Quote: Original post by Jarrod1937
If you're worried about having to reinstall windows, then just keep one partition. If windows ever craps out of you, you can simply do a windows repair. Or you can do a complete reinstall of windows and simply not delete and reformat the drive (no one says you have to), as you can skip the format option and install windows on an existing partition.

But can't there be a situation where reinstalling Windows won't be enough and I'll have to reformat? In that case, if I'll have only one partition I'll lose all my data.

Quote: if you create 1 partition, and make it large enough...

But if I create one partition, I'm just going to use the whole disk space for it...

Why would I want to create only one partition and make it smaller that the entire disk? The remaining space will just be unused.

Quote: Original post by Gage64

Quote: Original post by Jarrod1937
If you're worried about having to reinstall windows, then just keep one partition. If windows ever craps out of you, you can simply do a windows repair. Or you can do a complete reinstall of windows and simply not delete and reformat the drive (no one says you have to), as you can skip the format option and install windows on an existing partition.

But can't there be a situation where reinstalling Windows won't be enough and I'll have to reformat? In that case, if I'll have only one partition I'll lose all my data.

Yes, there is one situation, if something like your partition table, or the partition itself gets corrupted. But generally, in both of those situations, simply having two separate partitions will not save you/ Usually if one gets corrupted so will the other. However, generally data recovery for a damaged partition is quite easy, if the damage is not drive wide.

Quote:

Quote: if you create 1 partition, and make it large enough...

But if I create one partition, I'm just going to use the whole disk space for it...

Why would I want to create only one partition and make it smaller that the entire disk? The remaining space will just be unused.

I believe you misunderstood me. You stated that you want to create two partitions, one for the os and one for your programs/data, right? If you create one for your OS, of say 40 GiB in size, the partition will in essence be reserving 40 gigs from the outside in, for the OS. Now, if you create your Programs partition, it will create a reserved space from the remaining parts of the drive. This is effectively forcing your programs and all subsequent data to be stored in a less than optimal area of the platter, as the more you get closer to the spindle the slower the angular velocity is, and the slower throughput and access time performance will get.
The thing is, is that if you create 1 single partition, you're then placing your OS in the best position, then the programs in the second best, then the data last, in terms of their arrangement on the platters. This is a more optimal arrangement, because your programs can then operate on the same platter area that would have been reserved for the os (but more than likely not used). The key to good performance is to get all your data arranged, in a hierarchical fashion, on the disk platters, from the outside in, in order of importance. If you create an overly large partition, then you're causing your os to reserve more space than it needs, and forcing your programs to be in a slower area.
Although, this is an overly technical explanation of it. You can use two separate partitions if you want, if you're that worried about data loss from loosing a partition, but it just may not e the most optimal setup.

Quote: Original post by Gage64

Quote: Original post by owl
40gb is crazy for just the os.

What OS? [wink]

Like I said, Vista can take over 20GB, not counting swap file etc.

Quote: If you're going to browse lots of porn without emptying your temporary folders then 40gb wouldn't be enough though...

Hmm you're right. Better make it 100GB just to be safe. [smile]

ROFL!
That's funny but in reality I find 40GB may not always be enough these days especially since alot of programs are written for and still use the C drive and it takes registry hackery to change that in most cases.
Just do a search in the Microsoft knowledge base and I'm sure you find alot of examples where program updates i.e. Visual Studio Service packs and Vista service pack fail to install due to not having enough free space available on the C drive.

Quote: Original post by daviangel
in reality I find 40GB may not always be enough these days especially since alot of programs are written for and still use the C drive and it takes registry hackery to change that in most cases.

I guess you're right, but after reading what Jarrod1937 said, I'm thinking about going with a single partition, unless someone can offer arguments against it.

BTW, if I do end up going with a separate partition for the OS, how much do you think I should reserve?

Quote: Original post by Jarrod1937
I believe you misunderstood me.

I believe you are correct. [smile]

Quote: If you create one for your OS, of say 40 GiB in size, the partition will in essence be reserving 40 gigs from the outside in, for the OS. Now, if you create your Programs partition, it will create a reserved space from the remaining parts of the drive. This is effectively forcing your programs and all subsequent data to be stored in a less than optimal area of the platter, as the more you get closer to the spindle the slower the angular velocity is, and the slower throughput and access time performance will get.

That part I understood. What confused me was this:

Quote: if you create 1 partition, and make it large enough...

It is my understanding that you use partitions to divide the disk space (although from what you say there's no point in doing that), so if you only create 1 partition, you are not dividing the disk space at all - the one partition should be the size of the entire disk.

Therefore, I don't understand how you can talk about the size of this partition (when you say "large enough"), as it's size is always the size of the entire disk.

The only thing I can think of is that you deliberately make the partition smaller the size of the disk and the remaining space will be unused (i.e., it won't be used for another partition), but why would you want to do that?

