Program files; on seperate partition or on seperate drive?

[zzmster]

Having read several partitioning strategies I keep seeing different opinions on the matter of the location of the program files folder and or swap files. The need and essence of proper and smart partitioning of drives is clear to me.

However I can't figure out where to place the more demanding part of the program file folder i.e. Photoshop, Premiere etc. for maximum performance and output.

I have seen that most people tend to leave a 20-30 GB for programs in the OS partition (C, some people make an seperate partition for programs on the OS drive (D and some people assign a different hard drive for the programs folder.

What is best ?

Should programs folder be:

A: on the first partition of drive 1 (together with OS)

B: on the second partition of drive 1 (first beeing OS)

C: on the second partition of drive 2 (first beeing operating system page file).

It seems logical in some way to put it on the second drive, as far as efficiency goes; drive 1 runs OS while drive 2 is smoothly running Programs.

Any ideas ?

Specs;

Asus P5-AD2
P4 3.4
Corsair 5400 1Ghz

Drive 1: 74 GB IDE
Drive 2: 74 GB IDE

Drive 3: 120 GB Sata (file dump)

 

[rvnguy]

Assuming you are running a Win OS, there is little advantage to locating applications in a 2nd partition or on a separate drive. If you have to re-install your OS for any reason you will have to re-install your apps to re-establish the registry entries. Once the OS kernel is loaded and/or an application, the only other access is for dll's or other supporting files that can be with the app or moved to the OS directory.

Unlike the older or other OS's where you can control via config files where your apps are located, the win os's use the proprietary Registry and it is difficult to know all the entries required for any application and then there are several applications in most any system.

There is some documentation to an advantage of locating the swap page file on a separate 'fast' HD. This separation is proported to be an advantage as heads will be closer and ready to transfer required info. My experience is that if one maximizes installed RAM that less to no swaping is required and RAM is much faster than any HD access. I believe that you have 4 RAM slots and in theory, if cost is no object could use 2GB sticks for a total of 8GB. But more realistic would be 1GB sticks, and/or 2 512K and 2 1GB sticks trying to match timings.

As you have SATA you might consider a WD Raptor for your swap area...

If speed and smooth performance is your objective I favor additional RAM




rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[wolluf]

Some video editing apps suggest using a dedicated hard drive for video editing (with definitely no pagefile on it) as windows is always reading/writing to system drive (so slowing down other apps access to it).

note - if its 32 bit XP, can only address 4GB of RAM.

 

[rvnguy]

In concert with Wolluf's post, there is also some limits over 3GB memory and supposedly there are certian switches that can be enabled to assist.

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all