View Full Version : Help Partition my 149GB C Drive - How much 4 games? - Also what XP Defragger Posting
Got a couple of Samsung Spinpoint 160GB Drives.
My 1st drive (C) is currently 1 chunk (In reality they are 149GB)
This 1st Drive will be used for just the OS (WinXP) Plus applications and games
(I have temp stuff, swap file and data on my 2nd physical drive)
But I'd really like to split this 1st drive into 2 parts:
1st Part will be as now (WinXP and Windows Apps)
The 2nd part for Games.
The reason ?
Well, I guess I know games are (can be) MONSTEROUS installs and I'd quite like to install them and/or uninstall them without them getting saved all in amongst the OS, Drivers and Apps files.
(anyone agree or disagree with this)?
So, where should I split it ?
Remember I have a real 149GB of total space
With WinXP and SP2 and most of my heavy apps already installed I have only used up 5GB of my 149GB so far.
I know this 5Gb will grow over time, but the BIG Stuff (Office, photoshop etc are already installed)
Would you split it, and where would you split it ?
49GB (OS & Utils) 100GB (Games) ?
Thoughts ?
========= Edited ========
You may think I should just decide myself, but you see I've been out of the games side of things for a long time now. Quake3 was about the time I stopped with PC games, and I'm used to say 1CD for a game, but I know some modern games take even more HDD space now. So perhaps some more recent games players may be able to advise me on the sort of space to need to put aside for games these days.
=======================
Hmmm, 32 views and no comments....
Everyone must think I'm an idiot then !! :) or poss :(
Are your HDs ten years old or something?! :lol:
Wiseman82
16-08-2004, 20:07
I would advise a seperate partition for all the important files on your computer. e.g. re-direct My Documents to use the second drive, change the path of your outlook data file to this drive. This will make it easy to backup all your important data and also means that your data will remain intact if you need to re-install Windows.
A seperate partition for games is not needed. I would advise installing all games/apps on the same partition as the o/s unless you have a good reason to do otherwise. Running games on a sperate drive may improve performance if the games are I/O intensive, but I doubt you would notice any difference.
If you want to re-partition your drives you will have to use 3rd party tools such as Partition Magic. Windows can be used to re-partition your hard drive, but you will loose any data on that partition. Also the size of the Windows partition can't be changed. Right click My Computer, click Manage and use the Disk Management snap in to manage your partitions. Use with caution as you will loose your data with this utility.
morleyian
16-08-2004, 20:08
Was :D when I saw the thread title and the first few lines of your post. Think you made a couple of typos somehow :p
Are your HDs ten years old or something?! :lol:
Nope :p
My Old machine got older and older (esp left behind in the graphics department) HDD space was ok as I had a 60GB Drive, but I was not prepared to spend £200/£300 on a graphics card, then my CPU was not goot enough at around 1Ghz, then that would mean new Mboard, memory, etc.
So, decided to get a new machine and solve all in one hit:
New Machine
AMD64 3200+ (1MB Cache Clawhammer)
1GB PC3200 Ram
Two 160GB Hard Drives
ATI X800 Pro Graphics card
Suffice to say it's just a tad faster than my last machine :thumbs:
Installed Quake3 Arena tonight just as a test as wanted to see what a game looked like. At 1600x1200 res with all settings maxed out for quality I got 280.5 Frames/sec. Seemed resonable :clap:
Was :D when I saw the thread title and the first few lines of your post. Think you made a couple of typos somehow :p
Oopps..... See what you mean :doh: :doh: :doh:
Corrected..... :thumbs:
Wiseman82
16-08-2004, 20:15
If you like to keep your file system neat just make sure all games/apps are installed to the Program Files directory as they should be.
A seperate partition is not needed.
If you like to keep your file system neat just make sure all games/apps are installed to the Program Files directory as they should be.
A seperate partition is not needed.
Yeah, thanks, but I'm not talking really about how neat it looks on screen. I'm thinking of how the data is arranged physically on the hard drive.
I will of course keep the directory structure neat anyway as you righty say, but I generally like to try and keep certain types of data/apps/OS in seperate physical areas of the hard drive.
