How to partition my new large HDD?

[Lightning[983]]

Hi,

well i just bough a hitachi 500Gb drive so i'm wondering what would be the proper way to partiton it. The largest drive i had so far is 160Gb so...

I know it's gonna have at least 3 partitions, one for the OS and all the software, one exclusivley for games, and then i'll probably have 400Gb extra....

Now is it ok or will the partition of 400Gb be too slow? i'd apreciate any help from anyone who has some expirience with this... will i have to split it in like 150Gb partitions or will 400Gb work just fine?

Thanx.

[crofty83]

For general usage I can't see why a partition of 400gb would be slower than two 200gb partitions or something on those lines as they would all be on the same HDD. However if you had two 200gb partitions and wanted to transfer a file from one to the other it would actually be slower than copying it from one folder on a 400gb partition to another.

If your into downloading (from legal sites) you could always create a partiton for all your music files if you download a lot and maybe one for movies if you do that too (or something along those lines)

[Lightning[983]]

Well i don't have any expirience with large drives so i though who knows? we used to partition 80Gb driver in 2 or 3 partitions so how many will i need for a 500Gb disk :)

I went by that logic and i suppose i was wrong :)
I dont' want to move files, i just need to story large amounts of big files so i actually need a 400Gb partition, my only question is do i have to split it in a couple of partitions, or will windows work just fine with that large of a partition?

[crofty83]

Personally at minimum I would choose to have 2 partitions. Install your OS & software on one of your partitions and keep everthing else on the other. Makes it easier then if something goes wrong or for any other reason you need to format.

[tuskenraider]

One partition for OS/app/game install, another for data, that's it. This provides simple OS reinstall if necessary as mentioned above and keeps your data "safe" for lack of a better term.

[Havoc_]

The use of smaller drive partitions will actually increase data recovery speed since smaller "portions" of the hard drive are searched at any one time. I am currently using a smaller hard drive to place programs and such and I have a large hard drive (400 MB) that I use for storage. It is only a single partition since I am not that interested in accessing the data quickly. The programs are a different matter.

[tuskenraider]

The use of smaller drive partitions will actually increase data recovery speed since smaller "portions" of the hard drive are searched at any one time. Not really true. If you have the OS on the first partition and programs on a second or a third, etc., you've just increased the distance the heads have to move between OS and program files. If you keep them on one partition, they will be much closer to each other and won't have to traverse empty space of the first to get to the second.

[crofty83]

Get a decent defrag tool as well. Im using Diskeeper 10 at the moment and it works fine

[>HyperlogiK<]

Considering you only have a gig of RAM it could be worth creating a dedicated swap partition of 1-2GB at the start of the drive, and then putting the OS and apps after it.

[JigPu]

Not really true. If you have the OS on the first partition and programs on a second or a third, etc., you've just increased the distance the heads have to move between OS and program files. If you keep them on one partition, they will be much closer to each other and won't have to traverse empty space of the first to get to the second.
I believe he was strictly refering to data recovery, not data access. :) The less data you have stored in one spot (be it partition, drive, or building), the less data you loose when something dies and the quicker the recovery process.

JigPu