Partition Question 1

[WadeW]

Assuming I will not use my XP computer for dual booting. What are the advantages and disadvantages of having multiple partitions or one large partition for my 120 GB hard drive?

Thanks,

Wade

 

[skiflyer]

Organization, intentionally being able to put certain files nearer the beginning of a drive, being able to give an OS it's own drive never hurts, but most noticeably I'd say organization.

I'm sure there are more, as well as some reasons not to.

-Rob

 

[NADIAZIPPER]

Have you ever tried to defrag or run chkdsk on a 120gb drive? It will take HOURS! Now say you have a 10gb and two 50gb drives. You can do one at a time at your convience, plus if for some run your OS gets hosed and you have to do a reinstall you will lose everything. And lets say your drive is almost full, how do you back up a 120 gb drive, you would need another 100gb drive or a heck of a lot of CDRW's or DVDrw's to save all that info. I have had an issue with wanting to reinstall or upgrade my system, but ended up buring about 100 CDs to save most of the info before reformating and creating several partitions to store the info on.

 

[WadeW]

Thanks for the info.

 

[WadeW]

You may want to read this entire article.

NTFS Preinstallation and Windows XP

http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/tech/storage/ntfs-preinstall.asp

I think I might stick with one partition.

Thanks for all the advice,

Wade

 

[bullhlms]

WadeW, This is the only info I found in the article re: one versus many volumes. I read that one is just a little WORSE than many.
For example, comparing performance under Windows 2000 for a 75 GB hard disk partitioned with multiple smaller volumes versus a single volume shows that disk performance drops by about five to ten percent for the single large volume.

However, when comparing disk performance for the same small versus single large volume configuration under Windows XP, performance drops by only one to two percent for the single large volume.

What am I missing?

With data in a seperate volume from OS it's simpler to backup.

 

[WadeW]

You are missing a lot. What you mention is one of the cons, but overall when you include all the pros and cons it's not so black and white. Here is a combination of some of the article and what a Microsoft tech said:

"Microsoft strongly encourages system manufacturers to manufacture single NTFS volumes on all systems where a 32-bit version of Windows XP is preinstalled..."

"Microsoft implemented certain disk-layout optimizations in Windows XP. To perform this optimization, during idle time Windows XP moves pages used for booting the system and launching frequently used applications to ensure these files are laid out contiguously on the hard disk. The contiguous disk layout of these pages results in reduced disk seeks and improved disk I/O, contributing to improved boot time and application launch time. Windows XP does not perform these optimizations across volumes. Therefore, for this optimization to be available to users, the hard disk must be partitioned as a single volume."

The separate volume for pure data may be a good idea, but I burn CD's for my critical data every month. Games and programs would have to be reloaded either way because of all the garbage the put in the system directories.

Thanks for all the input,

Wade

 

[bullhlms]

WadeW, You have a point. I was thinking that the system files would all be on one volume, and not considering any advantage to the apps being contiguous to them. I supose it depends on whether or not you are doing repetitious tasks.
Thanks