Hard Disk Partitioning win WinXP

[John Smiths]

Hey all, have just bought a new laptop which arrived today (see this post).

I am going to install Win XP Pro and wanted to know what size i should partition my HDD up so that on one partition (a smaller one) i have win xp and on the larger partition i have everything else. What do people think??

BTW the HDD is 60GB...

Cheers for any help

[Neil]

I would personally make the C drive 10 gig.

[Nemesis]

Originally Posted by Neil

I would personally make the C drive 10 gig.

Yep agree with that ..

[Richard M]

I agree with Neil, 10GB for Windows and the rest for your programs, games and documents etc.
If you can though, try adding another small partition (D:) which you can put the swap file on and nothing else.
This way, your virtual memory will never become fragmented and always be very fast, a partition of 1GB is the max size that you'd want to do this.

So then you'd have:

C: WinXP (10GB)
D: Swap (1GB)
E: Programs (the rest)

[John Smiths]

how do u set up a swap disk??

[Neil]

Originally Posted by John Smiths

how do u set up a swap disk??

Just set up the partitions as Richard has suggested above, then install XP on C & then you can change location of your swap file by right clicking My Computer, select 'Properties', click 'Advanced' then 'Settings' (in the 'performance' settings tab), then 'Advanced', then click 'change' at the bottom of that pane.

HTH.

[Xaccers]

Originally Posted by Richard M

I agree with Neil, 10GB for Windows and the rest for your programs, games and documents etc.
If you can though, try adding another small partition (D which you can put the swap file on and nothing else.
This way, your virtual memory will never become fragmented and always be very fast, a partition of 1GB is the max size that you'd want to do this.

So then you'd have:

C: WinXP (10GB)
D: Swap (1GB)
E: Programs (the rest)

No point putting you swap file in a different patition. It gives you no benifit if you only have one hard drive (ie a laptop).
If you have a second hard drive in your PC you can improve things by moving your swap file off your primary hard drive.

The only reason these days to partition, is to give yourself a data partition, os if you have to format XP, you don't lose your data.
Of course you get fun and games if you keep forgetting to install programs into D:\Program files\ as C: will rapidly run low on disk space.

[Richard M]

Originally Posted by Xaccers

No point putting you swap file in a different patition. It gives you no benifit if you only have one hard drive (ie a laptop).

The whole point of having a separate partition for the swap file (just as Linux does) is to avoid fragmentation of it which can slow the system down.

Originally Posted by Xaccers

If you have a second hard drive in your PC you can improve things by moving your swap file off your primary hard drive.

Very true, I use both of the methods mentioned here which gives me excellent performance.

Anyway, back to the original poster - if you don't know what a swap file does, just leave it alone.

[rdhw]

Originally Posted by Richard M

If you can though, try adding another small partition (D which you can put the swap file on and nothing else.

This sounds to me like a terrible idea, though I must be the first to admit that my understanding of Windows virtual memory is not complete. But to the extent that I do understand it (as it works in NT, 2k, and XP), then one should enable virtual memory and a swap file on every partition which holds programs or data files. The reason for this is that when a file (or program) is opened, it can be "mapped" into virtual memory in situ, without any copying. If virtual memeory is not active on the partition in which the file (or program) resides, then that file (or program) must be first copied into the swap file of another partition. I'll check for more info on this.

[John Smiths]

I kinda understand the swap parition stuff, although i must admit i first came across it when i installed linux.


I will def. use a seperate partition for WinXP, but you guys seem to be unsure as to whether i should use a seperate swap partition....so what should i do...?

[SOSAGES]

just make a 10-15 gig boot drive and have the rest for games and mp3s or what ever takes ya fancy just make sure that if u make it 10gig u install any games to your D drive just install your normal apps to C: such as office anti virus and firewalls etc you can do all this in the xp setup have fun

[Richard M]

Originally Posted by rdhw

This sounds to me like a terrible idea, though I must be the first to admit that my understanding of Windows virtual memory is not complete. But to the extent that I do understand it (as it works in NT, 2k, and XP), then one should enable virtual memory and a swap file on every partition which holds programs or data files. The reason for this is that when a file (or program) is opened, it can be "mapped" into virtual memory in situ, without any copying. If virtual memeory is not active on the partition in which the file (or program) resides, then that file (or program) must be first copied into the swap file of another partition. I'll check for more info on this.

Every partition?
I can understand why but I was always told to just use one as in Linux.

[altis]

The swap file allows windows to swap (transparently to the running program) disk space for memory. Programs not only grab memory to run in but also as workspace. If the swap file were just a disk cache there would never be any benefit.

There can only be one swap file - it's called win386.swp.

[philip.j.fry]

Originally Posted by John Smiths

I kinda understand the swap parition stuff, although i must admit i first came across it when i installed linux.


I will def. use a seperate partition for WinXP, but you guys seem to be unsure as to whether i should use a seperate swap partition....so what should i do...?

Definately put it on its own partition, you've got nothing to lose by doing it and probably performance gains

From what I've read, the best swap file set-up is to split the swap file (not possible in windows?) across all of the disks and make sure that they are located on the outside track of the disks.

[rdhw]

Originally Posted by altis

There can only be one swap file - it's called win386.swp.

That was the case with Win9x/ME. With NT-based systems such as 2000, XP, 2003, the swap file is called pagefile.sys and there can be one per disk partition.

There is an article on optimising XP's virtual memory performance at http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsXP/e...s/03june16.asp, which includes having multiple pagefiles on multiple hard disks (though not for the reason I mentioned above).