Hi folks, I'll be getting a new system pretty soon with a Samsung 200GB HD and, after reading some posts here I decided to have the following partitions: 1 - 120GB Windows + applications + paging file; 2 - 80GB FS + addons I know it won't make much difference in performance since I just have one single HD, but I think having FS in a single partition will make defraging a little faster and it won't get as fragmented as the "everyday work" windows partition, am I right about this? I'm planing on formating both partitions as NTFS, so my question is: would FAT32 be faster for the FS partition? Oh, I also read somewhere that you can get a little performance boost if you put the paging file on a single partition, 1-2GB, formated with the FAT16 system since it seems to be faster. Does it make sense? Thanks for any help! I just want to make sure I'm doing the best thing for my new setup :) Any other suggestions are welcome!Leo

I don't know which is faster or better but I can tell you what I have done. I have a 120 gig HD partitioned into 2 drives. One at 40 gigs for FS and the other one is for the rest. I have Win XP installed in both. That means I can boot to either the FS operating system or the regular system. The FS operating system is the minimum needed to run FS. No bells or whistles. The regular system is the one I do everything else on. I have no virus checker or email or anything else on the FS operating system. I got a virus on the regular system but it did not affect the FS operating system. Mine works like a charm. Windows handles my page file.AMD 3400120 gig Seagate IDE (Boy they are quiet)ATI 850XL2 monitors and going to 4 soon.

I think I may have found this link from an AVSIM post but it explains partitioning very well.http://partition.radified.com/Ray

Thanks for the replays! Ray, thanks for the link too.

Hi, Leo.Partitioning is a wise thing to do. How you do it depends on how you use the system, your OS, capacity of your HD, how many physical HDs you have, recovery / backup needs etc.I will elaborate on a few, you can search for

Hi Leo, IMHO it mainly depends on the other things you do with the OS and it probably makes a difference whether the sys is your daily workhorse or a dedicated FlyTendo. Generally put, I would suggest to stick everything in one large partition and let the OS handle everything. Perhaps only create a relatively small partition for backups (i.e. 20-40GB). This could also be handy in case you decide to re-install one day. Personally, I believe the creation of various partitions (on 1 HD) is detrimental to disk performance. One of the reasons (amongst others and just as an example): Increased HD-head travel. With a single HD and multiple partitions, you can probably picture how the HD-head(s) need to shift around: From partition A to partition B, then it needs to pick-up or write some data in A again, afterwards back to B, etc, etc. Each re-positioning of the heads takes about 10ms. In these 10ms, roughly 600kB of data could have been transfered... :-) Hope this adds to thoughts, good luck and kind regards Jaap

On my HD I boot to C drive for FS. I boot to D drive for everything else. I'am talking one physical Seagate 120 gig drive here. Anything to do with FS is saved on C drive. The computer sees FS as a new OS and operates it that way. The HD only moves where C drive is. C drive is one area of the drive. That is why I have a dual boot system. There is no A or B partition. Also I have the Seagate formatted NTFS as I believe MS makes that type of file system work best. Hard disk travel is the least of my worries.JimCYWG

Hi, Jaap and everyone.This is not intended to dispute your advice and or opinion, just to clarify a misunderstanding that most people seem to fall prey to.By having multiple partitions you do not increase the access time, just the opposite. Partitioning assigns consecutive Tracks to the allocation. Once the program is started, from a particular partition, the worst case scenario in access / seek time can be minimized drastically. Let

Hi TV, no worries, I'm the last one to do away with a constructive discussion. :-) Nevertheless, I fear some of the reasoning falls short regarding a couple of issues: - The tracks on the outside or first bit of the HD are the fastest ones. Hence, moving data towards the slower bits in the middle will decrease access speed and transfer rates - Running the OS on one partition, the game on a second and i.e. the pagefile on the 3rd partition will make the HD-heads physically travel and unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about it. This has nothing to do with lookup tables etc - Each partition contains a Master File Table (MFT) and this alone can lead to data fragmentation since it's not located at the very beginning of each partition. SysInternals offers a couple of useful tools to visualize the location of the data on a partition in case somebody is interested - The OS calculates certain functions in relation to the size of drives or partitions. For example: Making big partitions also creates large MFTs - Windows XP has automatisms to relocate frequently used files to more ideal positions on the HD. Moving data away from their default directories will nullify such automatisms These are just a couple of details an uneducated individual can think of. :-) I once also thought that drive partitioning brought advantages, but I don't believe this is correct anymore. If somebody wants to use multiple partitions, IMHO, multiple HDs is the way to go. Parallely, this approach can also be a bit treaterous because multiple drives can equally signify multiple interrupt calls under certain circumstances... AIM, I believe it mainly depends on the manner somebody wants to use a system. Case Leo uses his sys for daily and simming purposes, IMHO, Jim's dual-boot setup is the way to go. @ Jim, indeed, with your setup there's no need for HD-head travel and you've got the best of both worlds. FWIW, I also partition drives (on dedicated systems) and my secondary partition serves as a backup location for that specific system --> service packs, drivers, add-ons, software, images, etc. Good luck and kind regards Jaap PS, TV, if you feel there's something I should learn, I'm always eager to do so :-) Links etc are more than welcome. Cheers