Win XP

[Anonymous]

I'm building my first system and just got a WD1000JB (100gigs/8mb cache). My question is: using WinXP and NTFS, do I still need to break the drive up into multiple partitions like the old FAT/FAT32 used to require so that you wouldn't lose clusters every time you wrote to the hdd?
If I do need to partition, what is the optimal size?
If no... YIPPEE!

[Darthtanion]

With modern file systems, the breaking up of the hard drive isn't necessary, but I would still recommend that you break it into at least two partitions.

I say this because it is a given fact that you will need to reinstall Windows from time to time (yep...even WinXP). If you have a 10GB partition or so as the bootable drive, then you can install your programs onto the second partition. This will give Windows plenty of space to handle it's job, and save you the trouble of having to reinstall all software when it does come time to format/reinstall. You'll just need to scrap the C: drive, format it, reinstall Windows, and then recreate fresh shortcuts to the programs that are still residing peacefully on the D: drive. About the worst case in this scenerio will be that you'll probably want to re-associate your programs with the file formats.

Good luck. :D

[Wiggo]

I work on a 3gig partition for XP and Office and everything else on other partitions. :smokin:
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[Orestis]

Well, if you use NTFS, you don't have to split it into a lot of partition. The allocation size in NTFS is 512 bytes. I'm not sure what is the size limit for this allocation size, but I'm using a 30Gb partition.

Since you have that huge playfield of a disk, I would suggest you split it at least in half, although even more partitions wouldn't be bad. Not only for backup reasons, but also for better management and faster defragmentations.... The number is up to you.... 2 or 3 would be fine, for me at least

[brashquido]

I'm building my first system and just got a WD1000JB (100gigs/8mb cache). My question is: using WinXP and NTFS, do I still need to break the drive up into multiple partitions like the old FAT/FAT32 used to require so that you wouldn't lose clusters every time you wrote to the hdd?
If I do need to partition, what is the optimal size?
If no... YIPPEE!

The limit of all the modern OS's is 2.2 Terabytes. This is due to their 32-bit architecture (even Windows XP, as it has a leveraged 32-bit code).