I'm about to re-image my wife's computer, but I want to know how I should setup the partitions. Here's what I'm thinking... The HDD is 20 GB C:\ 6 GB \ NTFS \ Windows 2000 + Applications D:\ 14 GB \ NTFS \ Data 1) Should I partition another drive for the swap file? If so, how big and should it be FAT32 or NTFS? 2) Should I partition another drive for applications (PhotoShop, antivirus, etc)? NTFS or FAT32? Or are the apps good sharing the partition with the OS? 3) Should my data partition be FAT32? Also note, I have the ability to add an additional 3GB HDD. Thank you for your time. -JG

1. There is no need to setup a seperate partition for swap George. There is nothing to be gained from it anyway. 2. I usually create one for OS and apps and one for data. If you ever have to format and reinstall windows, you will have to reinstall all of your apps again anyway so a seperate partition for apps won't help you (aside from maybe holding some of the application data, but thats what backups are for, right?) The 2nd one for data is a very good idea though. If windows gets so tore up it wont even operate and you have to reinstall your data will remain unharmed. 3. The only reason I can think of to use FAT32 for data, is if you would like to be able to write to that partition from Linux. Otherwise, stay with NTFS. It is just a tad slower, but the overall reliability is well worth the tradeoff IMHO.

Just George, Your sizing is about right. I went with 4/15 on my 20gb win2k drive and re-pointed My Documents + RecycleBin + Swap onto other volumes (off drive, in my case, but you could point it to 2nd partition on same drive. MyDocs should be off-sys partition anyway). I have never wanted for more space on the system partition. Frequent cleaning & defrag also helps. As Scruff sez, swapfile on same physical drive does not benefit from any special siting - but it *does* benefit (noticably on a slower machine like yours & mine) by designation to another physical drive attached to the opposing IDE channel. However, your doubtless older 3gb drive may be (probably is?) slower than the 20gb by such a wide margin that it offsets any benefit. Compare buffer sizes, RPM, and access time on the two drives - if you care enough. With 384 RAM you will want to limit the swapfile size to something less than OS default - depending on apps your run. I would mount the 3gb only if you require FAT32 access by another OS. It's not enough space to warrant the extra noise+heat+econsumption unless you need a few more gig & cannot afford anything else. When you purchase your next drive you'll want to make it your system drive & use the 20gb for swap, storage, & software archive (distro files). You can also keep down the disk access by defragging your swapfile. See tools at the wonderous sysinternals.com and also the excellent boot-time defrag at O&O software. Don't bother defragging your MFT: on volumes of your size you'll see no benefit. G'luck, JP

Certainly at least a Primary and an Extended partition; former = OS/apps/utils; latter = data, and can be further subdivided into two or more logical-drive (for ease of data organisation/faster defrags.) Also might not hurt to consider that if data (in its own partition) = fat32 and the system goes down (i.e. the OS/apps in Primary - be it fat32 or ntfs) you can always access it via '98 boot-disk. If data = ntfs then your options are somewhat limited in that regard... Personally unless one really 'needs' ntfs level of security, I'd go with fat32 all the way... Also with a fat32 Primary you can always drop in '98 in an emergency to again access data (as fat32). But re' the fat32/ntfs debate - it goes on and on and on and on..... You takes your choice. If the spare 3Gig drive is same speed/access rate as 20Gig (unlikely - it's probably slower?) you could install it as secondary Master and use that for a page-file location. This arrangement would allow an improvement in overall performance; whereas the page-file in a separate partition on the same drive as the OS itself doesn't really provide any significant benefit in that regard. jpers's advice re' a new drive (in the future) is good sense. It will probably be faster than current drives and thus is worth the effort to make it the Master (with OS/apps/utils installed - again to a Primary - and an extended for data).

Thanks everyone for the comments and suggestions. I'll definitely be implementing them into my build procedures. This time I plan to ghost the C: once I get it setup. Installing all these apps one by one is a pain. -Just George