I will building my HTPC tomorrow and I need to know how to partition things. I will have a Seagate 1.5TB HD and I will be using Windows Vista Ultimate Edition x86. Is This the 64bit? I haven't bought it yet. I will pick it up in the morning. 1. How big of a partition should I allocate for for Vista Ultimate 64bit? 2. Do programs go on this partition too? I want to be able to reinstall windows easily after I experiment with installing new trail programs and stuff. Do you have to reinstall all the programs you want to keep again after windows reinstall if they are on seperate partitons? 3. I've heard it is better to keep my massive video collection on another partition. To access it, will I just run a shortcut folder if it is on another partition? 4. How many partitions should I have? This is my best guess: Vista on drive D (for security not C), Programs on drive E, Video on drive F, Digital Pics/MP3s on drive G, and Documents/ Misc on drive H What do you think about that? Is it too many partions? Will I have to do a lot of clicking around to access my Stuff? Can you answer any of these questions because I would really love to start to get things going. Plus I need to be advised on which Vista to get ASAP. Thanks so much for your health. Here are the rest of my specs below: Tuniq Tower 120 Universal CPU Cooler 120mm Cooling Fan and Fan Controller/Heatsink $45 Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive (bare drive) - $129.99 GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3R LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard - $114.99 CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply - $99 CORSAIR DOMINATOR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X4096-8500C5D - SAPPHIRE 100265L Radeon HD 4830 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card -$114.99 LG Black Blu-ray/HD DVD-ROM & 16X DVD±R DVD Burner SATA Model GGC-H20L - $119.99 Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor Model BX80562Q6600 - $184.99 Antec P182 Gun Metal Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail $109.99 Tuniq TX-2 Cooling Thermal Compound -$3.79
That version of vista is the 32bit version. It will work fine for what you are doing but you will only be able to access 3.5gb of your 4gb of ram. Since the sp1 update the computer recognizes that you have 4gb but still cant actually use it all. You would need 64bit to get all of your ram but there is a chance of driver incompatibility. The way i would partition the drive is like this, 60gb for vista and programs, the rest for movies music and storage. You would have to reinstall your programs if you reinstall vista so you don't need an extra partition for that and there is no benefit to having a different partition for movies and music. When you have your movies on a different partition you access them by going to my computer and selecting the drive that it is on just like if it were on the c drive.
If you bought Vista Ultimate in the store, you bought both x86 and x64 versions. Install the x64 version, or loose ram. (I think...I bought the "Retail" version, but I bought it online) 1. Vista should go on a 100GB-200GB partition; this will leave room for a 16GB (ram x 4) swap file, lots of programs, temp files, etc... 2. Programs go here too; even if you put them elsewhere you would still have to re-install after re-installing windows; so you might as well delete them when you delete windows. 3. Yes, media should be on another partition, on another drive if possible. If you have an old 100GB+ hard drive, you might want to install windows on that, and the keep the whole 1.5TB for media. To make a shortcut, just drag the drive letter from "My Computer" to the desktop. 4. I doubt that you will get any security benifits from avoiding the C: drive. It would be a lot easier to put windows & apps on partition one (whatever letter windows gives it, it does not matter) and everything else in folders on the second partition. (D:\MP3s, D:\Movies, D:\TV Shows, D:\Documents, etc...) Doing it like this will keep you from running out of room for movies while you still have many GB left for everything else. Good luck.
100GB IDE drives aren't that much slower than 1TB+ SATA drives.., especially when used as an OS drive.
IDE drives are only slower when you do something that requires maximum data transfer rate. Can't think of much that does this other than FixVTS. IDE drives operate at about 45x DVD speed (60MB/s). So if you have a DVD drive that can rip faster than 45x, a SATA drive will be faster I've noticed no speed difference between an IDE and SATA II drive other than benchmarking scores. Possibly DVD Shrink will be faster, but I have yet to test it on my SATA drive. Partitioning can be done in whatever way makes more sense to you. Give Vista enough room and the rest does not matter. Make whatever is most convenient. If you want a separate partition for videos and music do that, but keep in mind that is you do that, you may run out of room in a dedicated partition and you will have to use the video partition for music or the other way around. That would make dedicated partitioning pointless.
Where did I say it has to be an PATA drive? I've got a pile of old SATA drives as small as 40GB. As for speed: If your windows/programs/swap file are all on the one drive, and you are recording to the other drive, your recording speeds should be much better with two drives, even if one is slower and smaller.
