Hi.>Then there is always the issue of defragging all your>partitions, Why? if you only use one partition, defrag others?>> Ability to separate many of your alike utilities in one>>partition, that can be shared by the multiple OSs, etc.>>Not good enough. It is if you have utilities that are OS dependent etc.>>2-Recovery, if your system

"The problem we face with access to the WWW is the many so called EXPERTS, and they are defined as people that know more and more, about less and less, until they know everything about nothing, giving out advice, and wasting peoples money and time.I hope this helps."I need to ask as did Bruce. Am I one of the so called WWW experts?? I only ask becuase of the implication in one of your other replies. You make some valid points. You also provide reasons that 99% of most susers won't/don't care about. I run a 40Gig JB for my OS and an 80Gig JB for my applications and games. To me the BEST answer for my situation. Not for everyone granted but an alternative. It would seem some of us have also forgotten RAID setups. Throw these into the mix and a partition will completely kill any performance gained. Especially in a RAID0 setup.I think enough has been said here about the subject and I feel the horse is about to be beat to death. I stated my facts. Provided an argument and info. Point was to help the original poster.Bottom line:One partition will be faster.WinXP when setup correctly will outperform 98SE.If your worried about file/App security, part. Or use a second drive.Have a good day.Bobby

I didn't say it but, gee, I wanna be one of the experts too. I sure hope he included me.

> I didn't say it but, gee, I wanna be one of the experts>too. I sure hope he included me. Knowing everything must be fun :) Too bad I am not one of the experts.

I have a couple of hints to help you get more performance without a lot of trouble. Since you don't say what you have for memory or hard drives or whatever I will list a pretend system:Pentium III 1Ghz768MB RAM2 20GB HDDCD-ROM PlayerMSI ti-4200 128MB Video CardStep one - partition each HDD into two parts. On physical drive 0 make one part 8GB (your C: drive), the other 12GB(lets call this your D: drive). On physical drive 1 make both parts 10GB (they will be your E: and F: drives). For security sake if not for the fact that it is a better file system, format all the drives NTFS.Step two - Put your O/S on the first part of drive 0 - the C: drive. Put your main O/S related programs with it on the C: drive. By that I mean your virus checker, your software firewall, your adobe reader, your browser, your media player, your e-mail client - things like that but most assuredly not your flight simulator program.Step three - Your paging file: First of all move your paging file to the first partition of drive 1. This would be your E: drive if you use the above scenario. Then, using the above configuration, make your paging file 1.5GB in size at its default amount and for its largest amount, make that 3GB. This gives lots of room for lots of processes to run without stomping all over each other, although with 768MB of RAM, paging probably won't be much of an issue.Step four - Put your flight simulator on the second part of drive 0 - the D: drive. Only put that program there - give it room to grow with all the addons you assuredly will have.Step five - put all your other programs and redundant files on the second part of drive 1 - your F: drive.Now, by doing this you have fundamentally changed the way things work with your processor. Paging is more that double fast when on a separate drive from the O/S. If you want to play around with your O/S, you don't lose anything. For instance, SP4 just came out for Win2kPro the other day and it was a simple process to upgrade. Since only O/S related stuff is on the C: drive any faults in the upgrade will lose nothing of the really important stuff like the flight simulator or the prize 421 over there on the other partition.Of course if you don't have two drives you cannot do the above steps until you add the extra drive. Just for pure speed alone, you should add the extra drive just to get the paging file off the operating system's drive.

Thanks all for your help.Regarding this last post:My system:P4-1.8G1G PC-2700HD0 = 40GBHD1 = 60GBPagefile on it's own partition on HD1 = 2GB.OS on C: on HD0 (plus OS apps as you suggest)Currently a GeForce 3 Ti200, but an ATI 9800 Pro on order.I do have partitions C: through P:, spread over the 2 physical HD's. I like your idea of partition mix, and might "adopt" it :) .BTW, all partitions formatted FAT32. I have never tried NTFS, and for a while shared these partitions with Win98 on a seperate boot C:. Is it possible to convert to NTFS, and what (if any) are the advantages over FAT32? How easy is it to convert with data on the HD's?Thanks,Bruce.

I am going to give you the M$ link to an explanation of Convert.exe. You might have to carefully type the link in to your browser but this page will show you what you need to know and direct you to more info: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;214579This link tells you about the space needed to use Convert.exehttp://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...&NoWebContent=1Here is another link of links about Convert.exe you might find useful:http://support.microsoft.com/search/defaul...=false&numDays=You don't mention your O/S but I will assume it is Win2kPro. If it is XP, you will have to check to see if Convert is available. The M$ WinXP knowledge base will have that info.Keeping it simple, NTFS is better than FAT or FAT32 in several ways: The cluster sizes are more efficient making less wasted space on the drive because of unused space in clusters. Also, and probably the most important reason - it is far more secure. You can set permissions at the folder level, partition level, or drive level. This is important from the point of view of hackers defeating your firewall and anti-virus software. It is also a just plain faster file structure. That has a lot to do with the cluster size but it also has to do with the way the processor or processors "thread" instructions. And, there is a more efficient use of the registers in memory.Think about it this way: Professional networks use only NTFS if they are Windoze based. You will NEVER see a commercial network using FAT. Ain't gonna happen. The main reason is SECURITY and the second main reason is the efficient use of limited resources.

Conversion is possible. My only problem with it is I have seen several conversions go bad with data being lost. Also remember that FAT32 partitions cannot recognize NTFS Partitions. Good Luck :)Bobby

Thanks, I have Win XP Home. I'll check the MS knowledge base.Bruce.

