What is the ideal size for the OS partition?

There is a large rebate on Partition Magic and Ghost 9 at OutPost.com, both end up costing $19.95. This triggered my question.

As far as I can tell, 10 gigs should be enough for XP. I would like other opinions on this.

Regards - Charles

 

as my opinion,8 G of space for winxppro should alway be a suitable size,
You do not know how microsoft wasting your HD,had you take a look at the \windows\system32\dllcache,\windows\servicepackfiles,windows update backup files,their almost wasting and taking the place.move them to recycle bin was a very good idea.By having remove the indivisual folder to another drive,pointing the virtual momery page file and also the Temporary folder to It.You will alway had a clean and no defraged system driver to deal with your works.another important tips,alway compressed you "use-less "files under NTFS file systems.

 

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your replies. Pete and Christer are for "breathing" room and artycoon for "lean & mean ".

You do not know how microsoft wasting your HD

Artycoon, actually I do know Thanks for the reply from the other side of the Planet. Hope to see more of you here.

Anyway, I'll mull all this over.

Regards - Charles

 

Ok, that's what I was looking for.

Regards - Charles

 

Charles and Pete,

One other consideration for keeping some breathing room on the system partition are the extracted files and large quantity of temp files some software installs generate.I was burned on an install that aborted part of the way through because I had no more room on C: for temp files the installer needed. That left a mess that took some time to straighten out.

I now have a 10 GB system partition. The page file and print spooler are on another hard drive and all the of the applications are on another partition. I am a little more conservative as I consider 75% as a full system partition. Hard drive space is relatively cheap so I don't consider it a waste.

Bill

 

Please take a look at my Optimized Winxp Pro partition,It's highly Efficient.

\windows, folder Size 1.91GB Only 1.55GB taking space.(Containing Sp2 and Uptoday installations) every not necessary files will be remove.

\Program files,Folder Size 2.18GB Only 1.62 Taking space.(containing office xp,corel graphics suite 12,diskeeper,cuteftp,Hewlett-Packard printing software,norton internet security and antivirus 2003,WildTangent,edonkey 2000,also microsoft default software and drivers),totally 3.34GB Used, 4,65GB space left for edonkey temporary cache.

there's more breathing room without wasting anything.

 

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Now I'm starting to feel a tad stupid - I have an 180GB hdd in this machine, although it makes me feel more secure that I dont have closed boundaries. I'm using 22GB of space overall w/ 2 90GB partitions. I have a fair amount of software installed, though... Including Office 2003, FP 2003, Project, Flight Sim 2004... music... AutoCAD. The list goes on.

Personally, I work well with our 20GB XP installations where I work, as we have a set amount of software installed; it's not all higgledy-piggledy like my home computer. For home computers, though, I prefer larger drives. But it seems here people are just fine with the slightly smaller GB drives - guess they can just manage it all better.

 

I think we are really dealing with personal preference more than anything here.

I have an 80gig HD.

MY C:\ drive with XP Pro on it gives me ( via My Computer ) the following report.

Used 5.41GB
Free 2.32GB
total 7.73GB.

Nothing is ever downloaded to C: ( unless I mess up ). Every Program possible is installed to another partition. I just noticed that I allowed WeatherBug to be installed to the C: drive. That alone is taking up almost 1gb. I will see about moving that.

I do things this way mostly because IF I should happen to have the OS drive go bonkers ( or yours truely messes up ) I loose very little. May have to reinstall but all is not lost.

Even if I had a 180GB drive I still would more than likely have no more than a 10GB C: drive.

I do not and never have liked the idea of downloading and/or installing everything to the C: drive.

But again. Different strokes for different folks.

BillyBob

 

Hi BB,

That's true up to a point, my concern is with a partition that only has the OS on it - no user data as such, meaning media files - text files - DB files and so on.

Started thinking about this last Summer when I decided that I needed imaging software. Since then, have switched out my old C drive for a new one and now use that old C as an external USB HD for backups. Want to and have a few times created images of my two internal drives, both of which have an OS on them.

Have come to the conclusion that it makes no sense in imaging user data - normal backup procedures are more convenient and faster. Have also come to the conclusion that drive imaging is not a substitute for System Restore when used for short term roll backs, makes no sense to roll back back a bad install for instance with an image file.

So what I'm going to end up with is OS partitions on Drive C and D and those partitons are what I was asking about. Both these drives are 40 Gig drives.

Regards - Charles

 

charlesvar I have the System Restore turned off and use imaging exclusively for rollbacks. It's quicker for me. I use Drive Image 2002 and it only takes about 3 minutes to reinstall an image. It takes about 5 to System Restore. I keep about three images on my hard drive so I can go back further if I need to.

 

Hi Ray,

The times are going to be variable, doesn't take me 5 minutes for SR - it'll take even less time once I've established the OS only partitions on the drives.

Still of the opinion that there is a XP tool for OS roll backs and don't see why it can't be made use of and keep the image for something serious; imaging and SR are not mutually exclusive which is the point I'm trying to make.

Regards - Charles

 

The ideal size for an OS partition depends entirely on how you set up your computer. Do you have your Programs folder on the OS partition, or is it located elsewhere? Do you use System Restore? Do you use a Paging file and, if so, is it located on the OS partition, or elsewhere? How often do you empty your Recycle Bin?

I've experimented with OS partitions of varying sizes during the nearly three years I've been using XP Pro, with a variety of configurations, but my Programs (presently totalling 7.1GB) have always been located on a separate partition ... not necessarily because it's a good idea, but because I've always done it that way.

The OS (XP Pro) partition on my 100GB HD is presently 9.76GB, of which 5.86 are in use. The Windows folder is 2.69GB, the Paging file is 1.53GB, and Documents and Settings is .4GB, totalling 4.62GB. The remaining space is used by System Restore, the Recycler folder and a few other small files.

So, if I turned off System Restore, moved the Paging file to another partition, and emptied the Recycle Bin regularly, I could easily cut my OS partition to 4GB (as long as I kept the Programs folder on another partition).

 

I am freezing my butt of and waiting ( not with pleasure ) for the big SNOW so I need something to warm me up. so here goes.

Would you please tell me why a larger drive is any better than a small one ? Other than having more room to use if needed of course.

The 80gig drive in this XP Pro machine ia COPY of 40gig drive as a Win98 SE system. The only real change is that it has had XP Pro put over 98SE.

The 40gig in the 98SE machine is STILL DOING THE SAME JOB. ( as this one )It is a bit slower and may not handle some of the newer software but that is MB, CPU and even maybe the OS. But certainly NOTHING to do with the HD.

As to the answer to the Question " What is the best size ?" I do not think there is a real answer to that. It depends on too many things. Starting right out with personal preference. Followed by how the USER wants to set and use his/her system.

Some like a large HD. I would rather have two small ones. One for normal use and the 2nd for storage. I only have one HD. But everything that really needs saving in on CDs. That way I can use them on any machine. So the CD is more or less my 2nd HD. ( and portable at that )

There are several different ideas in this thread. AND EVERY ONE of them works for THE USER and/or the way the USER uses the system.

I do not think there is any such thing as " once size fits all " or " which size is best " here. Way, Way too many variables involved.

THE USER BEING THE BIGGEST.

BillyBob