Just got Win 7 - Need partitioning strategy?

[Melissa2008B]

Hi guys,

I'm an intermediate user, so please be patient with me. I'm going from an old 2001 vintage AMD XP DT to a new Dell DT with Win 7. I havent installed anything major on the new one yet, so I'm in the playing stage, just getting to know WIn 7 a little first, running them side by side until I can get my stuff moved to the new one.

I asked this in a usenet group, which was probably a dumb idea because I got conflicting answers and a few of the people there, I now consider kind of kooks. ( it's usenet, right? )

Anyway, I'm interested in a partitioning strategy to get this thing set up as nicely as possible before I put all my data on it. There seem to be two approaches to this. First one is make one big partition ( my HD is 300GB ) and dump everything on it. Second one that I heard, was make a bunch of partitions and put the OS on C:, the programs on D:, the data split up on the rest, even the pagefile on its own. For example Documents on E:, Graphics on F:, Audio on G:... spread things out over a bunch of partitions.

But then I get into the problem of having to force the OS to install and keep these things in various places.

I understand from years ago ( dont know if it still even matters ) that more partitions keep cluster size, or something down, and dont waste as much space per file?

I also understand the multi-partition strategy is supposed to make restoring easier, though I've never had a major restore. I always keep my room temp below 68 degrees and have never lost a hard drive, since 1987.

I dont do multiple OS' or dual boot, or any of that, JUST Windows.

So please help me out here. What's the best strategy for all this, for an uncomplicated home, SOHO user?

 

[JackNaylorPE]

See items 2,3 and 4 in the 8th post of the thread for speed improvements on the computer.

See5, 6 and the other 6 for time savers

Just change the C to D if Windoze defaults to C:\

The 1st time you restore a HD (Copy System Image of C to new HD, copy / paste all others from backup.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

hmmm...lost 2nd half of sentence and can't edit

The 1st time you restore a HD (Copy System Image of C to new HD, copy / paste all others from backup), you'll relish the ease.

 

[Melissa2008B]

Best answer selected by Melissa2008B.

 

[Guest]

partitioning helps prevent your program files and updates from getting fragmented. you want at least 2, and you can make a really huge fat16 partition on there so as to run your dos and any old windows you need... incidentally, a really huge fat16 partition is 4Gb (and you can shove it down near the bottom, cuz what kinda speed do you need to run 3.1?).