Q: I have a Seagate 120GB HDD that I was looking to install Windows XP SP1a fast, a good way to optimally partition the disk?
I looked upon this way:
c: (boot-8-10GB)
d: (apps-20-25GB)
rd (storage space remaining)
Would to do the trick?
Ill also installing a Promise RAID card with 8MB cache Maxtor 2×80gb on the machine. 0.
Anything I might have missed or could improve?
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Re:My program files is 1gig, and I'm very tidy with uninstalling things I no longer use (comes from being used to my old 2.1 gb drive on previous machine, and still only have a 40gb). But my games' installs probably average 1gb each. Still, even 1 or 2 gb of Program Files would be annoying if you ghost onto CDs.
ps. guy, 3gig should be ample for just a XP install (assuming you're shifting My Documents off it), maybe 4 or 5gb if you want to ensure plenty of space for swapfile or whatever, and arent likely to be fighting for every last mb anyway. Better to have a gig too much space than 1mb too little 
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Re:>> "I think its because its fairly simple organisation and you can make a ghost of your OS partition and keep the filesize down. "
I use Ghost myself but in all honesty I still can't see much of an advantage unless you have gigabytes worth of apps installed. My main XP partition is 4gb and on there sits XP (duuh), Office 2003, Photoshop, Paint Shop, an absolute STACK of DVD, encoding and authoring software, AV, audio software and I still have over a gig free. Backing up with Ghost takes about five minutes!
Man you guys must be on app city!
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Re:I believe that my partition system works best for my situation… Maybe it'll work for you, too.
Firstly, I own the latest version of Partition Magic. Quite a great piece of software, and I highly recommend it to anybody who ever needs to image their drives…
I own two drives: one 80gig, and one 120gig.
The first drive (my 80 gig, which is also the primary drive) houses two separate partitions.
Partition One: approx 30gigs – Windows XP installation and all the software installed on my system
Partition Two: approx 50gigs (less, of course) – Misc Data…everything "miscellaneous" which I want to dump on my HD 
My second, 120gig drive, houses my *data* (the stuff I'd cry if my drive ever died )
Partition One: 100gigs – All of my data (music, MS money files, downloads, eMails, chats, PGP keys, some CD images I often use and mount, etc.)
Partition Two: Houses my Windows XP image (from partition one on the first drive). If I ever have a problem with windows, I pop in the DI7 CD, and bam…reload the partition in about 10 minutes…
I have the images for Windows XP on a different drive b/c it works wayyyyy faster when restoring and creating an image if they're on separate drives.
Hope that helps
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Re:guy, I think its because its fairly simple organisation and you can make a ghost of your OS partition and keep the filesize down.
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Re:I keep my OS and apps on the same (small) partition. I see no advantage in keeping apps seperate to the OS. If your OS gets hosed you need to reinstall the apps anyway.
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Re:Originally posted by: guy
I do only one partition per drive. If you've ever had an extended partition mysteriously disappear taking all your data with it, you'll understand why.
Well, there's no reason to use an extended partition if you don't need more than four partitions. Unfortunately, Windows has a strange habit of deciding to use an extension even when it's not necessary. I've also had an irritating experience or two with Windows and extended/logical partitions, so I just do any partitioning with linux fdisk, Ranish, or PM if I need to.
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Re:Text (http://www.fox302.com/index.pl?s=vf&user=guy&category=temp&file=partitions.jpg)
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Re:I do only one partition per drive. If you've ever had an extended partition mysteriously disappear taking all your data with it, you'll understand why.
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Re:what i typically do is partition into 2 sections. the c: (root system drive) i leave 20 gigs to install apps and such and have a d: drive of the balance for games, porn, music, pics and other stuff. dont short yourself space on the boot drive or your system will slow to a crawl if getting under 500 megs of usable space on the system drive.
Re:There are a 1000 ways you can do it, it's all personall preference. Your system would work except I don't see a reason to separate the apps and data. You can always reinstall a corrupted application relatively easily (versus the OS which takes forever). The way I have my computer setup:
C: Setup as a 2-3 GB partition. You want it to have enough room for patches and updates.
D: Everything else here. Make an image of your C: drive once you have the OS and apps installed. That way, if your OS is corrupted, you can just reimage it which gets your OS and registry settings back, and your apps and saved data is not affected. I then make backups of my data periodically onto CDRW. I am still waiting for the price of DVD media to come down.
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