I just got a new computer with a 160GB hard drive. I've read that
partitioning your hard drive can have great benefits in terms of
re-installing just the OS without also having to restore your
documents and other data. I've read that putting your OS (in this case
Win XP), paging file, programs, and datafiles each in a separate
parition might be a good idea. My question is how large to make each
partition?

How large should the Windows XP-only paritition be to allow the OS to
run and also be able to defrag it if necessary?

If I have 1 GB of RAM, should I follow the guideline of having 1.5
times that for a paging file?

Are there pitfalls I should be aware of?

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Clarification of Question by captapollo-ga on 18 Mar 2005 13:53 PST

Thanks for the comments.

I am a designer and often work with large image files, so the
swap/paging paritition is definitely part of my plan.

I think I'll put the OS and program files on the same paritition and
Ghost that so that I don't have to reinstall everything if I need to
wipe the OS. Is this a good idea? With a bunch of largish programs to
begin with (photoshop, Macromedia studio) will 20GB be large enough to
be future-friendly?

How hard is it to re-partition if I screw this up and find I need to start over?
Then I'll use TweakUI to put My Documents on a separate partition.

The benefits that you mention only apply if you take the time to save
everything you need to another partition. The same goal can be
accomplished if you buy an external drive and save everything to the
external drive. And with the external drive, you can easily take it to
a friends house if your computer completely dies.

I think if you partition the OS to 20gig, that should give you plenty
of space to install programs, updates, etc. Please note, that any
program you intall will have to be reinstalled when you format the OS
partition. Again, you have to make sure you save everything you want
to keep (word docs, excel files, movies clips) on the 2nd
partion/drive.

The size of drive partitions will depend on what you plan to do with
your computer.  If you are working with video (editing, etc), you may
want to keep the Primary Partion a workable size (say 10 gigs) and the
video partion as large as possible.  With a drive as large as yours,
you might consider making a "swap" drive (for virtual memory)
partition that is 1/4 to 1/2 the size of your primary partion.

Hope this helps,
<a href="http://www.infinitesurf.com">InfiniteSurf</a>

Partitions a drive is all well and good but if the data is important,
I would install a second drive having your OS on one drive and your
data on another. You OS only needs about 2GB and depending on the
amount of memory you have would determing the pagefile size.
Partitioning a drive to keep data safe only works if the hard drive
does not fail