How should I partition my two Maxtor 160Gb drives

JLamyJLamy UK
edited October 2003 in Hardware
Hi people.
Just bought myself 2 Maxtor 160GB S-ATA HD's based on advice given on this forum :). At present I intend to partition the drives as follows:
Drive 1:
P1 - Windows 98SE (8GB, FAT32)
P2 - Windows XP Pro (12GB, NTFS 4k cluster)
P3 - Windows 2000 Pro (10GB, NTFS 4K cluster)
P4 - Misc data for my files (remaining 130GB, 4k cluster, NTFS or FAT32 I not not sure yet)

Drive 2:
P1 - Windows 98SE swap file only (1.3GB, FAT32)
P2 - Windows XP swap file only (1.5GB, NTFS, 4k cluster)
P3 - Windows 2000 swap file only (1.5GB, NTFS, 4k cluster)
P4 - Temp folder & web broswer cache folder for all OS's (2GB, FAT32, 2K cluster)
P5 - Misc data for my files (remaining 125GB, 4k cluster, NTFS or FAT32 i not sire yet)

What do you think?
Any suggestions to improve disk speed more?
Are my swap file sizes ideal or not?
Am I putting too much stuff on Drive2 P4?
Are Asaka silver SATA data cables any different to the ones bundled in Abit mobo's?

System specs:
AMD Athlon XP 2800+ CPU
Abit NF7-S v2.0 mobo
Corsair XMS 3200 low latencey TwinX (2x 512MB sticks) memory
Gainward GeForce4 Ti4400 AGP graphics
2 x Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 160GB SATA hard disks
16x DVD ROM drive
16x CD writer

All suggestions welcome.
Thanks in advance.

Comments

  • R4CK3RR4CK3R Oklahoma
    edited October 2003
    hmm.. You have a gig of system memory and you need over another gigz worth of swap...
    I guess if U have the extra storage, why not use it! :D

    Also, keep in mind that win9x can't read NTFS so U would have to make P4/P5 fat to have 98 store to it.
  • edited October 2003
    But, won't he have problems with 98 trying to operate with over 512 megs of ram? Doesn't it have a problem with more or do the patches I've heard of really work. I used to dual boot 98 and XP but gave up for this very reason.

    Just a thought...................................

    S!
  • gtghmgtghm New
    edited October 2003
    Originally posted by JLamy
    Hi people.
    Just bought myself 2 Maxtor 160GB S-ATA HD's based on advice given on this forum :). At present I intend to partition the drives as follows:
    Drive 1:
    P1 - Windows 98SE (8GB, FAT32)
    P2 - Windows XP Pro (12GB, NTFS 4k cluster)
    P3 - Windows 2000 Pro (10GB, NTFS 4K cluster)
    P4 - Misc data for my files (remaining 130GB, 4k cluster, NTFS or FAT32 I not not sure yet)

    Drive 2:
    P1 - Windows 98SE swap file only (1.3GB, FAT32)
    P2 - Windows XP swap file only (1.5GB, NTFS, 4k cluster)
    P3 - Windows 2000 swap file only (1.5GB, NTFS, 4k cluster)
    P4 - Temp folder & web broswer cache folder for all OS's (2GB, FAT32, 2K cluster)
    P5 - Misc data for my files (remaining 125GB, 4k cluster, NTFS or FAT32 i not sire yet)

    What do you think?
    Any suggestions to improve disk speed more?
    Are my swap file sizes ideal or not?
    Am I putting too much stuff on Drive2 P4?
    Are Asaka silver SATA data cables any different to the ones bundled in Abit mobo's?

    System specs:
    AMD Athlon XP 2800+ CPU
    Abit NF7-S v2.0 mobo
    Corsair XMS 3200 low latencey TwinX (2x 512MB sticks) memory
    Gainward GeForce4 Ti4400 AGP graphics
    2 x Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 160GB SATA hard disks
    16x DVD ROM drive
    16x CD writer

    All suggestions welcome.
    Thanks in advance.


    My thoughts...,
    Must be a bench tester or something...? Xp Pro and 2000 Pro are basicly the same except that XP pro is more stable and more well rounded. If you have both XP Pro and 2000 Pro then I can't imagine why you'd ever want to run 98SE... Maybe for old dos stuff I guess...

    That being said, The main thing that I saw was the swap file partition for XP Pro. Putting the swap file on a different partition/drive for XP may actualy slow it down. The XP swap file is completely intergrated with the OS and really needs to be on the same partition as the OS. There used to be some speed differences with earlier OS's like 98 but it all changed in XP.

    If you really want speed then raid 0 the two 160's together that would really get you going...
    you would still get the 320gig of HD space but at almost twice the through put of single drives...

