win xp and paging system

I hope this isnt too stupid a question

I have a maxtor 14.3 gb 5400rpm drive, and am purchasing a nice new drive shortly, most likely a 120gb 7200 rpm drive.

I'm quite confused as to what would be the optimal set-up for win xp, assuming im using 512mb of ddr 2100.

I expect to partition the new drive. What I don't really understand is where should I put my os and paging system? I am under the impression that it is a good idea to have two drives, with os and data respectively. Should I put my os on the old drive, and the page file under a new partition on the new drive?

ie

Old Drive
c:\ winxp
d:\ applications

New Drive
e:\ games
f:\ data
g:\ paging system/virtual memory

Or should I just use the new drive for os too, considering its faster? I apologise in advance if this sort of query is answered within the forum but its frankly well over my head

thanks in advance

Use the new drive for the OS, the older one is 5400rpm, and you will notice much slower performance for your apps and OS on that drive rather than combining everything on the newer drive.

*edit* and you dont need so many partitions.. make like 2 C and D, put OS,page,apps on C and data on D, make C like 20-30gigs and the rest use for D.

so i shouldnt worry about having the paging system and the os on two different physical drives? I was under the impression this was good for performance.

ive actually heard that from a friend and read it somewhere too...
i think it was a technique to tweak a little xtra performance out of older systems.
cant imagine the gain would be noticeable on today's speedy systems

I have one drive - 80GB Western Digital (bleh at my failed attempt at ebay harddisks) and I put the OS on C:, a fixed size swapfile on D: and I have about a million other partitions - E: through K:

The HD arrangement is such that my OS and swapfile are at the outer edge of the disk, so that the read and write speed is better. The reason for a separate swap partition is so that the swapfile doesn't get fragmented - it has it's own space on the disk.

The 5400RPM drive would be better suited to keeping your files on for ease of transfer should your PC die, not apps or games. The new 7200RPM drive will be lots faster.

Euhmm, with today's ultra fast HDD's this is all obsolete. If you simply set a fixed size swapfile Windows will always keep this space reserved and together when you defrag, and it won't get scattered around your partition anyway. And ANY swapfile DOES get fragmented! The only way to get rid of this is by setting the option to clear the swapfile upon Windows exit, however this takes extra time when shutting down. (You can set it somewhere in the registry)

So, you are saying that swapfiles don't get fragmented but fragment anyway?

What did I miss

definatly put the os and programs on your new drive! and the page file as well but not on the partition windows is on preferably (fragmentation).

best is to have one partitions for windows (C:\) one partiong for programs (P:\) one partitions for tempoary stuff for example reallocate your tempoary internet folder to that partitions and set up windows to use that partition/ folder for temp stuff. control panel-> system -> advance ->Enviromental Settings. in here change the temp and tmp variables to a folder in your temp partition for example T:\temp also in the system variables there are 2 variables at the bottum which also are temp and tmp and you want to change this to that folder as well.

no all your temp files will be in a temp folder. now your windows partition will not get fragmentated! nor will your programs! and you can delete your temp stuff easily and still no fragmentation. and you can easily create a backup of your windows partition and it wont be over 3GB.
I love the way my system is set up like this. even though i got 3 hard drivers and my main fast hd has
c: windows p: programs games s:temp internet and stuff backup of other drives
2nd hd has f: movies (cough cough)
3rd hd has: d: downloads and temp (fragmentation overkill) m: music p: p*** lol