partition options

Finally decided to partition my 80 gig Hard disk. I plan to follow the commonly suggested scheme of OS in its own partition, another one for frequent backups which contains My Documents kinds of files, etc., another one which contains stuff I may need occasionally in the future such as downloads for apps, and another one which contains stuff related to my special needs, but access irregularly.
My main question is how lean and mean can you make the OS partition? I would like to keep it small, so that I can image it and save the image elsewhere, e.g., DVDs, and an external HD (probably both places). That would allow me to be back in business in no time if that awful moment ever happens when I need a complete OS reinstallation. I'm wondering if it would be advantageous in any way to put all or most of the applications in their own partition just to keep the "OS" partition smaller. Do images get corrupted when being made? Is that less likely when they are smaller?
Sorry if I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, but would appreciate some thoughts on this. Thanks.

 

I see no reason whatsoever for you bring sorry for Doing a bit of thinking/planning/asking

I am using XP Pro and my C: drive is only 8.3gig with 1.8gig free.

But D:-H: are heavily loaded.

BillyBob

 

Well. One guide. I have 30 software applications on XP, appart from those automatically installed by the OS-.. The whole size is 10 Gbs.

 

hey shawdaifu
I have found that XP saves alot to your user profile under "C "
I allocated 15 gigs to "C" and have about 5 gigs free. I had "C" at 6 gigs a year ago and it filled up real quick with three users and then I had to reparition to make it bigger which was a pain.
Then I have "D" programs- which have all my programs ie: photoshop etc.
"E" is user data- which is all our word docs, pics, music etc.
Then "G" is games- all my games, of course.

I like the setup.
Hope it helps
H. Hill

 

Hello shawdaifu,

The two biggest parts of an OS only partition is Widows itself and System Restore's SVI file.

The size of windows can be large if there is a i386 folder in it. This folder is a copy of XP's installation files.

The size of System Restore's file can be controlled by limiting the percentage of the HD it takes up. The default is 12%.

The tradeoff is that the Restore points cycle off in a shorter period of time. I personally only keep a weeks worth of restore points. I also drive image. You can make the decision to depense with SR altogeter as long as you drive image. I just find it convenient at times to keep SR enabled.

Images can corrupt - I personally never had that happen. To minimize the impact if it does, I keep a "Grandfather" cycle of images. If the latest is corrupt/unusable, I can fall back to the previous ones.

Whether a larger image is more prone to corruption, can't really answer that one. Certainly the smaller it is, the easier it is to work with, especially if using DVD's - one DVD is much much more convenient than 2.

I image to external HD's - normal internal ATA HD's that I put into HD enclosures; have two.

EDIT: Imaging software, at least the ones I'm familiar with, such as Acronis, compress the image. One of my OS's takes up 3.29 GB at the moment - the drive image is 1.75 GB - the ratio is roughly 3 to 1.

Regards - Charles

 

Thanks to all for the info.
Here's what I've decided todo.
In addition to the OS in its own little home, I've decided to put most of the apps in their own partition, have one for the frequently backed up stuff--the stuff that I'm working on and changing often, have an extended partition with volumes dedicated to various things that I bunch together for convenience, but seldom change.
In "cleaning up" I noticed in the Windows folder 99 files of the form "$NtUninstallKB815304$." They date as far back as Sep of 2005. I assume they are related to XP upgrades. Some are only a few KB, but there is one humungo one--maybe 300MB. I think the total is pretty substantial. Can these be deleted? Or are they there in case I want/need to uninstall some misbehaving upgrade?
Thanks again. You guys rock!

 

Hi shawdaifu,

These are the uninstallers that Add/Remove accesses in case you want to remove an MS patch/update.

The older ones certainly can be removed. You can also copy the latest of them out to a CD or DVD for a time and load back on in case of need.

The big one is probably for SP2. I took that off long ago.

Regards - Charles

 

Hi Tony,

My OS partitions are smaller - between 12 - 15 GB's on 80 GB drives. There are only so many programs I'm going to install at any one time.

Regards - Charles