>Conversion is possible. My only problem with it is I have>seen several conversions go bad with data being lost. Also>remember that FAT32 partitions cannot recognize NTFS>Partitions. >>Good Luck :)>Bobby -Not sure what you mean by 'cannot recognize' NTFS partitions. There is no need for any partitions to recognize one another. The only recognition with NTFS is that Win98/ME cannot see the NTFS partitions.. If you mean that you cannot have mixed NTFS/FAT32 partitions, I ran a mixed NTFS/FAT32 set of partitions for a long time, so I know that WinXP/2k work well with mixed ;-)

Very good, Fred. Also remember that to dual boot between Win9X and Linux or Linux and Win2K/XP or Win9X abd Win2k/XP you have to have the FAT32 O/S or Linux O/S on a FAT32 partition and you can have a mix of FAT32 and NTFS with the NT-like O/S on the NTFS partition for security. AND FAT32 and NTFS CAN see the other's partitions, just not on the same computer, so if you are in a networked environment with a Win9X machine and have proper shares set you can see all the FAT32 files from an NTFS machine and vicey-versey. The whole point of this discussion is that NTFS, because of its smaller cluster size wastes less space on a hard drive than FAT32, is far more secure than FAT32, and is faster than FAT32 in file access.As to failures of Convert.exe?? I have done over three hundred conversions of FAT32 to NTFS with the Win2KPro O/S and never had a failure. Maybe the next one will go bad, but for now the risk is so low as to be non-existant. Also, any time you play with the file structure on a computer you should have a current backup of important files that you can fall back to. You do have backups, don't you? Of course you do.Now, back to the topic of this thread. There is no reason at all to reinstall the O/S if you are going to install a new program such as MSFS9. To follow the logic that supports reinstalling the O/S when adding programs, you would wipe the drives and reinstall the O/S whenever you add any new program and that simply is not done, nor is it necessary. Unless you have a major disk failure and have to rebuild your entire software environment, you should never reinstall the O/S. One of the things none of you have mentioned is System State. This is the current "snapshot" of your operating system. If you are a competent administrator of your "system" you will have been downloading critical patches from M$ as they are released in order to maintain the integrity of your sytem. Also, you will have been installing service patches as they are released. If you decide to reinstall your O/S it may be impossible to get back to the existing "system state" unless you can go to all the trouble of making certain you have the updates and patches you had beforehand. Good system administration precludes the need to take such drastic action in order to just install a new program. Some of you have reported that by reinstlling you have seen increases in speed. I would suggest that defragging would have made the same difference. Also, some slowdowns are caused by added security features. By reinstalling you might be losing those features (see previous discussion of updates and patches).

Due to the extreme horse beating going on here I became a little confused. :) your 100% right. I remember seeing something about 98 in his first post and I think thats what made me post that.Bobby

hehe Bobby, rgr that :)

>Now, back to the topic of this thread. There is no reason at>all to reinstall the O/S if you are going to install a new>program such as MSFS9. To follow the logic that supports>reinstalling the O/S when adding programs, you would wipe the>drives and reinstall the O/S whenever you add any new program>and that simply is not done, nor is it necessary. Unless you>have a major disk failure and have to rebuild your entire>software environment, you should never reinstall the O/S. One>of the things none of you have mentioned is System State. This>is the current "snapshot" of your operating system. If you are>a competent administrator of your "system" you will have been>downloading critical patches from M$ as they are released in>order to maintain the integrity of your sytem. Also, you will>have been installing service patches as they are released. If>you decide to reinstall your O/S it may be impossible to get>back to the existing "system state" unless you can go to all>the trouble of making certain you have the updates and patches>you had beforehand. Good system administration precludes the>need to take such drastic action in order to just install a>new program. Some of you have reported that by reinstlling you>have seen increases in speed. I would suggest that defragging>would have made the same difference. Also, some slowdowns are>caused by added security features. By reinstalling you might>be losing those features (see previous discussion of updates>and patches).Tg,I agree w everything you said in the above post. Well almost everything :).Why should you never reinstall your OS? I have regularly done "Spring Cleaning" on every machine I own as well as 80% of the machines I have built for clients. If your a competent administrator you should be taking the time to research all the "Bloat" That MS says should be installed on your system. With a properly configured and protected network a vast majority of the security patches that are issued are really not needed by the average home user. There is also a known issue w one of the security patches within SP1 causing a major performance hit w FS2002.My way of going about freshening up my system is to perform a new install of the OS I choose. This is fllowed by installation of the correct drivers and DX components in the correct order. Follow this up w any "Major" security issues that pertain to the system at that time. I install the programs I or my clients want along w any patches or updates.I than create an Image of the system using Drive Image Pro. These disks than provide me with an exact "Snapshot" of a perfect system that can be reinstalled at any time. Any security updates that are needed can be found by running an update after the install leaving the machine as is or creating a new snapshot of the updated system. (CD-RW's are a great invention :)).Yes a defrag will speed up a slow system but unless your using a third party Defrag utility such as Diskkeeper your really not doing as good a job as you can. Also, a defrag does nothing for a clogged registry full of uninstalled programs and applications that can lead to instability as well as system slowdowns.This is my practice at home as well as at work where I am solely responsible for an environmental control system of 63 machines running Win2KPro. I also help oversee the entire network of approx. 1300 machines. As part of our annual Preventitive Maintenance program these machines are all cleaned up and reinstalled with the corresponding image providing for a fresh start once a year. Like I said this is how I do it. It works for me as well as any other method I have read about and has actually been reccomended in several leading field publications.JMO...:) No offense meant. Just another viewpointBobby