Partitioning the Hard Drive

Hey, I just had a question about hard drive partitioning. I don't want to do this for organization or dual booting or whatever, I just read that some people install just their operating system and "apps" to one drive, then all their other stuff to the remaining hard drive space. I'd like to do this in case I need to reinstall my OS or perhaps move up to Vista from XP. I just don't know what needs to go on that primary drive, JUST the operating system and its updates, or does anything else need to go there too?

If anyone could help or atleast just link a website about this thatd be great. I coudln't find any specific steps online.

Thanks :)

It gave some good information that I needed, but I guess I should phrase my question better.

I guess what I'm asking is, say I make one partition for my operating system (windows xp home) and one for everything else, can literally everything else go on the non-operating system drive, or do some applications have to be saved to the Operating system drive in order to work?

I hope that makes sense, lol.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as my PC should be ready tomorrow and I'd like to get this partitioning out of the way and on to my installations :P

starting from scratch on a 500gb HD btw.

Also how big should I make the operating system drive for XP, to include updates and still have some space left over?

look you need to decide how much space you're going to need for the primary partition, I leave 100 gb for my primary partition because I have a lot of installed games in windows and also A LOTS of programs (all that needs to be installed on windows goes on the primary partition) all the other things like videos , movies, music, photos , important documents and some backup programs I put in the second partition.

EDIT=

well , that's how I did things in the past, because what I do now is I have a 320 GB HDD for windows and all the extra that have to be installed on C, and I have 2 other HDDS 1 - 250GB 2 - 120GB with all of my precious junk.

Thanks :)

It gave some good information that I needed, but I guess I should phrase my question better.

I guess what I'm asking is, say I make one partition for my operating system (windows xp home) and one for everything else, can literally everything else go on the non-operating system drive, or do some applications have to be saved to the Operating system drive in order to work?

I hope that makes sense, lol.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as my PC should be ready tomorrow and I'd like to get this partitioning out of the way and on to my installations :P

starting from scratch on a 500gb HD btw.

Also how big should I make the operating system drive for XP, to include updates and still have some space left over?

Dae921

Thanks for the responses.

Sorry I'm just still kind of confused =/

An example might help me..

Like, ok, say I have a 20g partition made for my operating system, and the other 480 for everything else.

Would stuff like say, itunes, video games, music/videos, documents all go on the 480g?

Also you said if I had to reinstall my OS, i would have to reinstall my games and stuff as well? Why do the apps need to be reinstalled but the data (music/videos, documents) don't?

the reason that we do this is for safety if your windows becomes crippled by a virus or other thing, and you no longer have access to your system (doesn't boot or other) you don't wanna lose your precious things which normally are in drive C.

Having 2 patitions one for windows and a little more space for programs that have to be installed in order to work

and the second partition, which will be used as a back up

in case of an infection you can wipe out windows and reinstall very easy because your important things are in a different partition which is not affected by the virus

Itunes has to be installed hence it goes in the primary partition, But your music should go in the second partition (for safety)

get it?

let me give you an example with me

sometimes I keep a copy of the latest driver of my video card or I have winamp the program, or itunes and I already installed those programs in windows but I want to keep an extra copy of them, I put them in the second partition because if something happens to windows I might lose it

let's say that a virus got my pc and I can't get rid of it, what do you do???, well in my case i just erase the partition 1 (windows)

do a fresh install of windows , then install all my programs, and voala I didn't lose a thing because my music, videos and all the things are on a different partition

now the other way

you have windows and all you things on drive C, THEN you get a virus, your options???, unless you have a form of back up for your most important things, say backup dvds, cds, external hdds, raid 1, or a second partition, you will risk losing everything

Ok I understand more now. :)

So programs that actually run, like Itunes, Windows Media Player, Video games, etc I keep on the partition with the Operating system, but I just keep the data that these programs run on a separate partition (music, videos, game saves, etc.)

am I getting it? :P

EDIT: So, would an external hard drive be a viable alternative to partitioning? For one, if you kept the external one up to date it would be separate from your normal one if it was infected and it would also have an advantage over a partition, if the whole hard drive failed, that partition would fail as well.

Or would you maybe do both? Partition and an external?

well I have never partitioned a external hdd but use it itself as a back up device

also, you can buy another hdd, say 100 or 120 hdd for windows, and the one you have now for back up purposes

LIKE THIS

the options are there choose the one that suit your needs :)