (in the extended partition). What I believe to be a good strategy, is to make at least these partitions:
- one for data
- one for backups
- one for stuff you're working on (so that's a kind of temp data)
- one for junk
In addition to that, you might want to add some more partitions for other things like games, video, audio etc.. but that depends on your needs.

Oh and one thing... it's a good idea to put the backup partition on another phyisical disc as the data partition is on!

I hope this somewhat helped. It not, feel free to ask.

check this http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=138566

Sorry I should've worded the third sentence differently. I'm going to use WinXP and both drives are for storing data. Can you tell me the best way to partition each drive for best performance like this:

200gb drive

1st partition: drive letter, size, what should be on it
2nd: etc.
3rd: etc.
4th: etc.
5th: etc.

250gb drive

1st partition: drive letter, size, what should be on it
2nd: etc.
3rd: etc.
4th: etc.
5th: etc.

Don't partition. If you need more than one partition, buy another drive. Honestly.

Here's why - you know how you're thinking that partitioning will reduce fragmentation? It sure will - at the expense of making the drive head seek around all the damn time ANYWAY. So any gains you get from not fragmenting are MORE THAN OFFSET by the amount of wasted time seeking.

I never partition my drives. I have THREE hard drives instead. And I guarantee you that it works better and faster this way.

Hmm and what will you actually be storing?

If you're storing data... there is ZERO point in partitioning. You sound like the kind of person who needs a clear storage scheme. Fine, that's what FOLDERS are for. You make FOLDERS that hold each type of data...