Organizing HDD

Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2004 10:11 pm

Heya, needs some helps and suggestions here.. but sorry for the too much typo Wink

Ok, i bought a new Western Digital 250GB hard disk drive with 7200rpm, 8MB buffer, recently. And i can't figure what's the best way to organize this drive and my files.

I've already made 3 partitions for this drive. 2 of them (primary partition type) are about 20GB each and the other one is about 500MB (i think this one is logical type) which is for linux swap, since i already installed linux Mandrake on one of that 20GB. The other 20GB is still unformated however and i think, i'm reserving this partition for windows. And the rest of the drive (which is about 190GB) are still unallocated. Windows XP is still running from the older 60GB drive.

On that 60GB, i made 4 partitions. The first is about 10GB for the system (windows XP). The second, about 20GB for program files and downloaded stuff. The third, also about 20GB, for my music and video files (mostly entertainment stuff). And the last one about 10GB for My Documents and my work files. This drive is almost full. With only 1% or 0% of free space. And stuff aren't anymore organize to their partition as i mentioned above.

So, with the new and larger drive, i think things should be more organize. Aside from the OS's partitions, i'll need one partition for Program Files (where i installed most of the programs and games. mostly games installation take lots of space). One for video files (which is always big in size). One for music files. One for manga editing since i keep the raws and PSDs. One for My Documents where i could store my pics, other works, tutorials and such. One for downloaded stuff. One for downloaded manga (this is really important and it grows fast :p). Maybe one for anime or temporary partition to store anime before i could burn them to cd.

That's it. At least 8 more partitions i could think of. But i can't figure how big should they be. Do you think it's a good idea to make lots of partitions? And should i just format them in NTFS or FAT32 is better since i can mount them and they're writtable in linux? Or just make another partition of FAT32 to share files between the two OS? Are the 20GB for windows and linux are too much? What do you think? How you organize your drive and files? Any help would be really appreciated.

p/s: thanks for at least reading to the end Wink

Fan Boy Joined: 19 Nov 2003 Posts: 40

you shouldn't really need that much for your OSes if you are apps\docs elsewhere. Windws itself shouldn't really get beyond 3gb. My windows partition is only 5gb on my system and I'm only using about half of that right now, and linux root should use even less than that. However, if you do pull down you windows partition to 5gb or below, you may want to make sure to change the program files environment varible to whatever your apps partition is, just so apps with bad installers don't get the best of you. Also, for ideally you should stick your windows swap file onto that second harddrive. This should speed up windows a little bit since it won't be trying to access the sawp file and system files at the same time on the same drive.

I can't really say to much about the other partitions, because you know a lot more about hwo you'll end up using them than I do. Just keep in mind that whatever you decide on, particularly with the vid, manga, mp3 partitions, you'll inevitably come up short, so paln for bigger than you think you'll need. You can always uninstall an app you are not using, or get rid of a game you don't play too much, but you can easily amass large amounts of files quicker than you realize, and it's a pain in the butt to resize partitions later.

Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2004 1:01 am

that somehow helps. thanks manadren. btw, how to change the program files environment variable? just add another variable of "Program Files" in the environment variable or need to do with registry?

Fan Boy Joined: 19 Nov 2003 Posts: 40

Well the easiest way to change it would be to get TweakUI [not to be confused with the hordes of other comercial tweak programs]. There's a new version for Windows XP SP1 and windows 2k3 which you can get here . I assume that's the one you want, but if not you can get the old version here
I haven't seen the new version because I use 2k, but you'll probably find the Program Files dir under "Special Folders" or something like that.

Otherwise you will have to do some registry editing. You should find the 'ProgramFilesDir' key under:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion

Just edit that key and stick in the new directroy. I'd go for TweakUI though, it's safer, and if you don't have it already, trust me this is a little program that you'll want to have.