# Partition or multiple hard drives?



## Dia01 (Feb 13, 2008)

As the title suggests.  Is it worth installing say a 36GB drive for the OS soley or partitioning an existing larger drive with either 2 or more partitions?  I am currently running Vista 32bit and want to try out 64bit and am sick of reformatting the whole drive.  Any suggestions?


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## xfire (Feb 13, 2008)

If the larger hdd is faster then its better to partion but if you just want to try it you can do it on the 36Gb.


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## TheMonkey (Feb 13, 2008)

Unless you want to purchase a smaller high speed drive for your OS and get slightly quicker boot up times I would suggest just partitioning your current setup.  You won't really need to much space for your OS partition maybe 10gb max but probably less (my OS partition is only 5gb but thats XPpro with room to spare) and at least in XP its easy to change you page file location to your larger partition if u need the space.  Sure its just as simple in Vista tho I have no experience with it.


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## Dia01 (Feb 13, 2008)

Like I stated earlier I'm using 32bit Vista and want to upgrade to 64bit.  I would like to keep the 32bit OS for awhile to see if I'm happy with the 64 and plus I have a lot of saved docs and such I want to keep.  Should I partition the existing drive, shrink the current drive and allocate say 10GB for the 64bit OS and other partitions for say page file, media storage, programs and another for games.  If and when I'm happy can I delete the the 32bit partition to increase further room for the 64bit?


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## TheMonkey (Feb 13, 2008)

Dia01 said:


> Should I partition the existing drive, shrink the current drive and allocate say 10GB for the 64bit OS and other partitions for say page file, media storage, programs and another for games.  If and when I'm happy can I delete the the 32bit partition to increase further room for the 64bit?



If I were u I would create a 10GB partition on my current drive in the free space, leave the current partition as is and install the 64bitOS on the new partition leaving the page file on the new partition.  Play around with it for a while and when I decided which I liked best I would either delete the 32bitOS with no changes to the partitions whatsoever (if I like 64bit).  Or I would reformat the new partition and install the 32bit version on the new partition and clean up the old 32bit install later (and of course clean up my boot.ini so the old OS's don't show up on bootup.)  That way in the end I would have a seperate partition for my OS whichever it may be for easy reformats/dual boots in the future.  I would also use partition magic to create my new partition.  Hope that made sense, it's late and I kindof have an assbackwards way of doing things somtimes but they u go


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## trog100 (Feb 13, 2008)

dont keep your boot up partition too small.. i go for 30 gig with 10 used.. it leaves plenty of work space if needed..

trog


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## TheMonkey (Feb 13, 2008)

trog100 said:


> dont keep your boot up partition too small.. i go for 30 gig with 10 used.. it leaves plenty of work space if needed..
> 
> trog



I usually find that I don't need much extra space at all on the boot partition as you can almost always change temp location for install/extractions ect. and you can move your page file as well.  But extra room never hurts


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## Dia01 (Feb 13, 2008)

I have decided to go a seperate 36GB drive, when I'm happy with the OS I'll then partition my larger existing drive to keep it all neat and tidy I think.


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## trog100 (Feb 13, 2008)

TheMonkey said:


> I usually find that I don't need much extra space at all on the boot partition as you can almost always change temp location for install/extractions ect. and you can move your page file as well.  But extra room never hurts



i started off with 2 gig years ago then moved to 5 then to 10 now with storage so cheap i just think 30.. he he

i like to keep the OS plus all basic apps i use in the one partition.. it comes to around 10 gig.. i do it for easy back ups and swops.. a bit like a super OS..

trog


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## icon57 (Feb 14, 2008)

i would go with the separate hd over a partition, but if you go with vista, you might want to go bigger as vista seems to just keep growing every day...


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