HD setup for clean windows install?

[Guest]

I am about to reformat/install, and I was hoping someone on here would have some good info on how to partition the drives for best performance. I have a 2gig 5400rpm and a 20gig 7200rpm drive. It would be nice to have a partition for the OS, a partition for the swap file, and a partition for all my other stuff. What is the best setup? I will be using win98se or 2000, I have not yet decided.

I was thinking of having the OS on the 2gig with my program files, and a separate partition for the swap space on the 20gig with the rest of the 20 gig for my other files.

Will I benifit from having the OS on the 7200rpm drive instead? Am I right in thinking that it will be faster to have the OS and the swap space on physically different drives? Should the program files be on a different partition, or better yet a different drive than the OS?

And finally, to throw a wrench in the whole thing, I may be getting a 10 gig drive soon as a warranty replacement. If I get that, what is the best performance setup?

Thanks a lot!

 

[manish]

See, You will gain by having OS and swap file on different partitions when the partition having swap file is not accessed in between OS/program uses. The main thing is that the Hard Disk head remains over the swap file on the other HDD which is not being used while OS is loading/saving applications,etc.
If you install OS on the 2 gig drive, you will have around 1.2 gig approx to install other applications (in C:\Program Files\, etc.). You will prefer to install these applications on the same drive as the OS, as you don't want the HDD having swap file to be accssed everytime a heavy application is being loaded. Now, 1.2 gig, as far as I know, will fall short if you plan to install a lot of applications....infact, MS Visual Studio,etc. itself takes a whole lot of nearly 500MB,etc.

So, here is what I recommend:

Install your OS on the 20 gig drive, and install your applications too on the same partition.

Create another partition of around 500 MB (on 20 gig) and use this to store the Temporary Internet Files folder of IE (you can change the location via Control Panel->Internet Options). This will prevent your main OS partition from frequent defragmentation,etc. Maybe increase the size of this partition and even set variables like TEMP, TMP to this drive.

Use your 2 gig to store backups,etc. less frequently used programs, and the swap file.

Hope this helps.



Manish
http://manishmalik.cjb.net - just another 1-page site.

 

[Guest]

Thanks a bunch. I think what I will end up doing is having the 2gig carry the swap space, and then I will use the remaining space as temporary space to hold files on their way to the burner. The 20 gig will host the OS and apps together. I may add a partition to that to save, as you said, downloads (napster, IE, whatever) as I tend to save and delete a lot and really fragment those sections of my hard drive (when I realise a program I downloaded was crap, or an mp3 had a blip etc).

Thanks again,

Sean