Best Practice: XP Drive Partitions? 2

[ewiley]

Hi,

I'm a network consultant working with a client rolling out Windows XP workstations in a 2000 AD environment. They're using pretty basic apps, just Office xp, a database app and a java web-based app. They say that their corporate baseline policy is to have 2 partitions, a C: drive of 4Gb with only Windows files on it, and a D: drive with as much space as is left on the drive, for applications. My argument is that there's really no reason to set it up this way on the client end (since these are fresh XP installs and there's no dual-boot) and a single C: partition would be easier to support.

Are there any best practice documents out there relating to this? Or does anyone have a compelling argument either way?

Thanks!

 

[bcastner]

On a single drive there are no performance enhancements from partitions. The purpose of the partition should be to simplify backups.

I must admit that 4Gig. as the System partition strikes me as woefully inadequate anymore. My personal vote would be a single Volume, unless the drive exceeds say 60 gig.

If you are required to do the 4 gig. partition (12 sounds more reasonable), be sure to move the user profiles to the second partition.

 

[wolluf]

Would agree with bcastner - can't see any good reason to partition drives based on what you say.

 

[PAndersen]

If the users are going to save data locally, much space will be wasted on one huge partition due to cluster size 64KB for partition > 32 GB versus 8KB for an 8GB NTFS partition.

 

[bcastner]

XP defaults to 4 kb. clusters for NTFS. Always.

 

[ewiley]

Ah, good call about the profiles (i think there'll only be 1:1 workstation to user, but who knows). They're trying to get people to save to the network drive, rather than the hard drive. I think having folder redirection, coupled with only one drive would encourage that, since they're used to saving on that D drive.

I think the CIO who directed the policy is stuck in the NT4 days.

Thanks!

 

[bcastner]

I'm sorry, there should be a reference here, as the issue arises often.

"The maximum default cluster size under Windows XP is 4 kilobytes (KB) because NTFS file compression is not possible on drives with a larger allocation size. The Format utility never uses clusters that are larger than 4 KB unless you specifically override that default either by using the /A: option for command-line formatting or by specifying a larger cluster size in the Format dialog box in Disk Management."

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q314878

 

[PAndersen]

Thank you for correcting my error posting !

 

[PAndersen]

An idea to have a separate partition for the swap file ?

 

[Gabby75]

UMm personally, for backup and defragmentation purposes, I would always create partitions. 1) XP itself, 8GB. 2) Data and applications (on which I install all applications other then thn the OS itself and (8-20GB) 3)a dedicated partition for video capture etc (rest of the disk). While it is true to say that performance is the same because its a single disk, its nice to keep a separate partition which can be easily defragmented for video data etc. c: drives become very fragmented over time. Also with separate partitions you have the ability to backup/restore the OS separately from user and other data.

 

[johncurtis]

I agree that there's no technical reason for partitioning a drive. However, we always partition into C (10GB, system files) & D (the rest, apps & data). That way we can tell users to only use D - messing with anything on C is a disciplinary offence. Harsh but effective - no more calls: "I deleted this file since I didn't recognise it. Now my [whatever] won't work"

John