Partitioning Opinions

[gigabyte1024]

I'm about to install a new corporate network file server.
Nothing fancy - one container of RAID 5 >400GB

There are two 'areas' for storage, personal files and shared files.

Area 1 is about 20GB and 70,000 files
Area 2 is about 10GB and 60,000 files
I expect them to double in the next 2 to 3 years.

Everything is and will be NTFS.
The OS (Win2K3) will be on its own partition.

Should I split the areas into their own partitions or leave them on the same partition?
What setups do other corporate admins use?

Thanks.

 

[feigned]

130,000 files using 30GB?

Leave it alone and create different shares and set permissions accordingly UNLESS YOU ARE USING QUOTAS. 30GB is nothing...

I'd be more worried about the number of disks you have serving up this data. If it's three with a hotspare that's great, but four or more with a hotspare will yield better results.

How many users? What about the bus that the RAID card sits on? While we're at it, what card?

 

[gigabyte1024]

I am using quotas, but not equally.
There will be 4 drives, no spare. (I've got 4hr parts)
This is a Dell 2850 (overkill) with onboard PERC4.
The size isn't what I'm worried about, I'm wondering about the MFT and performance hit from so many files.

There are approx 90 users utilizing this file server.