As a simple example:
Say windows is a bit fragmented, and I decide to defrag it. (as you do)
If Windows and the apps are on 1 partition then I just defrag that and everything is smooth and sweet again.
Now imagine I have also (In the same partiton) installed all my games.
Now I have 10's of Gigabytes of extra data all intermixed with windows files and application files, and I'll have to defrag the lot of it !!!
Games in a games partition won't really get that much fragmented on their own (from my personal experience) so seems to make sense to keep them away from other areas (windows) which does lots of moving about of files all the time and needs more defragging.
Unless anyone cares to blow my logic out the water on this one. Please feel free :)
Wiseman82
16-08-2004, 20:37
Yeah, thanks, but I'm not talking really about how neat it looks on screen. I'm thinking of how the data is arranged physically on the hard drive.
I will of course keep the directory structure neat anyway as you righty say, but I generally like to try and keep certain types of data/apps/OS in seperate physical areas of the hard drive.
As a simple example:
Say windows is a bit fragmented, and I decide to defrag it. (as you do)
If Windows and the apps are on 1 partition then I just defrag that and everything is smooth and sweet again.
Now imagine I have also (In the same partiton) installed all my games.
Now I have 10's of Gigabytes of extra data all intermixed with windows files and application files, and I'll have to defrag the lot of it !!!
Games in a games partition won't really get that much fragmented on their own (from my personal experience) so seems to make sense to keep them away from other areas (windows) which does lots of moving about of files all the time and needs more defragging.
Unless anyone cares to blow my logic out the water on this one. Please feel free :)
Your drive will get fragmented mostly as a result of software installation/removal. Normal use of your computer should not produce a significant amout of fragmentation and will occur over a period of time.
Seperate partitions have advantages and disadvantages. I would tend to opt for a single partition for the o/s, applications and games. Run defrag every couple of months (depending on use) and leave to run overnight.
On the subject of that........................
What Defragged would you recommend.
Anyone reading this: What's your opinion of the best Defragger for use with XP ?
There is a LOT of argument on the net about this subject.
f1buffyfan
16-08-2004, 21:46
hey, i have 2 HD's, identical seagate 120Gb. I keep all software stuff, OS + programs + games on the main HD ( games being installed to a folder called games!, not Proggram files) and all my media on the 2nd HD.
Works for me only thing is that i keep copies of saved games and all my work on the media drive cos i liked to mess around with the OS and after a few costly errors, i learnt the error of my ways!
whats behind the desire to keep games and programs in separate partitions? to make it easier to install new OS's? (by keeping your games etc intact)
LouBarlow
16-08-2004, 21:53
hey, i have 2 HD's, identical seagate 120Gb. I keep all software stuff, OS + programs + games on the main HD ( games being installed to a folder called games!, not Proggram files) and all my media on the 2nd HD.
Works for me only thing is that i keep copies of saved games and all my work on the media drive cos i liked to mess around with the OS and after a few costly errors, i learnt the error of my ways!
whats behind the desire to keep games and programs in separate partitions? to make it easier to install new OS's? (by keeping your games etc intact)
I do the same - can't see the point of complicating things further tbh
OK, will try and explain myself again.
In the past (just for organisational reasons) I liked to have partitions on drives.
Not for keeping it neat, but for keeping certain data away from other data.
It has paid dividends in the past too, when I have (for some reason or another) just had to format C: But I still had everything else safe.
In todays world of stupidly large hard drives (whose speed has in no way kept up with their capacity increases) it seems even better.
Take the system as I have it at the moment.
Two Drives:
OS and apps on one drive (currently 1 chunk)
On the other drive I have created a 2GB Partition, formatted it clean and placed windows page/swap file there with a fixed size of 1.5GB
This swap file is not stuck right in the middle of my OS Data.
It's on the very fastest part of a hard drive (right at the start)
I've given it 25% slack space within the patition as I understand NTFS does not like going over 75% full in partitions without defragmentation issues.
I've set it at a fixed size so windows does not have to resize it.
As far as I can find out off the web and talking to some knowledgable people this is about as good as I can make it.
Then I have created a smallish partition straight after that (so still on very fast part of the drive) and all the scrappy bits of data are going to this partition.
