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Hello,
A couple of questions regarding partitioning.

well I am getting my laptop in a few days and I would like to know if partitioning is really a good thing to do? If so, when do u partition? Before the installation of windows or after? Is it easy to do? What should the partition sizes be? How many partitions?
I have read that say for a 60gb drive it would be good to say make 20gb partition for the operating system and programs, a 35 gb partition for data and a 5gb partition for a scratch pad on songs you are working on.
Or is partitioning really necessary?

So any ides and comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance




<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Astral Fridge Magnet on 2004-07-09 22:12 ]</font>

Hoi Magnet,

Partitions are essential for a couple of reasons. The OS partition (primary boot) has to be there before installation (or created during) of the OS.

Let's say you install everything on your C: drive, and put your data on the same partition. Iif something goes wrong and you have to format the drive you loose everything.

With different partitions, you move My Documents, email folders, etc to a partition, music projects etc to a different drive so your data don't get mixed up all over the place and you can safely format the C: or whatever without loosing all your work.

It's quite easy to partition a drive from the XP boot CD. When you get to choose where to install XP, select the one existing partition and delete it. Now there's a whole disk with empty space. You can create more partitions here, or later from Computer Management > Disk Management.

Create one partition the boot CD at least, and select it for your XP installation.

To do some serious multi-tracking, you may find the laptop's intern harddrive a bit slow: usually they're 5400RPM with 2MB cache instead of 7200RPM and 8MB cache for a high performance IDE harddrive. You can always add such a drive later in an external Firewire or USB enclosure, and as such get decent performance of your laptop's multi tracker.

Good luck!

Atom|c's on the money. Partitioning is definitely the answer.

Hello again,

What do you suggest are good sizes for partitions?
So for example, I need to install the OS of course and loads of programs. So how much space do you allot to say the partition with the OS and programs? Some of these programs contain sample libraries. Or do programs get installed in another partition?
Is there anyone kind enough to give me an idea how they would partion a 60gb hard drive? How many partitions blah , blah

Thanks

You get to chose where you install stuff on set up.
I would allocate 8-10 Gb for OS and programs, then tell the exe. setup on your program installations (or in preferences) to install data to the other partition.
e.g. my SX is on 'C' but all the data files are on another partition. If the OS crashes, or SX crashes, I need only reinstall the OS or SX, and don't lose any data.

Nestor did some (huge) contributions to this subject...many topics about this subject here

Does anyone know how many tracks you can get with a good 7200 rpm external USB 2.0 drive? What is a good brand?