    I don't know what your intentions are with your rig... if you were looking to just get the most out of your system and do regular computing/gameing on it then with the 1gb of memory and 320gb of plus9 maxtor HD space I'd say that your way above the curve already... I would say, just pick an OS either 2K pro or XP pro (my choice) either raid 0 the 2 maxtors..., or not, use NTFS for the whole file format and have a nice day...

    At any rate, the swap file for XP Pro should go on the same partition as the OS.

    "g"
  • JLamyJLamy UK
    edited October 2003
    Thanks for comments.

    Does Win98 have problems with working with oiver 512MB RAM? I hardly use Win98 nowadays. Its just there in case I need to run any old software that wont run on 2000/XP. And also I thought that running games in Win98 would be faster than 2000/XP, or is this not the case any more?

    No I am not a bench tester. Just general user who likes PC performance and games, hence my methods of trying to make system faster.

    Is having a RAID 0 setup be as reliable as just a single drive setup? Kinda tempted to RAID the drives now.

    Thanks 'gtghm' for point regarding XP swap file. I didnt realise it could slow it down as if it were on its own partition then it wont get fragmented right? Also should I manually set a swap file size or just leave it on automatic?

    Thanks in advance.
  • gtghmgtghm New
    edited October 2003
    Originally posted by JLamy
    Thanks for comments.

    Does Win98 have problems with working with oiver 512MB RAM? I hardly use Win98 nowadays. Its just there in case I need to run any old software that wont run on 2000/XP. And also I thought that running games in Win98 would be faster than 2000/XP, or is this not the case any more?

    No I am not a bench tester. Just general user who likes PC performance and games, hence my methods of trying to make system faster.

    Is having a RAID 0 setup be as reliable as just a single drive setup? Kinda tempted to RAID the drives now.

    Thanks 'gtghm' for point regarding XP swap file. I didnt realise it could slow it down as if it were on its own partition then it wont get fragmented right? Also should I manually set a swap file size or just leave it on automatic?

    Thanks in advance.

    As far as I know there were issues with running over 512 on 98SE, but there are, I beleive, work arounds although I don't know what they are. And I think that it was when you get beyond the 768meg mark that the problems begin.

    As for the software, it is your call on the 2K/XP vs 98SE thing, I know that I used to have several programs that were old DOS oriented stuff but I have since moved on and don't mis them at all.
    I don't know what those programs are only you would know.
    I do know that XP does a better job running older software and there is a "compatibility" mode that can be set in XP that allows whatever program that is trying to run think that XP is instead the OS that it needs to run on and not XP.

    Unless you have a ton of expensive software to up grade that are DOS baised or a favorite game then I'd bag the 98/DOS thing and look to newer or new versions of programs that you need that will run on XP/2K. While DOS was a decient language XP/NT format is really far superior. For one thing you can use NTFS for your file format and never have to scann disk again... yea....

    Also with the implementation of DirectX 8 and now version 9 XP has shown to be the faster platform to game on.... It does a better job than 2K now also, but from my experience 2K has always sucked to game on anyhow...

    I would like to point out that XP has been out for over 2 years now... :grin, and all of the problems that were there at launch time have now been pretty much addressed for the most part.
    Even hard core diyed in the wool 2K fans have started to recognize that XP Pro is the better more robust OS... The 2 OS's are vertualy identical. In fact with a little tweaking you can make XP Pro look exactly like 2K Pro.
    The file system is the same and both are built on the NT5 (I think might be NT4) kernel which has shown to be the most stable MS has ever released in my opinion...
    For example I have been runing the same install of XP Pro on my rig for over a year now and it is as fast as it ever was. I did have one slight issue with a trojan (my fault) but that was eaisly rectified through an XP repair. The repair was much like the old 98SE repair but this time it actually worked well. I did have to reinstall a couple of drivers because the repair rolled them back but all is good now... I can't say that about 98 thats for sure... 98SE repair sucked, you were better off format and reintalling if something went wrong...
    With XP thats all changed now. Except for the bug I cought I have seen no reason to ever reinstall the OS and start over.
    Over the last year and a half that my install has been I haven't noticed any blooting of the OS as long as I keep it clean via empting the trash bin and clearing out temp files and such... My install has worked just like it did the day I loaded it, infact its actualy better now in some ways, since I have all the updates installed...
    Yes, I have become an XP fan boy... but you should know that I wasn't to start with... A month after launch a friend suggested XP, so I bought it, at the time my system was an older P3 and the install of XP sucked so bad and nothing worked that I got a refund from MS and sent my XP disk back to them...
    After that XP put in compatibility mode and 4 months later I was building a new rig and XP Pro was cheap with the purchase of a hard drive so I tried it... I'm glad I did I will never go back to anything lesser.

