Help on partitioning(Primary,Extended-logical) an 8.4GHz hard drive?

[seismik]

My question:

How much of my hard drive should I use for the Active Primary Partition; Extended Partition(s).

Remember it's an 8.4 GHz drive (Western Digital)UDMA2.
Extended partition should contain how many logical drives. Using Win 98!



[This message has been edited by seismik (edited 04-28-99).]

[augidog]

you're going to get a lot of opinions on this...here's mine.

estimate how much room you need for your OS and software, double it, then add 2X your total physical RAM. this would be your primary partition, or C: drive. let the rest become a logical drive on the extended partition, or D:.

take all of your supporting software (drivers, installation programs, updates, etc.), including a W9X folder, and organize it on the D: drive. if you include the basic DOS commands, you will be able to do re-installs in a relatively short time.

augidog

[ENVY]

That be a good suggestion matey.

[BBA]

It depends on what os's you plan to use.
If Win98 or Win95 SR2 and up, then the most efficient use of the drive is with Fat32 and create one partition.

If you plan on using NT4 with any other or the above, then Fat16 with a partition sizes no greater than 2G, even tho you can go up to 2.1G (strange problems pop up with >2G Fat16 partitions).

If you plan on NT5 (W2K) then Fat32 is the way to go, because the W2K is fully Fat32 functional (I have W2K Proffesional release version).

BBA

[augidog]

yes, you should use FAT32 (sorry, assumed you would know that)

i find that the separation method i use still gives me the full performance potential of my Hdd since the OS is exactly where it would be if i used the full drive (i use a fixed swap size, and the try-n-buy NU 3.0 Speed Disk to optimize it), while having an extended partition for saved data means i never lose anything, and i can do a clean re-install of everything in 30 minutes, without a boot disk or any CD's!!



[This message has been edited by augidog (edited 04-29-99).]

[Nathan]

It's incrediable how easy that works out isn't it? I've been doing that for years. And never loss any data due to a crash, reformat, and reinstall.

[augidog]

yup-that's the configuration my customers get, too, and they become pros in a matter of weeks.

i've always wondered why the major PC makers haven't seemed to figure out this simple customer-satisfaction secret.

btw-since i re-install so frequently, my shareware never expires http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

thanx, envy & nathan, for your kind endorsement...coming from you, it means a lot.



[This message has been edited by augidog (edited 04-29-99).]

[Nathan]

I think the PC's are really difficult for the average user. They just want it to work. It's only people like ourselves that want it to be simplier and want to get the most out of it.

I actually go further than that with the partitioning. I break up those big drives in more than that. The swap file gets it's own partition, documents, downloads, etc.

[augidog]

that surprises me...i decided to optimize the swap based on info at your site. oops, sorry, had your kick-*** site confused with another k-a site, but i still wanna know...

is the separate swap partition your choice because startup files run faster and you hardly use swap anyway?

oh, and is your swap static or dynamic?



[This message has been edited by augidog (edited 04-29-99).]

[Nathan]

There are a lot of differing opinions on this subject. I always set mine and my customers to permanent, 100 or 125 MB. In the old days of MS-DOS, it was helpful to have that swap file at the beginning of the drive. But in 95/98, I think it really doesn't matter that much. The operating system is what's accessed first. So why have the swap file at the beginning of the drive? Nother words, the system has to read past the swap file before reading the starting ones. But better minds than myself will disagree with it. As for me, it's not worth the argument over it. Some things are worth arguing over. In my opinion, a permanent swap file brings stability to the system. Of course the more physical memory you have the less it's needed. Actually the best thing to have is more ram. Then it's not being used at all. Then this discussion is really not needed when users have 128 MB or more of ram.

When setting the swap file, I defrag first, reset the swap file to a different size, reboot and defrag again. Well in 95 that is.

[augidog]

cool info, Nathan, thanks.

hey, seismik, how ya doin'?

[seismik]

how does one set the hard drive up for optimizing the "swap file". My Norton's Utility soft will optimize automatically; is this adequate or should i do this myself.

[augidog]

Norton's automatic optimization is exactly what we are talking about, seismik.

it places the swap at the front, and fastest, part of the drive.

check out Nathan's info before deciding what to do about that http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

[socalgal]

I have my swap set at 120mgs (80mgs of RAM, and only 840mgs of hdd free) and still not sure if this is "best" - still experimenting!

Interesting info Nathan.

NU3's Speed Disk is my choice for optimizing. (That and the System Info are the only utils from NU3 I installed from their disk - the others to hoggy! Except it seems SpeedStart installed itself, so I just disable it so it won't start again). Anyway, I like the part where it throws the swap (brown colored clusters) up first. It 'fixes' the swap at the outer edge of the disk for the fastest retrieval. You can also set other programs/applications to start where you want them (first, second, etc.) After this inital optimization, the swap stays fixed, until/unless you reset your swap size.

[Nathan]

What did you find interesting Socalgal?

Interesting internet handle there. I wonder how many know what it really stands for?

[Nathan]

I really wonder if people can tell the difference in speed whether it's at the outer edge or not. I really can't. Now that doesn't mean someone else can't. To me it's much to do about nothing. There are more noticeable ways of speeding up the system rather than just placing the swap file at a different location on the hard drive. To me having a stable system that protects the data is more important than a lot of the other things users tend to focus on. But that's my opinion.

The computer knows where the swap file is without hunting for it. The question is why is that placement so important? Seems to me if you have enough ram, the swap file rarely comes in to play. So if you don't use it, and it's placing it at the beginning of the drive, aren't you sacrificing speed in opening frequently accessed files? Of course. Let's take this one step further. 98 moves the frequently accesses files to the front of your hard drive. So it learns by your habits and tries to place those critical files at the beginning of the drive. Why? So they can open quicker. I'm not sure if a user can really notice there apps opening any quicker or not. But that's what 98 does.

So instead of people spending big bucks on their components and having 32 or 64 MB of ram, bump it up to 128 MB and drop down one speed of the CPU. You will notice the difference. People tend to forget that the swap file does wear the hard drive some and is so much slower than any speed of ram.

[socalgal]

That was ALL interesting Nathan! Thanks for the lesson. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[socalgal]

Hi Nathan ~

This is what I found interesting:

. In the old days of MS-DOS, it was helpful to have that swap file at the beginning of the drive. But in 95/98, I think it really doesn't matter that much. The operating system is what's accessed first. So why have the swap file at the beginning of the drive? Nother words, the system has to read past the swap file before reading the starting ones

I hope I don't sound too dumb here, but IF Windows has to access the swap (which is set/optimized), and it is arranged in one spot (the outer edge of the disk -i.e., the beginning) then wouldn't it's access be faster, rather than having to search the hdd to and fro? and increasing performance? Wouldn't this also cut down on defragmentation?

My handle (I thought) was kinda obvious... lol