I've moved the following here:
My Documents
Windows Temp
Temporary Internet Files
Cookies
History
Favorites
Downloads Folder (when stuff gets downloaded off the net into)
Install Folder where I unzip stuff to before installing and deleating install files.
If/When I install Forte Agent (Newsreader) I shall put this here also.
This partition will be totally shot to hell when it comes to being fragmented. All the little temporary bits that windows throws around whilst it's working, while you browsing the internet, downloading stuff, installing/deleting stuff will be here, From doing this in the past this by it's very nature will be very fragmented by the nature of what's going on.
How nice therefore to keep all this mess of 1000's of files all away from the drive where your OS and apps are installed.
It will make defragging your C drive (OS and apps) so much easier due to this mess not being mixed all in with it.
The final part of my drive is a BIG single chunk that I will just use for data storage, or say I have a video camera, I could put the BIG mpg's there.
=================
Back to my 1st drive.
Say I install, Quake3, Unreal 2004, Far Cry, Doom3, plus a few other BIG games.
That's a HELL of a lot of data, which apart from a few saved games is just really gonna sit there and not get very defragged. My old games folder on my old machine didn't get defragged very much at all.
So we can leave that alone.
So, I think to myself.... Why would I want to mix these dirty great games files which don't get defragged (due to their nature) into the same partition as Windows and my apps?
When I want to defrag Windows just to keep everything running at stop speed I've got to defrag all these bloody games as well as it's all mixed together.
Keeping C drive for your OS and Apps only is much easier and faster to keep in tip top condition.
Plus as has been said, if C needs to be formatted then you've not lost much.
Feel like I'm on my own here though, everyone seems happy just to have 1 large draw and chuck it all in :)
I've moved the following here:
My Documents
Windows Temp
Temporary Internet Files
Cookies
History
Favorites
It will make defragging your C drive (OS and apps) so much easier due to this mess not being mixed all in with it.
=================
Plus as has been said, if C needs to be formatted then you've not lost much.
Feel like I'm on my own here though, everyone seems happy just to have 1 large draw and chuck it all in :)
not on your own - i like you philosophy.
i currently have 2 partitions on a 120gb drive: 1 for os/apps [20gb] and the rest a huge partition for data.
now whati want to know is how the heck did you manage to transfer:
Windows Temp
Temporary Internet Files
Cookies
History
away from the OS partition?
moved:
My Docs/favourites/OE mailbox onto my "data partition" but i couldnt for love nor money move the history/cookies/let alone temp files. no matter what i did XP just recreated cookies/history in the c:\docs&settings\user data folders and only users that one; there also also "empty" duplicates of faves there but it uses the one on my data partition
could yo tell me how you moved that stuff?
when i reinstall i was originally planning:
OS
Apps
Data
Music/downloads etc
have since been told to keep os and apps together so will stick with the 3 partition format...
not on your own - i like you philosophy.
i currently have 2 partitions on a 120gb drive: 1 for os/apps [20gb] and the rest a huge partition for data.
now whati want to know is how the heck did you manage to transfer:
Windows Temp
Temporary Internet Files
Cookies
History
away from the OS partition?
Use this:
http://www.x-setup.net/
It's Free. Install and use the classic option (not wizards)
It will take some hunting around the menu structure, but you will be able to move the folders with this.
ok on my 2 200Gb's.
10-20gb for OS and apps, if you have full office and dev or anything else similar then go nearer the 20gb.
A 2nd partition for data, redirect my documents to this, redirect OE or outlooks mailstore to this, redirect every crappy thing that trys to dump stuff in some hell hole in documents and settings.
3rd partion for games right now its ~100gb.
Hopefully a new shuttle will arrive soon with a single 160gb...this will follow the same rules, probly 15gb for os, 20gb for data (there wont be as much as the other) the rest for games.
As for defrag, diskeeper (http://www.executive.com/) is good.
Feel like I'm on my own here though, everyone seems happy just to have 1 large draw and chuck it all in :)
I think bottom line is that it makes so little (if any) difference to system performance that it's not worth the hassle. Separating out the swap file and putting on a separate physical disk isn't a bad idea, but if you're regularly hitting swap you should just buy more RAM. Having separate OS and data partitions also isn't a bad idea, but you should be doing backups anyway, especially before an OS upgrade. All these partitions just give you hard limits - when one fills up you have to start spreading data among other ones (or go down the very risky route of Partition Magic).