    Raid 0..., humm well you will would see a speed increase but there is a risk... Raid 0 is good as long as the array never gets broken... I have heard of it happening but usualy not that often.
    I guess you have to ask youself if its right for you. By themselves the drives you have are fast and prolly fast enough that you wouldn't see much of a difference in over all gaming... The games may load faster but the actual play would not change.... If you do graphics or video editing things like that then the risk might be worth it... I have a raid 0 my self just because it makes me feel good to know that its the fastest thing that I can run... But I also do photo and AutoCad stuff too and I also have a back up solution. By the way XP has a pretty good built in back up as part of the OS... But I use Drive Image on a regular basis so If something ever did go wrong I could go back and reload and maybe only loose a few days...
    But I also have a single hard drive that is large enough to put my whole array on too... Currently I have 2-100gb WDJB drives in raid 0 that are backed up onto a single 250gb WDJB drive so I don't ever worry about losing my data... Thus I feel safe with raid 0...

    If you are going to run a gig of memory then I would let XP run the swap file... Also I would not limit the XP partition to below 20gb I found that 30gb seems to be the best. The reason is that no matter what you do XP and the software that you load up will always look to put something on the fricken C: drive... Its something that I have struggled with and I'm sure that some gru has figured out how to make XP play nicely on another partitoin/drive than c: but the fact of the matter is that XP is hell bent on putting something on c:... I did as you did, dual boot with 98SE I had XP on the d: drive and it still put things on the c drive with 98... If you install most programs it seems that the programs will want to always put something on the c: in system or system32 so you need to make sure that the OS can grow... I tried 15gb at first and it ended up out growing it.... I've been at 30 for some 6 months now and it appears to have stableized size wise...
    Also because the way XP works you will want to allow it to have as much scratch disk space as the OS needs... becides limiting it, you will find that you would limit your ability to multi-task as once the limitation is met XP will tell you and not allow you to run anything more untill you end or close something...
    My experience is to just let the OS decide... I can point you to a place that you can do some research on the XP and the paging file if you like or you could go to 2cpu.com and do a search on page file, there is a chap there that goes by jeh that seems to be very "up" on the whole thing...

    Hope this helps... If you do raid 0 then I know that there are plenty of qualified folks here to help if you need it, especialy tex...

    Cheers,
    "g"
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited October 2003
    JLamy

    g makes a lot of very valid points! I would actually consider not even having a swap file if running 1 gig of memory (just a thought). It would be much faster than anything else you could do because the access time is just not even comparable. Even though it is recomended to have a swap file 1 - 1.5 times the amount of physical memory, that is basically old school. Since people are now using larger amouts of RAM the old formula is going out the window. I have 512 MB of RAM on my system with 1280 MB swap file size and the most I have ever used from my swap file is 408 MB. I use MS Word and Excell, Photoshop and game on my system so that is a pretty fair test.

    I would do RAID-0 and if you have another drive say 40 GB or so use it for a "Back-Up" of your OS (I would only run either 2K or XP)
    As a matter of fact you could set up your OS on the spare drive (connected on a regular IDE) and the set-up your RAID-0 array from there. The RAID-0 should have 16 or 32k stripe size and be formatted with a 8 or 16k cluster size. This way you can make certain your array is functioning properly before installing Windows. If you have Ghost you can even Ghost your complete OS to the new RAID array after it is set and you are happy with the way it performs. Then use the remaining space on the spare drive in a separate partition to save things you want to back-up. I would use 20 to 30 Gig for OS, apps and all else to go on that partition. Next make a 10 Gig partition for Temp, Temp Internet and move "My Documents" to this partition. By doing this and not having a swap file you will almost never need to defrag. A RAID-0 needs to be less tha 3% fragmented for good operation. Then partition the rest as you want for storage. Just remember that if you store something on RAID-0 and you care about it you must back it up!
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited October 2003
    It does not matter how much memory you have... you need a swap file. It has to do with recovery and errors on booting etc... You need a swapfile for it to be able to boot at all when it craps out at times guys. You can tweak the OS to favor not paging and to not page the kernal and stuff but getting rid of the swap entirely is not a good idea in general. There are tons of other tweaks that pay off more then eliminateing the swap entirely. make it small and fix the size if you want but don't eliminate it.

    Tex

  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited October 2003
    Hi Tex,

    It's about time you show up. (grin)

    Then would you recomend he just set a fixed swap and keep it within the OS or move it to a spare drive if he opts to have one. And I know you Do recomen he has a spare drive if he goes RAID-0.

    BTW
    Keep in touch bud! ;)
  • JLamyJLamy UK
    edited October 2003
    Thanks Tex and G.
    I think I will ditch Win98 althogether if it wont run on a gig of RAM.

    So from advice, shall I install XP on C drive with partition of about 30GB which will hold swap file and programs?

    What if i want to dual boot 2000 and XP in future? Will there ever be a need to run 2 similar OS's?

