Are Partitions necessary for Win2KPro compared to 98SE? 1

[aussteve]

Am migrating from Win98SE to Windows 2000 Professional.
I partitioned my hard drive with 98SE to keep the FAT table size reasonable. I have been told that because I intend to use NTFS on the new build, partitioning is uneccessary because NTFS is much more efficient and the table does not become a problem? Any information would be gratefully received!
System: P3 1Gig 45Gig HDD 256M Ram

 

[999Dom999]

This might help

http://www.ntfs.com

 

[Accessdabbler]

Here is how FDISK makes a FAT32 partition:

512 to 8191MB - 8 sectors/clusters
8192 to 16383MB - 16 sectors/clusters
16384 to 32767MB - 32 sectors/clusters
32768 and up - 64 sectors/clusters.

NTFS uses different sizes too and you can change them if you want. By default, here are the NTFS sizes:

512MB or less - 1 sector/cluster
513 to 1024MB - 2 sectors/cluster
1025 to 2048MB - 4 sectors/cluster
2049MB and up - 8 sectors/cluster

You are concerned about the size of the FAT itself. Here's the math to show the size of the FAT32 map for your 45GB drive (one partition):

45,000,000,000 / 64 sectors per cluster / 512 bytes per sector = 1373292 addressable areas (using the cluster size for a 32+ GB hard drive)

Each addressable area needs 4 bytes to define it:

1373292 x 4 = 5493168 bytes = 5.24MB

Therefore, to store the FAT on a 45GB drive, you would lose 5.24MB - insignificant.

Now that I've bored you to tears, you should use NTFS anyway. It's simply better than FAT32 and, yes, go ahead and make 1 big partition if you want.

 

[aussteve]

Thanks for your advice, and no, I was not bored!
Appreciated it.

 

[aussteve]

Thanks also to 999Dom999 for the link

 

[jhowley58]

Hi,

I partition mine into a volume for the system and vital stuff, which I back up, and the rest. That way I can make an image or whatever fairly quickly.

John.