Recommended Partitions on 120 GB Hard Disk? 5

[Antonimo]

I am about to take delivery of a 120 GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 Hard Disk after my old 15 GB Quantum Fireball (supplied with my Dell desktop 3 years ago) turned into a door-stop.

I have started taking a lot of short digital video clips and photos, apart from using the machine for home business.

After using a 15 GB disk, 120 GB seems cavernous but I am sure that it will fill up soon enough.

I anticipate having up to 5 GB of program files.

What suggestions might anyone have about the best partitions to create on this new disk?

How many partitions should I create?

What sizes should the partitions be?

Which is the best software for creating and managing the partitions?

Any advice / recommendations read with gratitude

 

[Banzai5150]

First off would need to know your Operating System to determine if your FAT32 or NTFS.

NTFS will handle all partitions over 8gig at 4k clusters so one big 120gig partition in my opinion is fine.

FAT32 gets a bit unruly in the Cluster size so you would end up with a ton of partitions under 120gb to maximize it.

Here's a link for FAT32 sizes:

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/partCluster-c.html

Hope this helps a bit,
Banzai

Wherever you go, there you are...

 

[shaner66]

I would use Partition Magic, it's the best program out there, IMO.

I would also create a 15 GB partition for Windows and Program Files, then have a second partition with the remaining HD space for your personal files, videos, music, etc.

That way if you reinstall Windows your personal files won't be lost.

 

[Antonimo]

Thanks Banzai5150 & shaner66

I forgot to mention the OS.

I shall be using Windoes 98 SE for the time being. Would you suggest I upgrade? I don't like XP but I would like to use an OS that coule handle system resources better. Is Windows 2000 worthwhile?

 

[shaner66]

Yes, Windows 200 is definitely worthwhile if you have a 120 GB hard drive.

 

[wolluf]

win2k is a very nice o/s - I would recommend it (XP is very similar - particularly if you turn off its new interface, which is easy to do). Both are very stable once set up properly). If you do stick with 98, there is an issue with fdisk creating partitions > 64GB - see this fix -

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q263044

(and link on this page about format -

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;263045).

 

[vop]

Fragmentation can be a big issue on a large capacity drive. I divided my 120GB HDD in 3 x 40GB (Win98SE). This can isolate a partition with minimal fragmentation issues (programs only) from ever changing data content in other partitions - medium content changes on one (games) and heavy content changes on the other (downloads, temporary internet files, email, document creation, etc.).

Two recent encounters on XP systems tell me that it is extremely important to address fragmentation on a regular basis. A badly fragmented disk (both 40GB partitions) can take forever to defrag often requiring multiple passes. And, 4K clusters can make the fragment count excessive (8x more than a 32K cluster) if you don't address fragmentation issues on a timely basis.

In general, I have found XP less friendly to the defragmentation process. Defrag early on, and monitor very closely. Thing will go a lot smoother that way.