Migrating WoW

[Jim]

Hi, Found it in my Tomshardware forum folder: :wub:

I can only give you some guidelines. The details as to size and number of partitions is something you have to figure out based on _how_ you will use your machine. I will start with the way I do it, stating why I do it that way.

When deciding how to partition a hard drive, two factors that you should keep in mind are:

1. hard drives transfer data that is stored at the beginning of the drive faster than data that is stored at the end of the drive.

2. if files you access frequently are stored all over the surface of the drive, then the hard drive's read/write head will have to travel a lot to retrieve the files you want. If, on the other hand, you group your files into groups of "frequently accessed", "less frequently accessed" and "rarely accessed" files then the hard drive's read/write heads will very often be in the "frequenly accessed" area, implying they will have to travel less and consequently, accessing the files will be faster. In technical terms, this grouping is to maximize locality.

Given the above, when configuring a system you'd want to have all your frequently accessed files at the beginning of the drive and the rarely accessed files at the end of the drive. A partitioning scheme that accomplishes this, could be the following:

First partition (C: ) - Your choice of Windows version - First Windows installation. (Windows files are obviously accessed very frequently, therefore it makes sense to have them in the first partition at the beginning of the drive.) It's difficult to openly recommend a size for this partition, I use 32GB and only use this space for Windows and utilities that help me manage and/or recover a computer in case of problems. Everything else goes into a different partition - keep reading to find out where.

Second partition (D: ) - for swapfile and temporary files created by Windows. I use anywhere between 16GB to 32GB. I manually set the swapfile to be in this partition. I also manually set all temporary files (including temporary internet files) to be in this partition. The point of this partition is to place all the file that are frequently accessed there AND that you do not need to backup. Do not place anything you would mind losing here. This is a partition for what you could consider "junk".

Third partition (E: ) - Your choice of Windows version - Second Windows installation - size 16GB to 32GB. When you have a problem with your computer, particularly if it is a software problem, you'll be glad you have a second installation you can boot into. You use this installation to repair any problems that the first installation may be having. Whether you make C: or E: the installation you use on a daily basis is a matter of personal taste. I have a slight preference for making the installation in E: my daily one because many viruses/trojan/crapware are hard coded to affect drive C:, therefore by using E: you dodge the bullet. If you chose to make E: your daily installation then do boot into C: every now and then to make sure it is still working properly (in case one of those poorly coded viruses/trojans/etc got in there without you noticing.

Fourth Partition (F: ) - Your programs go here (Games, Office, etc). This partition is still quite fast to access, for this reason your programs should go here. The size of this partition depends on how the number and size of the programs you want to install. About 200GB is usually sufficient.

Fifth Partition (G: ) - Your Data goes here. I redirect the "My Documents" folder to this partition. You do this by right clicking on "My Documents", selecting properties and clicking on the "Move" button. Again, the size of this partition depends on how much data you think you have. This is the partition you should be backing up very often and everything you do not want to lose should be stored here. Accessing the information in this partition is slower than it is in C, D, E and F but most data files are small in comparison to program size, for this reason they still load very quickly.

Sixth Partition (H: ) - an "Attic" partition - Seldom accessed stuff goes here. As I said at the beginning, the end of the hard drive is noticeably slower to access than the beginning. For this reason, I normally make this partition anywhere between 25% to 30% of the total drive size (transfer rate drops noticeably after 75% of the drive). In this partition I keep files that I do not access very often but that I still want to have "online", that is without having to search for a CD or DVD.

Very Important, the sizes I gave for C, D and E are the sizes I use but, my O/S of choice is Windows XP Pro 64bit. Windows Vista and, I believe Windows 7 use quite a bit more space, therefore, if you intend to use Windows 7, I would double the size I stated for C and E (D should probably be ok as stated but, you may want to make it larger if that makes you more comfortable).

Here is the breakdown in my main installation which uses 1TB hard drives:

C - 32GB
D - 32GB
E - 32GB
F - 350GB
G - 150GB
H - 320GB

Note that it does not add up to 1TB, this is because I quadruple boot my machine, there are two Windows XP 64bit installations and 2 Windows XP 32bit installations. I did not include the Windows XP 32bit installations above to keep things simple.

Another important point, make sure that when you partition your hard drive, you only have one (1) primary partition. Avoid creating multiple primary partitions. Windows has a very unpredictable way of assigning drive letters when there are multiple primary partitions and there are multiple hard drives in the system. This problem is made worse by the fact that the Windows Setup (from the installation CD, does NOT assign drive letters the same way that a fully installed Windows does). These problems can be managed but they are very tricky and the best way is to avoid them by having one and only one primary partition in the system.

When you get your SSD, you will make your life a lot simpler, if you _disconnect_ your hard drive from the system (so it cannot be seen by Windows - alternatively, you can disable it in the BIOS but, I'd rather be safe and disconnect it) and install Windows 7 on the SSD as if it were the only installation. Once you've done that, connect your HD back and set the BIOS to boot from the SSD. If you do it this way, you will have to reinstall the programs you have in drive F. When you install your SSD and reconnect your HD, you will find that the drive letters that were originally assigned to the partitions on the hard drive have changed. You can - and should - set them back to what they were originally using the "Disk Management" console of Windows. The one partition you will not be able to assign the same drive letter will be C (since it will then be unmodifiably used by the copy of Windows on the SSD), this is not a problem and, since you should not be storing or changing anything in what used to be partition C, I would simply hide the partition by removing whatever letter Windows 7 assigned to it. Doing so will not prevent you to boot into that partition if you ever needed to (because the BIOS will still see the partition and give you the option to boot from it - if you have a BIOS that has a boot menu).

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/251381...rtitioning