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Hard Drive Partitions under XP

March 11th, 2010 by , under nnmj.com.

  • I just got a new computer with a 160GB hard drive. I've read that partitioning your hard drive can have great benefits in terms of re-installing just the OS without also having to restore your documents and other data. I've read that putting your OS (in this case Win XP), paging file, programs, and datafiles each in a separate parition might be a good idea. My question is how large to make each partition? How large should the Windows XP-only paritition be to allow the OS to run and also be able to defrag it if necessary? If I have 1 GB of RAM, should I follow the guideline of having 1.5 times that for a paging file? Are there pitfalls I should be aware of?


  • Thanks for the comments. I am a designer and often work with large image files, so the swap/paging paritition is definitely part of my plan. I think I'll put the OS and program files on the same paritition and Ghost that so that I don't have to reinstall everything if I need to wipe the OS. Is this a good idea? With a bunch of largish programs to begin with (photoshop, Macromedia studio) will 20GB be large enough to be future-friendly? How hard is it to re-partition if I screw this up and find I need to start over? Then I'll use TweakUI to put My Documents on a separate partition.


  • Partitions a drive is all well and good but if the data is important, I would install a second drive having your OS on one drive and your data on another. You OS only needs about 2GB and depending on the amount of memory you have would determing the pagefile size. Partitioning a drive to keep data safe only works if the hard drive does not fail


  • The size of drive partitions will depend on what you plan to do with your computer. If you are working with video (editing, etc), you may want to keep the Primary Partion a workable size (say 10 gigs) and the video partion as large as possible. With a drive as large as yours, you might consider making a "swap" drive (for virtual memory) partition that is 1/4 to 1/2 the size of your primary partion. Hope this helps, http://www.infinitesurf.com">InfiniteSurf


  • The benefits that you mention only apply if you take the time to save everything you need to another partition. The same goal can be accomplished if you buy an external drive and save everything to the external drive. And with the external drive, you can easily take it to a friends house if your computer completely dies. I think if you partition the OS to 20gig, that should give you plenty of space to install programs, updates, etc. Please note, that any program you intall will have to be reinstalled when you format the OS partition. Again, you have to make sure you save everything you want to keep (word docs, excel files, movies clips) on the 2nd partion/drive.







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