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Windows XP Pro

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Jun 2, 2003
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What is the recommended partition size to install XP Pro.
 
I have 2 hard drives each 37 GB. I am thinking splitting the first hard drive with Partition 1 being Windows XP Pro, Partition 2 will have the pagefile(What's recommended for pagefile space?) Partition 3 being Microsoft Office Programs.

The second Hard drive will be file(xls, mdb, docs,...) storage only.
 
I don't see any benefit to what you want to do. Just put the OS and all program files on the first drive, and the data on the second drive.

You MIGHT see a performance difference for relocating the swap file on something with a huge amount of I/O, like a terminal server...

Even then, it should be on a separate disk, and it should be SCSI.

And I've never been a fan of installing applications to any partition other than C, but that's just me...

As for the size of the pagefile (and this is one of those things that people fight over around here), should be 1.5 times ram, last I checked.

Matt J.
 
Word docs, xls, and database doesn't take up that much room, word.docs are nothing! Make a 20gb partition and bang it all on there, you have so much room, you'll end up repartitioning just to fill up your first drive with another operating system!
 
Putting the pagefile on a different partition of the a drive is not really a help.

Putting it on a second physical drive is.

There is a lot of mystery to the pagefile, and this is one of the clearest explanations I have seen about how to assign, monitor, test and defrag the beast:
And I still vote for 20gb for XP.
 
CompAdmin2003, this is what I would do:

Disk 1:
Partition 1: 30GB Windows
Partition 2: 700MB CD burning, copying
Partition 3: 6GB for keeping various files

Disk 2:
Partition 1: 768MB Page File
Partition 2: Rest of drive to keep backups, copies of programs, etc.

You can also go a step further by making another partition to have your TEMP files on it. This will further reduce disk fragmentation. Some people also have another partition to store all their MP3s and music files as well.

It is always a good idea to have your important data saved on a partition other than the partition which Windows is on. This data will then remain intact if Windows dies of becomes corrupt. Otherwise, make sure your backup regularly.

 
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