Tips on adding a new 80gig hdd

[^KoalaBear^]

Gday guys 'n gals...

I run a PC on Win98 Athlon 1200 with 512 mb RAM and presently have two hdds... a 20gb partitioned 50/50 (C and D) and an 80gb (E)

My 20gb drive is starting to slow up perty fast and I am about to replace it with a new (second) 7200speed 80gb drive.

Would someone out there like to suggest my best way of configuring it for speed and other reasons,,, as this will become my new C: drive.

I am thinking of partitioning it to say 10gb (C) and 70gb (D) leaving my existing 80gb hdd still as E, but don't know if this is best or should I leave it un-partitioned?

Are there any schools of thought on this partitioning practice? Any thoughts and advice would be of grateful help.

Cheers

KB...

[Roy Sinclair]

In the past I've always found that partitioning a drive into peice X and piece Y will eventaully lead to a point where you run out of room in one piece while the other piece is still half empty. It's much better to leave the whole drive as a single partition and use a subdirectory or two to divide the content into managable portions.

[oracleguy]

Originally posted by Roy Sinclair
In the past I've always found that partitioning a drive into peice X and piece Y will eventaully lead to a point where you run out of room in one piece while the other piece is still half empty. It's much better to leave the whole drive as a single partition and use a subdirectory or two to divide the content into managable portions.

I agree... There isn't a point anymore to making multiple paritions on one physical drive. Back in the day before FAT32 and NTFS, you had to because with FAT16 you could only have paritions up to 500megs and even then the clusters were 32k and that led to lots of wasted space so ideally you'd parition your, say 1gb, hard drive into 225meg (something like that) paritions.

Btw, make sure you get that new hard drive with an 8mb cache instead of a 2mb, it will be faster.

[liorean]

Yeah, about the only reasons I can think of for partitioning it are:
- If you want to have separate (limited) spaces for each user, but want to use a file system which does not provide user quotas (FAT16, FAT32 among others).
- If you want to have different file systems on the partitions, maybe because you are using two different operative systems, of which one can't read/write a file system (ext2, ext3, reiserFS, UFS (the Apple version), NTFS among others) you want to use to the benefit of the other.
- If you want to have multiple operative systems, you should have separate partitions for their system base.
- If you use an operative system which can only operate if it's entire system base partition is within the first 500MB/2GB/8GB (those are the limits present for the few such operative systems that can be used on x86 systems.)

If you really want speed and performance, I'd put them in a RAID array as a single 160GB drive. Whether you use partitions or not, that drive will be faster and more reliable, not to speak of that you will reduce excessive spin-ups and red/write head movements and because of that probably gain in hard drive lifetime.

[Mhtml]

If you really want speed and performance, I'd put them in a RAID array as a single 160GB drive. Whether you use partitions or not, that drive will be faster and more reliable, not to speak of that you will reduce excessive spin-ups and red/write head movements and because of that probably gain in hard drive lifetime.

You will need a raid controller for that though. Raid arrays show just how much partioning is really a thing of the past really as oracle said.

[Roelf]

Originally posted by liorean
Yeah, about the only reasons I can think of for partitioning it are:
- If you want to have separate (limited) spaces for each user, but want to use a file system which does not provide user quotas (FAT16, FAT32 among others).
- If you want to have different file systems on the partitions, maybe because you are using two different operative systems, of which one can't read/write a file system (ext2, ext3, reiserFS, UFS (the Apple version), NTFS among others) you want to use to the benefit of the other.
- If you want to have multiple operative systems, you should have separate partitions for their system base.
- If you use an operative system which can only operate if it's entire system base partition is within the first 500MB/2GB/8GB (those are the limits present for the few such operative systems that can be used on x86 systems.)

If you really want speed and performance, I'd put them in a RAID array as a single 160GB drive. Whether you use partitions or not, that drive will be faster and more reliable, not to speak of that you will reduce excessive spin-ups and red/write head movements and because of that probably gain in hard drive lifetime.
or if you want to separate your applications from your data. So you can make an image of the applications (including OS) partition which can be restored without losing the data-partition

[Mhtml]

Norton Ghost works like that does it?

[liorean]

Well, of all reasons for using partitions, I forgot to mention the one reason I have up to M: myself... five harddrives as four logical drives, separate media, user, and programs partitions, and different OS system base partitions.

[Mhtml]

I'm not sure if scratch drives have been mentioned, these are required by some big graphics and video editing software packages. You can use partions for that ...

[liorean]

Yeah, or you can use swap files. I personally prefer that way of creating a virtual partition inside a real one.

[Celtboy]

i always partition.
At MINIMUM: 1 for OS/Applications & 1 for Data.

Makes disk imaging easier. Also quickens defrag and scandisk.

[oracleguy]

Originally posted by Mhtml
I'm not sure if scratch drives have been mentioned, these are required by some big graphics and video editing software packages. You can use partions for that ...

Yeah but if you are going to have a scratch disk, there is no point in partitioning the drive for it. You only get a good performance out of them if they are on a seperate physical disk and ideally seperate controller from the OS/application.

[^KoalaBear^]

Well......... all I can say is WOW!! lol.

Thank you all sincerely for contributing your individual views and tips of advice. It is far more complex than I had imagined and now will chew over the posts and hopefully form a sensible decision on how I will configure my upgrade.

Was good to see you again too, Mike. Haven't been around for quite some time due my need to chase some pretty nurses `round their 'bedside manner' :p

Cheers!

KB...

[Mhtml]

lol :thumbsup: that's the way KB!

[^KoalaBear^]

LOL 4.40am????
You tried warm milk and honey to make you sleepy? :D

[Mhtml]

lol, never thought of that ... I was thinking perhaps some 'southern comfort' or 'black douglas' :D ... I'm only going to get up again so why bother with sleep? :)

[^KoalaBear^]

LOL Ahhhh to be young again.... you devil, you! ;)
Congrats on becoming a mod too mate. Does that mean old aussie nerds get preferential treatment? hehe... :D

Bye for now, Cobber :thumbsup: