I have a 20 Gig. HD. I would like to partition it optimally. I know the mechanics of how to partition a drive but would appreciate suggestions from more knowledgeable people than I as to the best way with respect to how many MB's or Gigs in each. I've read articles suggesting putting only the OS on drive (partition) C:, putting all applications on D: and data on E:.
I have always used several partitions, with storeage space divided up evenly in each partition and Windows installed in C: except that I make sure I have enough extra in C: to compensate for extra files installed by applications I may want to add in the future.

I'd welcome any comments.

Thanks;

Hank

I pretty much try to do mine the same way except I have one for image storage only used in burning CDs. I also put all or most of the install stuff in one partition. OS in first, image in 2nd, app in 3rd, data in 4th, install stuff in 5th.  Except I'm working with smaller drives with partitions 1 gb and smaller.

Ed Fair
 efair@atlnet.com
 
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

Ed;
Thanks for the comments. What did you mean by "the install stuff".

Hank

directories win31in, win95upg, w95bin, lan8in, msharein, qain, wpin.
Once the system is up in DOS (or any other is up in DOS w/lantastic) I can install the programs or OS from the hard drive or over the net.
I rebuild operating environments regularly on various machines so I pay the price and store the load stuff. It goes high so it is available from multiple boot partitions.

Ed Fair
 efair@atlnet.com
 
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

My preferred setup is to have at least 2 hard drives. The second disk is for data alone. I schedule in an incremental backup for midnight (or midday, if I've been working for any period of time on a Windows box ).

But then I do a lot of computing research and music writing, so I'm particularly fearful of losing data.

Apart from that, I agree totally. O/Ses in their own partitions, apps in another, swap in another and data completely separate - follow the UNIX model

Thanks for the response. Interesting, that you put the swap file in its own partition. What do you use for backing up your system? The second drive or another medium altogether.

My swap isn't segregated but other than that CE & I agree.
I do my backup across the net onto zip disks, data only. It  requires 3, and is only done from DOS using a batch file from the source machine. I'm not as good about it as I preach to my customers but I'm comfortable. I make 2 sets and store both off site. I've documented the install steps so I can duplicate the layout for all but a major disaster and one of the backup steps is to put output of tree of all drives onto a directory that is saved. This would be sufficient to allow me to put stuff back in order.

Ed Fair
 efair@atlnet.com
 
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

To back up all my home computers I have a DAT drive installed on a Pentium 200 PC running Red Hat Linux 7.1, with Amanda backup software.

Works flawlessly!

CE

Funny how things work out.  Friday night the server hard drive started making louder than usual noise. Saturday during a panic backup it slowly went into oblivion. So I got to optimize my partitioning again with a larger drive. Lost about 6 email addresses by not being current on backup.

Ed Fair
 efair@atlnet.com
 
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

Partitioning? Use two drives.
   First drive: P1=2Gb=Windows+core apps.
                P2=3Gb=Temp (internet files,scanreg CAB's,Apps temp. space, 'dirty apps'.
                P3/4=remainder=data of your choice
   Second drive:P1=<1Gb=virtual memory-set to min=max,300Mb the rest can be used once swap is set up.
                P2/3=remainder as required.

  I rarely defrag, and when I do, there isn't much fragmentation anyway.

**********************************************
With one drive only, P1 win+apps, P2 swap, P3 temp, rest for data.