Quote: Original post by Gage64

Quote: Original post by daviangel
in reality I find 40GB may not always be enough these days especially since alot of programs are written for and still use the C drive and it takes registry hackery to change that in most cases.

I guess you're right, but after reading what Jarrod1937 said, I'm thinking about going with a single partition, unless someone can offer arguments against it.

BTW, if I do end up going with a separate partition for the OS, how much do you think I should reserve?

Quote: Original post by Jarrod1937
I believe you misunderstood me.

I believe you are correct. [smile]

Quote: If you create one for your OS, of say 40 GiB in size, the partition will in essence be reserving 40 gigs from the outside in, for the OS. Now, if you create your Programs partition, it will create a reserved space from the remaining parts of the drive. This is effectively forcing your programs and all subsequent data to be stored in a less than optimal area of the platter, as the more you get closer to the spindle the slower the angular velocity is, and the slower throughput and access time performance will get.

That part I understood. What confused me was this:

Quote: if you create 1 partition, and make it large enough...

It is my understanding that you use partitions to divide the disk space (although from what you say there's no point in doing that), so if you only create 1 partition, you are not dividing the disk space at all - the one partition should be the size of the entire disk.

Therefore, I don't understand how you can talk about the size of this partition (when you say "large enough"), as it's size is always the size of the entire disk.

The only thing I can think of is that you deliberately make the partition smaller the size of the disk and the remaining space will be unused (i.e., it won't be used for another partition), but why would you want to do that?

You're not understanding that quote because you keep taking it out of context :-)
"if you create 1 partition, and make it large enough, you'll be effectively reserving a large chunk of the outer platter space. When you then create your programs partition,"
When i stated that, i was actually saying that you create 1 partition for your os, then later, the program partition from the remaining space.

Although, all misunderstanding aside, there are some reasons to just create partition, that does not use the entire hard drive space. The answer as to why is, speed. If you cap the max size of your partition, to say, half the size of your drive, you're then effectively limiting its usable area to only the fastest outer edges of the drive. This will not so much increase performance, as it would prevent the drive from reaching the slower areas.

If you look at my Raid tutorial, stickied in the hardware section, you'll notice something interesting when looking at my single drive benchmark:



As you can see, it starts out fast, but slowly, its throughput and access time performance decreases. This decrease is due to the drive slowly reaching the inner areas of the platter with the slower angular velocity, the closer you get, the less throughput you get. Now, if you cap the size of the partition before it reaches those slower areas, you will be keeping your hard drive performance pretty level and straight forward, as you're cutting out the sections that would be slow.

Quote: Original post by Jarrod1937You're not understanding that quote because you keep taking it out of context :-)
"if you create 1 partition, and make it large enough, you'll be effectively reserving a large chunk of the outer platter space. When you then create your programs partition,"
When i stated that, i was actually saying that you create 1 partition for your os, then later, the program partition from the remaining space

Ah, I get it now. I should have read that more carefully.

Quote: If you cap the max size of your partition, to say, half the size of your drive, you're then effectively limiting its usable area to only the fastest outer edges of the drive. This will not so much increase performance, as it would prevent the drive from reaching the slower areas.

Would you say it's worth giving up some disk space for the extra speed? Is the difference significant?

Quote: Original post by Gage64

Quote: Original post by Jarrod1937You're not understanding that quote because you keep taking it out of context :-)
"if you create 1 partition, and make it large enough, you'll be effectively reserving a large chunk of the outer platter space. When you then create your programs partition,"
When i stated that, i was actually saying that you create 1 partition for your os, then later, the program partition from the remaining space

Ah, I get it now. I should have read that more carefully.

Quote: If you cap the max size of your partition, to say, half the size of your drive, you're then effectively limiting its usable area to only the fastest outer edges of the drive. This will not so much increase performance, as it would prevent the drive from reaching the slower areas.

Would you say it's worth giving up some disk space for the extra speed? Is the difference significant?

It would be to me, if i had fairly large hard drive to work with. But, then again, i am a bit of a performance freak. You're talking about the difference of 50-60 MB/s at around 15 ms, compared to a minimum of 35 MB/s at around 25 ms, in my given example. The difference is large enough to be noticeable. However, if you keep your hard drive defragmented, and compacted well, it would be unlikely that you would reach those inner areas of the platter in the first place. And if you do, then you more than likely need the space to begin with, so purposefully loosing the space would not be beneficial to that person.
SO, my answer, it depends on who you are and your uses.

You can take it a step further. Install the OS, your main IDE, assorted utilities, and then use a program like Norton Ghost to create a backup of your partition. (I think you can do it with the dd Linux command too, but I never tried it) Depending on your development environment, this can easily save you an extra day or two.

That's crazy. Want speed? Make a 10mb partition leaving the other 190GB unused, then install zip slack.

There you'll get all the speed you want.

Better yet, burn your system into a CD and load it at boot time into a ram disk and leave you HD out of the question. :)