 |
 |
Disk Partitions
Name: Ross
Status: Student
Age: 30s
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: 2002
Question:
What are the disadvantages to keeping a single disk
partition on large drives such as these NTFS, Windows 95/98.
Replies:
The reason why you do not want to keep one large partition is that you lose
the ability to keep your data segregated. If you ever want to dual boot
your computer between Windows NT and Windows 2000, it is mucheasier if you
have more then one partition. In Windows 2000 you have the ability to keep
quotas on the amount of drive usage users are using. If you have only one
partition it is harder to manage these quotas. You also lose the ability
to have more than one page file. A page file is a location on disk that
acts like memory, consider it a virtual memory. If you have only one
partition you can only have one page file. Plus it is much easier to
defragment smaller drives than one lager drive at a time. I would
recommend that you have a 5GB C: partition
and then make whatever size you have left over for D: (data) drive.
Joseph F. Noga
MCSE, CCNA, N+
GTO -
Larger discs are less space efficient. Windows breaks
down a drive into small chunks (I forget the numbers).
The space a file takes up is actually larger than
what it really is (because it will be rounded up to
the nearest chunk). This difference is more
significant in larger drives than smaller ones.
For instance, go to the C drive. Hit Ctrl-A (to
highlight all files in the C drive). Right-Click,
then go to Properties. Look at the total size of all
the files. Now, right-click on the C drive, and go to
Properties. Look at the used-space size. It will be
larger than the other size number.
I believe that when you partition a drive into smaller
ones, the space for the C drive takes up the perimeter
of the physical disc. Other drives will take up the
remainder of the disc space (going from the perimeter
towards the center of the disc). As the disc spins,
the points on the perimeter travels faster than the
points nearer the center. This means that data is
read and written faster in the C drive then in
subsequent drives. Although defragging often helps, I
like to put disc-intensive data in the C drive.
Hope this helps,
Wil Lam
Click here to return to the Computer Science Archives
| |
Update: June 2012
|
|