With 2x160Gb drives, I'd format both as large single drives and have a script (www.xxcopy.com is great for this) to copy any new/changed data over to the second drive so you're covered if one fails. Use the first drive for all your regular stuff, then use the remaining space on the second as a scratch or overflow area for any large data you're working with.
And if you really want a boost in disk performance, buy a 36Gb Raptor for ~75 quid and put your OS/apps/games on that.
Wiseman82
17-08-2004, 08:52
The effort to partition the data will not be worth it in my opinion. There should be very little benefit if any in seperating the games etc into seperate partitions. Even if you have 1000's of files that constantly change on the same partition as your o/s and become fragmented - so what? The location of your apps, games & relativly static files on the disk drive will remain in the same place on the drive. The newer files will suffer the fragmentation.
If you really want to improve I/O, look at setting up a hardware RAID 0 with two disk drives.
A small amount of disk fragmentation will not significantly effect the performance of your system. Run defreg once a month or so and forget about it.
Partioning is easy and I can think of two benefits
1) simple organization
2) OS reinstalls, out of your pc the OS is what could go wrong...do you really want to loose all your saved games, emails etc just because you had to restore the os after a dodgy driver.
there is a third, there is a limit at which NTFS looses efficency on a larger drive, the bigger the partion the bigger the smallest cluster(is it cluster?) is, a 16k cluster is pretty crappy, and wastes a lot of space.
Wiseman82
17-08-2004, 11:38
Partioning is easy and I can think of two benefits
1) simple organization
2) OS reinstalls, out of your pc the OS is what could go wrong...do you really want to loose all your saved games, emails etc just because you had to restore the os after a dodgy driver.
there is a third, there is a limit at which NTFS looses efficency on a larger drive, the bigger the partion the bigger the smallest cluster(is it cluster?) is, a 16k cluster is pretty crappy, and wastes a lot of space.
Not much of an issue with larger drives. I would always advise a seperate partition for data though.
isn't it a bigger issue with larger drives? as they would be using the largest cluster size.
Wiseman82
17-08-2004, 13:03
isn't it a bigger issue with larger drives? as they would be using the largest cluster size.
Yeah, maybe I didn't make that too clear. It depends what type of files you are using. Large files will better suite the larger cluster size.
-Smaller files will waste a small amount of disk space with a larger cluster size. The drives are that big though (and much cheaper now) - Who cares?
Smaller partitions are going to limit you in many other ways. e.g. What happens when you run out of space on your "games" partition but still have pleanty of space on your apps/os partition?
you resize partitions with partition magic:)
but if you're regularly hitting swap you should just buy more RAM.
Yeah, well I do have 1GB or Ram which is enough I feel for my needs.
As for hitting the swap file, yes, I always hit the swap file I'm using a Microsoft Operating System
WinXP Just booted up, running Internet Explorer and nothing else.
Task manager reports 205MB Pagefile Usage :cuckoo:
A 2nd partition for data, redirect my documents to this, redirect OE or outlooks mailstore to this, redirect every crappy thing that trys to dump stuff in some hell hole in documents and settings.
.
I've moved:
My Documents
Windows Temp
Temporary Internet Files
Cookies
History
Favorites
To my (if you'd like to call it) scrappy partition.
What else can I move there ?
How do you move Outlooks Mailstore to there ?
Any others bits I can move ? Helps to stop C getting so fragmented.
Thanks
:) I'd move windows temp, temp int and history back, you don't really want to save them do you?
Main one I can see missing is OE/outlook/other mail. To move OE use the tools options and the maintenance option, for outlook its harder (which is odd for a supposedly 'professional' program), find the current .pst file (in docs and settings somewhere), close outlook, move the pst file to your new partition, open outlook, it will whinge but allow you to pick the new location.
Oh and your not really doing this to stop C fragmenting, it will do that anyways just schedule regular defrags, its to save you loosing lots when you do a reinstall of the os:)
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