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Should I get my new laptop with hard drive partitioned?
Carol Haynes:
Drive letters are assigned somewhat differently.
It really depends how you set up the partitions. If you have a primary partition on both drives followed by an extended partition with logical drives inside windows usually assigns:
Drive1: C: (primary) E: F: .... (logical)
Drive2: D: (primary) G: ... (logical or where ever you got to in the extended partition on drive 1).
There is a simple way around this ...
From empty drives when you install Windows from the first time:
1) Create an active partition on drive 1 for Windows to install into (set the size you want).
2) Install Windows
From within Windows create the other partitions as you want them (you can use the Disk Management tool in the management centre - START > RUN > diskmgmt.msc
When you create a partition in the disk management bit you can select the drive letter. Just right click on the new partition and choose "Change Drive letter and Paths ...". You will get a warning that it will potentially screw up your system but you can ignore that since the partition is empty. You can also do this for other drives - CD/DVD, multimedia etc. The only drive letter you can't change is the one assigned to the Windows installation.
If you do this immediately after installing windows you should have no problems. The one exception is if at some point in the future Windows asks you to install your installation disc (driver installation, additional programs or to fix a corrupted file) it will expect you to use the CD/DVD in the same drive letter it used during installation. Easily solved though as you can select an alternative drive.
By the way if you want to put all the temp files with PageFile.sys in the first partition on drive 2 I suggest you use a fixed size page file.
Note it is also worth keeping a page file on C: of at least 64Mb - that way if you get BSODS in the future the errors will be logged in the system event logs. If you don't have that small page file available Windows can't save Crash Dumps at all and there will be no error messages in the logs to help with trouble shooting. Again make it fixed size.
Once you have set up your system use something like Perfect Disk to do a boot time defrag so that your C: and page file drives are optimized.
Shades:
Most laptops only have one harddisk inside. When we take this into account and only Windows will run on it, make three partitions.
The separation is as follows:
1. a swap partition
2. a system partition
3. a data partition
Unfortunately, my method requires a total re-installation from the system. I'll explain why.
At the center of the harddisk the platters move faster than on the outside.
Because all data is stored from the center and then going outwards. So for the most speed gain the swap partition has to the first one.
With Windows that means that the C:\ partition has to be dedicated to the swap partition. Luckily , this partition does not have to be big.
Of course, this depends on the OS to be used. XP doesn't need more than a 4 Gigabyte C:\ partition for example, so the rest of the system
doesn't suffer much performance loss.
The D:\ partition should then be used for the Windows system files and the E:\ partition for all your data.
Their sizes depend on the total size of the harddisk minus the swap partition.
In my point of view this gives you the fastest (albeit a little weird for most users) Windows setup. Personally I think that the total
overall performance gain will amount to approximately 5%. Not that much, but in the basis the fastest setup I can imagine.
Daily/weekly defragging of your harddisk will maintain this extra speed, not to mention regular registry clean ups.
f0dder:
Btw, pagefile on a second partition (but same physical drive) doesn't necessarily make things slower - the read/write heads have to move anyway. Keeping in unfragmented is what matters (and better yet, get 4+ gigs of ram and 64bit windows and disable it altogether).
Carol Haynes:
Actually in the one drive scenario described above you can still make the Windows drive C: and the page drive whatever you like.
You just need to prepare your hard disc in advance.
The easiest way to do this is to
* use a partition manager rescue disc (such as Acronis DiskDirector - Partition Magic doesn't recognise some of the newer SATA drives if you still have that)
* delete all the partitions on the disc (unless you want to keep the ubiquitous recovery partition - though personally I would back it up and delete it)
* create a small primary partition on the drive but use a format that isn't used by Windows (anything will do except FAT, FAT32 and NTFS) but you don't need to bother formatiting it
* use your Partition Manager to set the partition to Hidden.
Now install Windows (creating a new primary, active partition during setup). It will install as drive C:
Once windows is installed
* boot from your Partition Manager disc again
* unhide the page partition and format it with NTFS
* reboot windows
* use the disk management utility to relabel the page partition drive letter to whatever you want
* create a data partition and label that and you DVD whatever you want.
Personally I don't think it is worth the hassle though - just install Windows on the first partition and set your page file to be a fixed size and do a boot time defrag of the pagefile. If the pagefile is fixed size and defragmented it doesn't fragment again so there is little advantage in setting aside another partition on the same drive.
AndyM:
Thanks for the detail!!!
By the way if you want to put all the temp files with PageFile.sys in the first partition on drive 2 I suggest you use a fixed size page file.-Carol Haynes (April 17, 2008, 11:44 AM)
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How big?
Note it is also worth keeping a page file on C: of at least 64Mb - that way if you get BSODS in the future the errors will be logged in the system event logs. If you don't have that small page file available Windows can't save Crash Dumps at all and there will be no error messages in the logs to help with trouble shooting. Again make it fixed size.
Once you have set up your system use something like Perfect Disk to do a boot time defrag so that your C: and page file drives are optimized.
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I'm going to have some questions about this when I get back on Monday :D
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