How to partition?

[tonymac]

Have Deskstar 120gxp 60 gig. I want to partition the drive for video capture. Does the first partition occupy the fastest part of the drive? If so would it be better to make 3 partitions, i.e. a small one just for operating system, a large one for capture, then a third for applications and so on?
Or do the extra partitions slow the drive performance?

[SLK001]

Actually, a partition can give slightly better performance (disk read arm is constrained only to the partition - no more end-to-end searches). If you can, put a second drive in your system. This will help you speed things up when you are modifying the captures. Perform an operation and point the destination to the other drive (then back again on the next operation). This prevents the head on the single drive from having to do both the read and the write. One reads, the other writes. Speeds up things (disk access things) by about 30%.

[Sefy]

If you want to partition your drive without losing any data, I suggest you get your hands on Partition Magic 7.0 (especialy if you got XP), and it can resize, create or merge partitions without losing data.

[D_Knife]

The only thing I am having trouble with in XP is I have not found a defragmenter that will consolidate my free space, it defrags it fine but will leave gaps of free space.
I have tried built in XP defrag, diskeeper ( a pro verison of XP's builtin) and O&oO Defrag pro, and none of them specificlly consolidate space Does anybody know of a defrager that will provide this feature?

[q1aqza]

Follow this link, a fantastic guide on partitioning a drive.

http://fdisk.radified.com/