Help me organize my storage space.

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KevC

Supreme [H]ardness
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I currently have a 120GB Seagate 7200.7 SATA HDD that houses everything. I think it's one big partition (haven't been home in ages so I don't know).

I am planning to buy a 320GB Seagate 7200.9 (or 10, whatever). Also SATA.

I use my computer for 2 primary things.

1: Photoshop. I know I should have like a raptor and a couple more gigs of RAM but I can't deal with those expenses now. (Just bought some new glass). I work with 6MB RAWs that convert to ~40MB 16bit TIFFs (that probably open to about 700MB in photoshop).

2. Music. I use iTunes to rip ALAC (lossless) from images of CDs. I use iTunes to serve these CDs to my upstairs laptop which is connected to a decent Head/Hi-Fi system. (DAC, Tube Amp, etc the works)

With the heavy disk usage (only 1GB of RAM, moving to 2 soon enough) I plan on giving photoshop a lot of swap space.

I am considering this.

Windows+Programs on 120GB
5GB Partition on 320GB dedicated to Swap (photoshop and windows).
The rest of the 320GB dedicated to music and image storage (50+CDs in ALAC takes up a lot)

I figure this way because I should have my programs and swap on different HDDs, therefore theoretically improving bandwidth (two needles to "work" instead of only one).

However, I'm unsure if I should put the Windows and Progarms on the 320GB and have the swap on the other. The 320GB should be marginally faster with higher density and more buffer (16MB). Would that benefit swap or windows/programs more?

Thanks!
 
Always have a seperate partition for windows,
I use a 15GB at the moment but am leaning towards 20GB now.
I install apps to the windows drive and games to another hard drive.

Its not a bad idea to have a separate partition for the swap file but create it before you make the storage partition so the swapfile ends up on the faster part of the drive.
I recommend using another hard drive for the swap file as it will make windows a little snappier.

If I had your drives I would make a 20GB partition (more if you intend to install games there) on the 320GB and use that for Windows. Create another partition for the rest of the space.
I would create the 5GB swap partition on the 120GB then the rest of the space for another partition.
what you install where from then on doesnt really matter, whatever takes your fancy.
 
What I really do...

Thinking about how I have mine now, I have 2 drives, 200GB and 320GB.
Both have 15GB partitions and the rest for storage.
Windows is on the 320GB drives 15GB partition.
The swap file is on the second drives 15GB partition which is where I also install games.

The reason for having 2 partitions of 15GB is if Windows ever takes a nose dive I can quickly install windows on the other 15GB partition and be up and running fast.
I also do this when Windows is due for a re-install.
Once in the new Windows, copy the data from the old install, free up the space and convert the partition into a swap file/games drive.
 
there is no point in doing a seperate partion for 5 G for swap, juts put the swap on the 320 and be done with it

but since you use PS, do not put windows and the PS swap on the same disks, doesnt help peformance.
 
If you let windows manage the swap file it will allocate and deallocate space when needed.
With a drive that regularly has items installed/deleted/downloaded, the drive will fragment.
The swap file can end up partially fragmented over the drive if it needs to increase its size.

All is good if you create a permanent 5GB swap file first and use the drive normally.
But if you ever need to recreate the swap file, you are not guaranteed where it will go and it could end up in multiple places on the hard drive. So you can end up with a fragmented swap file and it may not be on the fastest part of the drive.
The swap file partition will always be in the same space and wont be subject to heavy fragmentation so its quite a good idea :)

Its a simple measure to create a smaller partition for the swap file that can save you hassle later.
Its also useful for installing a second Windows if you have a problem.
 
swap file doesnt fragment i recall reading.

it is good to set it aqt a fix max amount yes.
 
not only can the swap file be fragmented over the drive, the swap file does fragment internally as well but thats another story!

You can get tools to defragment the internals of the swap file but its far quicker and easier to move it to drive c: temporarily, delete the old swap file, then recreate it on the partition you made.
If you have a few games etc on there as well, temporarily copy them somewhere else, the drive should be empty then, ready to create an unfragmented swap file on the fastest part of the hard drive.
 
partitions can screw with speed because of the way drives are organized. I wouldn't bother making a swap partition, windows is decent at organizing the swap. Just make sure you create it and then fix the size to one value.
 
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