Partition question

Im thinking of reformatting my C:/ - OS partition and reinstalling winxp on its own partition, and installing my programs and app on a seperate partition. I already have games on a seperate part, and pictures/music on another.

Any comments/advice about this.

Sounds good to me.

Of course, make sure your have all your data backed up in a completely different place.

Other than that, you can create the particians the size you want directly from the XP install. During the first section of the install (the Blue Screen section), when it asks you to specify which drive to put the OS on, simply delete the exsisting partician and then create the particians to whatever size you want.

I use a 4GB OS partician and a 10GB Progs partician.

Have fun

Foxy

Ok, so when you go to install a program, normally it wants to install files into "Program Files", If I install it on a seperate partition where would those files go.

cmitchellfly said:

Ok, so when you go to install a program, normally it wants to install files into "Program Files", If I install it on a seperate partition where would those files go.

Click to expand...

When you start an install process, it usually asks you where you want to put the files. By default, it wants to put them on the C: drive. All you have to do is change the C: Drive to whatever drive letter you want to put all your programs on.

For example, my Prog drive is E: so when the program asks me to install in C:\Program Files\xxxxxxxx, I simply tell it to go E:\xxxxxxxxxx. That will put the majority of the program files on my E drive and put a few files in the Windows directory on my C Drive. The files that go into your C drive cant be changed because thsoe are the ones that need to be integrated into the OS in order to provide some extra options or make the progam work right.

Foxy

Makes sense. So then lets say I do this and then decide to reformat the C: drive, will the programs that DID install files in on the C: drive still run properly after I reinstall Windows

That is always the kicker

When you reformat your C Drive, you always have the possiblility that you have to reinstall all of your programs again. This is because when you format you are wiping out the old Windows, including those files and registry entries. The benefit of having them on a separate drive is that you can save most of your settings and not have to worry about loosing the data off those drives.

I use to format and reinstall my OS every couple of months and everytime I did I would have to go back and reinstall all the programs.

You can always try installing the OS and then manually running your programs and see if they work. If they do, great! If they dont, reinstall them.

Foxy

FireFox said:

That is always the kicker

When you reformat your C Drive, you always have the possiblility that you have to reinstall all of your programs again. This is because when you format you are wiping out the old Windows, including those files and registry entries. The benefit of having them on a separate drive is that you can save most of your settings and not have to worry about loosing the data off those drives.

I use to format and reinstall my OS every couple of months and everytime I did I would have to go back and reinstall all the programs.

You can always try installing the OS and then manually running your programs and see if they work. If they do, great! If they dont, reinstall them.

Foxy

Click to expand...

You can get CasperXP which will copy any drive to any drive and make it bootable or whatever you want. The drives don't have to be the same size either.

This is true....Norton Ghost will do the same thing as well.

However if you already have programs installed to a single partitian and you want to move those programs to a new partitian, you will still have to reinstall those programs . The only way around that is to edit your registry and convert all the key that point to the old program location to the new location. (ex: C:\program files\xxxxxx -> D:\xxxxxxxxx)

I was mainly refering to starting from scratch and when you want to kill your OS for a reinstall.

I actually have seperate hard drives but I've always done this. This is actually a HUGE performance boost for running windows if you use 2 seperate partitions. If you are going to put the OS on it's own partition the minimum I would recommend in size is 8GB, ideally 10-15GB though. This is because you will load a few OS type applications like office that will work better on the XP partition then on a seperate partition.

Also, the REAL benefit to having two seperate partitions with windows XP is allowing XP to have 2 seperate managed pagefiles. That right there is a 25%+ performance increase. I'm dead serious. There were a couple of reviews and benchmarks on this subject matter awhile back. Basically, if you can set your page file from a set size to OS managed and put it on 2 seperate partitions or drives then XP runs much smoother when it needs to access pagefiles. Trust me on this.