Need Advice Partitioning New Comp

[videocheez]

Tomorrow, my new Dell Precision Laptop is arriving with XP Pro Loaded and a Disk to Upgrade to Vista Business. I have never partitioned a hardrive before so I wanted to see if anyone had some advice for me. The hardrive is 160GB. Can I make a 20GB or maybe a 40GB portion that contains the OS and programs? In there an advantage to do doing this? will it run more efficiently. Any Advice will be appreciated.

Thx in advance,

VC

[Nelson37]

Yes you can, but no it won't.

There is an advantage to OS and Data on seperate physical drives, on seperate channels, to maximize available bandwidth and performance. Seperate partitions on a single drive do not accomplish these goals. The only real advantage is organizational, basically a higher-level directory.

Experience dictates that partition structures should be kept as simple as possible, and only messed with when extremely necessary. One of the fastest ways to lose an entire drive is for the partition structure to have a major corruption. More complex partitions are more likely to suffer this problem.

The Vista disk is excellent when used as a coaster to protect your coffee table.

[Soopafresh]

The Vista disk is excellent when used as a coaster to protect your coffee table.

[creakndale]

Although it's best to have 2 physical disks, I would partition the one physical disk with 40G as OS and Programs and the rest as Data. Once you have the OS and programs loaded, configured and optimized as you like, use a hard disk imager like Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost to make an image file of C: storing it on the D: partition (and also onto a blank DVD, if it will fit). This way you can quickly recover to a pristine image if you ever want/need to. I also turn off System Restore and rely on the disk image if something goes wrong.

My personel preference is to map the "My Documents" folder onto the D: partition. When it's time to make a backup, make sure to copy your Bookmarks, Address Book and Emails over to the D: partition. Then backup D: to an external hard disk and/or DVD's.

[videocheez]

Thanks guys for the info. and advice.

[Ethlred]

I second the advice to have a smaller boot partition. The idea here is to have ONLY the OS and programs on the boot partition. Keep the data, including the Documents folder, on another partition. This way when or if things go south you can redo the boot partition without loosing your data.

For instance viruses or spyware. Now if you back up frequently this isn't as important but few do. Also even if you back up every single day you could have problems between backups depending on how much exposure to malware you have.

Also this makes it easier to do backups. Image the boot partition and use conventional file back up methods for the data. You won't have to image anywhere near as often as you should back up your data. With a large external drive you should be able to keep more than one image giving you the option of how far back you want to go should the need arise. Somewhat like keeping more than one version of a document.

Unfortunately I haven't figured out how to move the Documents and Settings folder as opposed to just your Documents folder(I HATE that My Documents crap, I rename it every time). A sync utility will take of this by keeping a copy on both partitions.