Partitioning a hard drive 1

[Wannabetechie]

Hello,
I just bought a 120 gig hard drive to go along with my 40 gig drive. My question is, I want to do a clean install of windows xp home, but I want to have the operating system on one partition, the programs on another, and my data on yet another. I've searched the internet for some detailed steps, but can't seem to find a step by step way. Some even said to make a partition for just the swap file. I would like to have my hard drive set up so if I need to reinstall my O.S. all I have to do is reformat one partiton.

Thanks for your help,
Dennis

 

[techkiwi]

Check out this link:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;313348

I have yet to install Windows XP, so I don't know how the installation process goes. You'll just have to try this article unless somebody else who has already installed it can confirm or deny.

As far as the setup of partitions goes, you will find many different recommendations on the right or wrong way to do it. For my two cents worth, I would just go for 2 partitions, one for the OS and programs, and one for your data. The reason for this is that if you need to reinstall your OS, when you reinstall it you will also need to reinstall your programs.

 

[jfryer]

In short -
When you install XP one of the install options is to change the layout of your HD, ie you can delete all current partitions, create new partitions etc AS PART OF THE XP INSTALLATION.

The way I normally do it is to create a XP partition out of part of my HD during installation and leave the rest of the HD unpartitioned, once XP has been installed you can go into the Disk Management program that comes with XP and partition the rest of the currently unpartitioned HD space however you like, assign drive letters, choose the file system type (ntfs or FAT) etc.

Word of warning though, your goal of settign the system up so that you just need to re format your OS partition may not be possible, lots of programs when you install them (even if you install them on a different partition) will copy files to the windows/system32 directory and other places in teh XP install PLUS they will write a pile of information into the registry, so as soon as you re-format JUST the OS partition you will break a lot of programs and they will not work after you re install XP.

Of course you can Ghost your OS partition and resotre it that way.

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There is no magic, only onions
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[Maxximo1]

Ok, here we go, you can rest assured that you can and in fact have the right idea on what to do, the problem is how to do it.

If you itend to perform a CLEAN installation of Windows Xp Home then this is my suggestion step by step.
Step 1, Using either your 40GB 0r 120GB hard drive, Fdisk the drive, create a primary partition of not more than 10GB, then on this drive create a secondary partition of the remaining 30GB of course make sure the first partition is set ACTIVE.

Step 2, Fdisk you second hard drive, if the second hard drive is used to save your work then just Fdisk as a single partition, otherwise Fdisk and partition this second hard drive with many partitions a s you require.

Step 3, Install Windows XP Home in the primary partition of the primary drive. I agree with jfryer as far as installing the OS in one partition and the programs in another aprtition, this is why I suggested to create a 10GB partition in the first place, this partition will be more than sufficient to hold all of the possible programs you can think of, will be easily manegeable, easy to backup (fully using a program like ghost).

Then yu can use the extended partition of the primary drive to save your programs data not to install the programs, BUT to save your data.

Step 4, Use the secondary master for your swap file, by doing so you will find that the pc will run much faster as there's no swapping between ram and the hard disk where the OS is installed, remember that if you have lot of RAM say 1GB you can do without the swap file altogheter, Windows XP will run faster and better with large amount of ram and no swap file.

Step 4, Turn off System Restore in all drives/partitons but the partition that contains the OS, you dont need System Restore on any of the partitions contanining your actual data and/or saved information.

Step 5, this is a matter of preferences of course, if you use your pc in a home environment then I suggest to use the FAT 32 Files System not NTFS, believe it or nor not Windows XP will run faster and better using Fat 32 instead of NTFS, I know that few poeple disagree with this information but it has been proven that is in fact true, NTFS is much more suitable where security is a HIGH priority, like a business environment. Also remember that a Fat 32 partition can be converted to NTFS even after the OS has been installed, converting from NTFS to Fat 32 after the OS has been installed is indeed impossible.

Finally just a matter of safeguarding your work, my recommenadtion is to use ghost and back up your full installation once you are happy how everything runs, by doing that later on if you decide to upgrade the primary hard drive or if you see that the OS has slowed down, or a virus or a trojan hard to get rid of or anything else that makes you unhappy how the system work just reformat and ghos the image you saved back onto the hard drive, 15 minutes and your pc will be exactly as when you was happy with it.

FYI, if you parttion the hard drives as I suggested you might be unhappy the way Windows XP names your drives/partition including the cd-rom drives letters, although you can certainly change them to suit your need, I do suggest you leave them a sdefaulted by the installation of the OS. Good Luck

Sorry for the long post guys.

 

[Wannabetechie]

hey, thanks for the responses!!
Maxximo1, (by the way, GREAT POST, just what I was looking for)
In the following step,

---Step 4, Use the secondary master for your swap file, by doing so you will find that the pc will run much faster as there's no swapping between ram and the hard disk where the OS is installed, remember that if you have lot of RAM say 1GB you can do without the swap file altogheter, Windows XP will run faster and better with large amount of ram and no swap file.---

What is the secondary master, is it another partition, if so how big, and on which drive,and should I do it with 512 MB of ram?

Thanks everyone for putting up w/this. Anyway, how else can I learn

 

[braddds]

The second master, he means the 2nd hard drive, be it either your 120 or 40 gig drives (your choice but I'd set the 120 drive as my primary and the 40 as my secondary - chances are the newer drive will be faster.)

Personally I split my swapfile across two drives (if present) instead of one (ie: 512 ram = 640 on 1st drive and 640 on second for a total of 1280 (which is 2.5 x the size of ram)). Also when setting up make sure that the swapfile minimum and maximum sizes are both the same...this is important!

You haven't mentioned if you have a CD-R-RW or DVD-R-RW. If this is the case then I'd make sure that this drive is set as the secondary master...less burn-outs (bad recording) will occur.

However, other than my suggestions, I'd follow all Maxximo1's advice. When it comes to setting up your e-mail temp files, doc files and other data files make sure you use the options in each program to relocate to the data partition you've made...else everything tends to end up on C:\. Also, I'd use your 40 drive as the swap (half or whole your choice) and my backup drive (were you put your ghost images or (as I prefer) my Acronis True Image's (I like these as they are able to backup out of windows and you can schedule it to do so in the off hours!).

There are other things to do but you have enough info to start with...good luck and have fun!



Cheers

 

[PICKER50]

if you can get a copy of partition magic you can partition after you have installed windows by just running the program and following the steps