capturing/editing/dvd -new hard drive what the best partitioning stratergy

[jjbtnc]

So far my video experience has been limited to using Nero for dvds and converting a few clips to divx.
I've recently got a new big hard drive and want to start learning about video capturing, editing and processing, and then making dvds of my home clips.
Before i start i want to make sure that my pc is in the best state to do all this work, and the first step is partitioning the 2 drives i have. When i got my new hard drive (diamondmax10, 250gb, 16mb cache, ata133) i immediately plugged it in and loaded windows on it and relegated my old ibm desktar 40gb to a storage drive. I'm now thinking this was a mistake and i might be better installing windows on the smaller older drive and then leave the larger newer drive as storage.

Is it best to have the place where you are capturing to, on a different disk to the one windows and your capturing program is installed to ?

Also what about a seperate partition for the swap file ? I've seen reports that for optimum performance you should have a swap file partition on every physical disk, is this true ?
Will it be ok to have a swap file partition on the large new hard drive where the video is being captured to ?
If so should the first partition be the swap file partition or should i put the swap file after the video partition ?
Hope i've explained that ok - basically i have a 5 yr old 40 gb ibm desktar, and a new maxtor diamondmax 10, 250gb 16bm cache, ata133.

p.s. at the moment i don't have the facility for setting up raid or sata disks - thats for a future upgrade

[gadgetguy]

IMHO it was a mistake. Put Windows and program files on the 40gb and leave the 250gb for video/documents. It is better to capture to a drive separate from Windows and on separate IDE busses too. In general what you've heard about swap files is true, so that the OS can utilyze a different drive then the one it's currently working with for swap, but I would not put a swap file on the capture drive. You want to avoid as much as possible any OS operations on the capture drive. And a separate partition doesn't gain you anything because it's the physical operations you're trying to avoid.
Personally, I've never understood the desire to partitioning a large drive, if you don't have to for OS/Filesystem restrictions.

IMO you don't need SATA or RAID to have a full functioning video editing machine.

[jjbtnc]

As soon as i did it i thought 'mistake' you're better off capturing to a drive that the os and capturing program aren't running from = my new drive therefore install windows etc on the other drive.
I haven't installed anything yet apart from xp, just checking the hard drive works, so it's not a problem and it's why i'm checking for the perfect setup before i start installing everything.

just got to sort out the swap files, like you my gut reaction is to not put it on the same drive that is capturing or working with video. But if i wasn't messing with video and just using it as storage then i would have the swap file on that drive.