Starting Fresh

[Mchart]

Decided I would do a total wipe of my first hard drive today, which is windowsxp. My second harddrive is mostly programfiles and downloads. So I have used nLite to make an install of XPSP2 + some other drivers. I'm also downloading mandrake linux to install as well, since ive been wanting to do this.

So the question is (even though I think I already know what i'll do) what should my partitions on disk 1 look like? It is only 40gb, so I decided I will give 20gb to mandrake, then 5gb to XP, then 4gb to virtual memory, then the remaining for storage of whatever. I did a HORRIBLE job with my 2nd HD, I just let it be the entire 120gb of disc for the partition, but that isnt going to change.

So -

C - XP 5gb

B - Virtual Memory for XP - 4gb

L - Linux (mandrake) - 20gb

H - Remaining for XP storage

Then I have the partition F which is all of disc 2, but im not gonna go through deleting all the files on there anytime soon..

Would this setup be good? Should I give the partition H just to linux for whatever?

And my last question, the current partition which takes up all of my 2nd Hard drive, which is NTFS, will my new install of xp on the 1st hard drive be able to detect the files on there fine?

Thanks

[Radimus]

how about giving XP about 5 gb more... and move the pagefile to the second drive. That would also be a good idea for Linux. Put the page file on a seperate drive, not partition on the same drive

[Mchart]

Why would I want to give the partition for XP OS 10gb? Seems like a waste, remember Im using the partition for XP for the core OS files only. I doubt I would need more then 5gb. Also like I said, there is no way im doing anything to my 2nd harddrive at this moment in time.

[Ana]

Why would I want to give the partition for XP OS 10gb? Seems like a waste, remember Im using the partition for XP for the core OS files only. I doubt I would need more then 5gb. Also like I said, there is no way im doing anything to my 2nd harddrive at this moment in time.

To keep XP from complaining about not having enough room. I used to keep mine at 8gb and it was a pain. I keep it at 10 now and haven't had any problems. My swap file is on a different drive, and I don't install anything on my XP drive.

[Zxian]

What would Windows complain about? I've got 8 GB for mine, and that's with a 512MB pagefile and a 512 MB hiberfil (I'm on a laptop, so I actually use it).

I've got all my main programs on C:, including MS Office, Acrobat, Nero, Photoshop, Java runtime, etc etc etc.

I've got 3 GB free right now... and all seems well.

As long as you're only putting the core files on C: and your pagefile on another partition (I'm guessing that this is what you mean by virtual memory), then you should be fine.

I personally don't see any advantage to putting programs on a separate partition. If your windows buggers on you, then you'll have to reinstall the programs anyways, so there goes that extra partition.

I'd say that the only programs that I'd install on a separate partition would be games, since most of them save files in new folders in their directories. That way, when you reinstall the game, your saves should still be there (one exception, Freelancer, but it's a MS game anyways).

Oh.. and don't call any paritions A: or B:. For some reason, Windows thinks that they're the old school floppy drives by default.

Hope this helps.

[Radimus]

you don't need to partition the second drive, just move the pagefile to it.

It is obvious that you are trying to optimize the performance of the machine, as you went to the trouble to create a seperate partition of the pagefile to begin with... Problem is, that the partition you are place it on is on the same physical drive as the OS, therefore any performance you are trying to gain is lost do to head seek time. You may be doing it just to eliminate some fragmentation, but that can be offset by just fixing the pagefile to the same min/max size

XP + ms office + 2 or 3 apps will use up about 4 gb of space, being that stingy with a few GB is going to bite you in the butt later on... assuming XP is your primary OS.

Quite frankly, if you are going to 'play around' with linux, you can use VMWare or VirtualPC and not worry about all these partition games.

When I was doing Multi drive PCs, I would do:

drive 0

c: fat 16 50mb (dos and recovery tools)

e: fat32 2gb (win98)

f: ntfs 2gb (winnt)

drive 1

d: fat32 3gb (progs and docs)

g: fat16 1.5gb (pagefiles for NT and win98)

Since then I quit screwing around with all that and have average size HDs in my PCs and HUGE ones in old PCs working as file servers.

If you don't actually screw around the the NT or 2k OS, they run VERY stable, and my roaming profile and home drives mean I can pretty much rebuild my home desktops at will and not worry about losing documents and such... And my desktops have 1 single partition and I cannot remember the last time I saw a working/running PC with 95 or 98

[Mchart]

Sounds like ill do what I had thought then, Ill just keep the pagefile on my 2nd hard drive like it is right now then. Then just spread out whats remaining on drive 1 for linux and XP, there is no way ill need more then 8gb since ill just have the core files on there.

[mark]

From what I have read, putting your page file on the second drive helps but splitting it between the drives can be an even bigger help. If you have 512 in memory, you may be getting to the point where you may not need much in the way of a page file anyway and if you have 1 GB then you may be able to run without a page file at all. I have read where a number of people zero out their page file size when they have larger memories because they didn't need it and it saved wear on their HDD's. I have run a computer with no pagefile and didn't notice a difference but I also didn't put it through the works to see what would happen. I guess it is going to depend on what you are going to run on your computer.

An alternate to this is if you are experimenting with an OS, then use a live build and there isn't going to be a pagefile at all. I've done this with Mepis(Linux), DSL(**** Small Linux, 50MB total) and Win XP Home (used BartPE).

Making an XP disk with 130 MB to 250 MB using nLite, you could just re-install windows somewhat regularly to clean out the cobwebs. Use 2 GB for primary partition. I don't think windows will complain about that. Your programs are somewhere else. Permutations.

[Radimus]

splitting page files can help by allowing the OS to chose which drive to access, etc... however, it isn't that big of a deal, you'll get most of the performance by placing the page file on a second physical drive

I usually min/max my pagefile at 128mb if I have 512mb or more.... unless it is a photoshop or video editing box... some apps choke if there is no pagefile at all, so I force a small static sized one

[Mchart]

Ive allready formatted my HD and done the partitioning, so if you want, you can close this thread.