Topic: Hard drive partitioning

[Ginny]

Hi, I?m new to this so I?m hoping you can give me a bit of advice.
My PC is fitted with: AMD Athlon XP 3000+ CPU, 1GB PC3200 DDR Memory, NVidia GeForce FX 5600 graphics card, 200GB hard drive .

Whilst working on a recent problem I had to reinstall Windows XP and took the opportunity to experiment with partitioning the drive using the Windows partitioning facility. The problem wasn?t resolved so I?m now having to have a new hard drive and RAM fitted - the manufacturer is doing it under warranty and will supply the drive with Windows XP preinstalled so I will be using Acronis Disk Director to partition it. I would really appreciate your comments and suggestions on my strategy.
C: 15GB  Operating System
D: 50GB Programs ? my thinking is that if I have to reinstall Windows I can do so without losing all the applications. If I do this should I move Program Files from C: or have both? Does anything need to find Program Files in C:?
E: 50GB Data ? I thought I would put My Documents here. When I move My Documents should I leave the rest of Documents and Settings in C:?
F: 40GB Images
G: 30GB Music
I work on images using Photoshop and thought that a separate drive for the scratch file might be useful. If I did this I guess it should be partition D: in the faster part of the drive but perhaps with only the OS in C: there will be enough spare and I should direct Photoshop to use that.

[Clive]

Hi Ginny and    Someone be along to answer your question shortly.  

[Sandra]

Hi Ginny, there isnt really any advantage in having any more than two partitions on a drive.

If you have the number of partitions that you suggest then you will end up having some partitions almost full and possibly not having enough free space in total left over to be useful.

I would split a single hard drive into something like a 40 or 50 gig C partition to install your operating system and programs on and the remainder as another partition.

You can make as many folders on the second partition as you like and name them as Documents, Images and Music or anything else you like.

You dont need a folder or partition for your program files, thats created on C when you install a program to C and there is no point saving the installed program files anywhere else as you have to install them again if you ever have to wipe C.
You need to have the program setup or exe files on CD/DVD or another folder on your second partition.

I hope that this clarifies it for you, get back to us if you dont understand something or want further information.

[sam]

personally i keep my o/s on one partition, music on another and documents on another. This works well, but as sandra said there is no need for more than two. Two is crucial though, so maybe having c and then dumping everything else in directorys (folders), as Sandra suggested, will be the way to go.