I am installing Novell Netware 4.11. The spec of the server is as follows: Dual Intel Pentium III Processor 1.4 Ghz 2 X 18 GB SCSI hard disks running RAID 1 512 MB of SDRAM Can anyone give me any advice on how the two 18Gig SCSI HDs can be partitioned for maximum efficiency? How big should each partition be and should there be a separate one for system and another for data? Cheers - Craig

use 1 hard drive 18 gig and use the other as mirror and you will have no data lose if a drive fails

Best solution:- 1 Hard drive 18Gig with 2 volumes sys and data Other HD as mirror. If anyone has a better solution for maximising disk space then please post it now. Craig

Well, Craig S. asks about maximizing efficieny, but we don't know what he wants efficient. If there are several logically different things that users need to do, it may maximize users efficiency to have more than one data volume (engineering, sales, etc). If he is running FastCache Proxy or Groupwise PO on this server, they should each have thier own volume. This is a system design question, and how he is going to use the system determines. One issue is size of SYS: volume, as Netware gets very squirrelly if it runs out of space on SYS:. Right now I allocate 2gigs for SYS: by default, unless disk space is very tight. Hope this helps

I forgot to mention that the server must be capable of handling 40 concurrent users

Handling 40 con-current users is not really an issue in answering your question in my opinion. That box will be idling most of the time with 40, unless you're doing large transaction database. Netware is very efficient with CPU cycles. As noted above, a SYS: volume and one DATA: volume is a minimum starting point. If there is a good logical reason to split it up further, create other data volumes. At one site I had to create several volumes so that none was more than 4 gig in size, since that was the capacity of the backup device. It just depends on what works for the situation. Remember that you can create a DATA: volume that does't use all of the netware partition. Then later, you use the un-allocated space to either create an additional volume, or add more space to an existing volume. That may let you defer the decision until you know more about how you will use the machine. Hope this helps