Sorry I guess I missunderstood. I don't have an old drive around. For $60 I could get a new 500 GB SATA drive. I haven't seen many new drives smaller than that, but I guess they are out there somewhere.
Before lumbering yourself with a small 500 be sure it will have enough space for what you want to store,my advice save up some more & get a 750 or larger,the 750 samsungs are dirt cheap in NZ $185 works out half price if your in the US As for music etc i use XBMC there should be a vista version too,works bloody brilliant *crowd goes wild @ mention of xbmc* with xbmc all you need do is create seperate folders inside selective partition i.e music,movies,pictures,programs then point xbmc to that partition by i think it's add source or if you wanted have seperate partitions for music etc it's entirely over to you EDIT: *meanwhile scorp does the macarana & creaky joins in*
LOL at 'crowd goes wild'. I can't dance though, but i'm with you in spirit No arguments from me on the XBMC front, nor on the large hard drive front - multiples of both get my vote. I'm afraid if there were 20TB hard drives we'd all still want bigger ones, i have loads of 500GB drives myself. I'd been researching building a HTPC, with some kind of NAS storage, my goal was to have some kind of NAS in the 4TB ballpark, that would be cheaper to run than having a PC on all the time. Turns out NAS's that big use as much electricity as a PC so i scrapped the idea and now i just keep adding disks in USB2.0 enclosures to supplement the 6 disks in the main PC. I have 5 old type xboxes around the house using XBMC that access all the media on that PC and have recently added an xbox 360 to the mix (for playing hi-def content, what little i have), though i've found the 360 doesn't play all media correctly. I don't like to use the 360 unecessarily however as i don't want to help it get the inevitable RROD but i digress. My point is that if the OP's 1.5TB isn't enough then it can always be added to later. For many years i used to do the multiple partition thing but nowadays i use separate disks for most things. Example - (main pc, all drives are 500GB) - C: - OS and default area for ripping DVD's to, various samba shares (this drive is a pig to defrag so i regularly delete the DVD rips) D:,E:, F: are optical drives G: MP3's H: DVD Concerts I: DVD movies that have been processed thru DVD Rebuilder; i keep as many DVD's on here that i can, in case DVD's are damaged J: AVI storage area K: ditto The above 6 drives are internal to the PC. Also there's 9 USB2.0 enclosures, most of which are backups of the internal drives, but some contain boxsets etc All the main media is samba shared and accessed via XBMC on the various xboxes.
hehehe that's a whole stack of cords & wires as i'm the same 1st comp 2x 500,all comps are IDE,stores data & all my music as does comp 2 & 3 2nd comp was 2 x320's but one f'd out so for now it's got a 4gb for pagefile 3rd comp 2 x 200 (lounge xp home) Externals: 2 x 750's SATA's 1 has xbox games & some movies the other has movies & images & general data,all taken from the two xboxes & being sorted to be put back as they were jumbled & had duplicates on the each others drives 2 x 500's 1 with PS2 backups the other is drive images for comp plus general data 2 x xboxes with 3 hdd's each inside as i'm using extender kits,which can be home made if you wanted as they're pretty basic 1st hdd bay 320 in place of original drive 2nd hdd bay 400 above dvd rom 3rd hdd bay 400 & a 500 above cpu etc,one 400 burn't out replaced with a 500 2 x xboxes un-modded for now,eventually will have extenders fitted along with 500gb hd's All comps have tv cards & upgraded graphics,everything has xbmc installed The first two comps are more for general shit like surfing,downloading,ripping,email n stuff,the one in lounge is my poor mans media centre xp home,all the comps are xp home except for No1 which is prof,all dual boot 3 different flavors of linux , right now i'm re-organising the stuff on the xboxes,the first two drives in each are having games ftp'd then i'll add movies with any left over space,eventually i'll be putting 500's in all the xboxes including the comps,no sooner do i get decent size drives it don't take long before i need larger as like you creaky i like backups on hdd for everything. xbox 360 bought november just gone, getting a good thrashing ,pisses me off tho it won't detect usb hdd's so can't stream music or movies direct,pretty bloody useless,why have a comp running "gay" ,i really wonna headbutt the idiot who decided that should be how it's done,what's more gay is their version of xbmc
