hi ka,
looks like steve provided a good answer. allow me to chip in with some thoughts from fred langa on the very subject you've asked about....
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"How I Partition My System
On the system I'm using right now, my single 20GB hard drive is split into three
partitions, which appear as drives C:, D: and E: (they're not really separate drives,
but Windows treats each partition as if it were a separate drive). My C: partition is just 2GB in size. My D: partition is 6GB; and E: is 12GB.
My C: partition/drive contains my Windows system files and all my
most-frequently-changed data files -- all my e-mail, DOC, XLS, HTM, etc., files;
those files occupy about 1.2GB of space on that 2GB partition. This is the part of
my system that gets the most use and abuse, and is most likely to "go bad;" it's
the part that's most in need of backing up. I use Drive Image to image this
partition every day; I store the images on the E: drive. Using Drive Image's "high
compression" mode, each image file of the 2GB partition squeezes down to
about 600MB. If you do the math, you'll see that I can fit the better part of a
month's worth of live backups on my E: partition/drive. (I actually do more with the images than just leaving them on E:, and I'll come back to this in a moment.)
My D: partition/drive contains files that change infrequently, miscellaneous files
and easily-replaced, nonessential files. This includes most of the files that
normally install themselves in C:\Program Files: When new software (typically)
offers to install itself in C:\Program Files, I just edit the C: to D:, and the software
then installs itself in D:\Program Files. (In other words, my D: drive contains most
of my live, installed apps.) Because there's little on my D: partition/drive that's
irreplaceable (my apps could simply be reinstalled), I only image the D: drive
once a month or so.
My E: partition/drive contains my Windows swap file, the disk image files from C
and D, and not much else. I don't image the E: drive at all."
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the article in its entirety, called "Bullet-Proof Your Windows Setup", can be found here:
winmag.com
btw, i'm getting ready to add a 20gb slave drive to a machine with a 13gb master drive, and do some partitioning too. so it is with some great interest that i read posts such as yours, and replies such as steve's.
hope this helps
:)
mark |