    Will RAID 0 make Windows load faster? I know that just this one reason isnt enough to go RAID. I dont do much editing, sometimes I edit WAV files if I am making a music CD. I would like RAID, but if it craps out all the time dont think I have the paitience to reload everything. Havnt got a spare drive to backup RAID array (would need 300GB HD at least).
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited October 2003
    Here is an option since it does not seem like RAID-0 is currently the way to go. This is very similat to what I am doing. Make a 2 GB partition first on each drive, then put a 10 GB partition next on each. And you will divide the rest as you wish for storage. All partitions will be default cluster size NTFS. You will install 2K on the 10GB partition of one drive and all drivers OS apps will be installed here. You will create a partition after this for temps, temp internet my docs and all non windows programs here. Then install XP on the 10 GB partition of the other disc. Now you will put a fixed size swap file for each on the opposite drive (do not exceed 75% of the size of the partition). This way the swap file for each OS is on the opposite drive and you will have one place for all yopur constantly changing files. Defragging the OS will almost be a thing of the past. If you wnt or need the extra partitions as you are only allowed 4 primary NTFS partitions per disc you could skip the separate swap files and just make them fixed within the OS.
  • JLamyJLamy UK
    edited October 2003
    This way the swap file for each OS is on the opposite drive and you will have one place for all yopur constantly changing files. Defragging the OS will almost be a thing of the past.

    I am not quite sure what you mean by this sentence. What constantly changing files? Will they be in just 1 place?
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited October 2003
    Sorry to mix two different things as well as not clarifying.

    Since each OS is on it's own HD you would have the swap file for each on the opposite HD on the first partition to maximize the efficiency of the set-up.

    I was referring to your temp files, temp internet files and 'my documents' as 'constantly changing files' since they are almost always changing. The less files that are constantly changing on a partition makes it need to be defragged less. Therefore, with the biggest culprits out of the way you will not need to defrag the OS as often and it will be easier to keep it healthy.
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited October 2003
    HDD 0

    1. swap for XP
    2. Win 2K OS and apps
    3. non-Windows programs/ temp, temp internet, my documents,etc.
    4. Files


    HDD 1

    1. swap for win 2K
    2. XP OS and apps
    3. Files
    4. Files
  • gtghmgtghm New
    edited October 2003
    Don't make a seperate drive for the swap file for XP. :grin
    Just let XP run as it was ment to be...
    That is the point that I was trying to make before.
    Moving the swap file to something other than the drive that the OS is on can slow things down.
    As even Tex stated that is old school thinking... XP has changed all of that...
    In fact the swap file that XP uses is not the same as the swap file on the other OS's... The XP swap file is completely integrated with the whole OS all of the time.
    It keeps track of every file that XP uses and where it is stored on the system... Moving it to a seperate partiton or drive will mean that it has to go cross partition and drives to maintain its self...
    Becides that if you make a limit on the swap file like 2gb then that time when the OS needs to expand further it will run out of space and then span itself across your other drives anyway, I'm sure thats going to be a performance hit...

    Really from my experience, if you use XP, unless you really need to have partitions instead of directories then just go ahead and partition the drive, but the whole partition thing is actually gone bye bye too... I see no reason not to just have 2 big drives in NTFS... Heck even if you have to insist, :grin, in running 2K also at 160gb each they both could have their own drives...

    The only real reason that partitions were necessary was becasue of the file format limitations but with NTFS and XP all supporting drive partitions above 1 tearabit (I think, it might be more, but its definately more than the drives you have...) you really don't need to partition anything any more...
    For all intence in pourposes a partition now days is nothing more than a physical directory... Also keep in mind that the disk cache works better on the whole disk, as it was designed to do, than it does in a partition situation...

    Just my thought,
    "g"
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited October 2003
    gtghm: And I disagree with you about partitons but I don't go crazy like some folks do with chopping a drive into all kinds of small pieces eiother. I always have a seperate partiton for my users files. I move most of the application files, documents and such to a differant partition and I move the internet temp files and windows temp files also to a partition of their own just for keeping the OS partition from needing defragged all the time. The stuff that changes and is addedf and deleted is then kept in its own partitions and I defrag those smaller partitons much more often.

    Its more a way to make my house keeping easier and keeps the OS running faster without having to jack with it all the time. Once you get setup this way and your apps loaded the OS partititon doesn't get that much written to it in general and it doesn't become fragmented nearly as fast. In his case he would have 320gb in one partiton with two 160's in raid and it would take friggin forever to defrag that sucker.

    I've also hosed a partiton (usually the OS one) so bad that it couldn't be read and with everything in one partiton it would all be gone. I usually don't hose a whole drive but rather one partition usually goes south when I do this.

    For a lot of guys that would be freak out and start crying time.

    Tex
Sign In or Register to comment.