(I thought I asked the same questions a while back, but I can’t find the thread.)
For the second time in 3 months, my C: drive is making the Buzzy/Clicky Noises of Death. (The previous occupant sleeps with the fishes - I didn’t ever want to trust it again.) This time I got a 250G behemoth to pair with a still-healthy 40G.
So…
Which should I use as the C: drive?
If I use the 250, should I partition it so Win 2000 Pro gets its own partition? How big?
Should I make another partition if I want to play around with Linux? How big?
Any other helpful tips?
You have lots of space and insulating and organizing is a good idea. Windows needs less than 10 GB but you might want to give it 20 just because you have it. Linux would use much less than that but you might want to give it 10 - 20 GB as well. That only uses up 40 GB with 210 GB left so you could make them a little bigger if you want. From there, you can decide what you need. It might be good to have a dedicated partition for applications. A dedicated partition just for music or video files might make sense if you have a whole lot of those. A backup partition is a pretty good idea as well (you can use the drive to backup part of itself in case of viruses or stupidity on your part). These partitions will all get their own drive letters so keep that in mind for the good and bad.
I would use which ever drive is faster as the OS boot drive. Check the specs of both drives for RPM’s, cache size and transfer rates.
Apart from that, I would say use the 40 gig as the OS/Boot drive and the larger drive for storage and app installations (and your swap file). Then, if something happens to Windows, you can reformat the 40 gig and still have all your files safe on the larger drive.
Having been bitten once, you should be twice shy. Get yourself a decent RAID controller, another 250 GB drive, and mirror the two 250 GB drives and the two 40 GB drives. If you want to play with Linux, I suggest simply letting it use the two 40 GB drives. Do note that Linux demands a proper RAID controller, not one of the many fake-RAIDs.
Don’t be too hasty to throw away the ailing drive - I fixed a hard drive failure on a machine that was several years old once and, on a whim, bashed the serial number into the ‘warranty repairs’ section of the manufacturer’s website - to my great surprise, the device was still within warranty and was replaced free of charge.
If you can swing it, get yourself an ultra fast little 60 or 80 GB drive and install that as your boot drive and leave it for nothing but the OS (and patches, service packs, and whatever else Windows forces you to install on your primary).
Then you can divvy up your larger secondary drive however you like.
I’ve had issues with having to redo partitions with the OS and my file pace on the same disk… it didn’t go well.
Besides, this way if you ever have OS issues, you can just wipe out your primary and start over again without even the slightest worry of losing any files.