guys i need suggestions on partitioning a 1TB hdd. i intend to use only 3 disks(c,d,e) currently i have a 500gb HDD in my pc which has 90gb allocated to c drive which has win7 installed. usually i dont install any software in c except SDK's and runtimes. in my new HDD i'll be installing win8.1 ,so how much space should i allocate to c drive ? also im thinking of adding another drive (f) for Ubuntu so that if i ever format the drive i wont lose any data. how much space would all these drive need ?
You'd probably need to allocate at least 3x the minimum space required to install each OS, that is space to run the OS and enough to accept their auto updates for several years to come. Although I am more wondering why you'd want to have 3 OS in the first place. I can understand Ubuntu might be for you to learn programming, but 2 versions of Windows is kind of pointless. I also think having too many partion could make the HDD significantly slower. I would rather have several unpartitioned 250-500GB HDD, for each OS. Then again, best you wait for Loonylion to answer than rely on my questionable respond.
Im not installing 3 OS , i said that i have win7 in im pc and im installing win 8.1 in my new hdd of my laptop. So it'll be 8.1(+ubuntu) in my laptop and just win7 in my pc. If 3x is the case then how much space would it be ? Also in win8 if we download apps from windows store can we chose a path to install the app or does it automatically installs itself in os drive ?
I can't find anywhere in your initial post that mentioned 2 devices (PC and Laptop). All I read was PC, HDD, and 3 OS (Win 7, Win 8.1, and Ubuntu). That's why I assumed you intend to have 3 in 1. In any case, Win 8.1 is said requires 16GB (for 32bit) and 20GB (for 64bit). So I'd safely assume min 60GB should more than suffice, although a bit more might be safer. Ubuntu only needs min 5GB, heck even installing it on a removable 8GB-16GB USB Stick would more than suffice. You'd more than likely need to worry more about how much RAM you have. Again I'd suggest you wait for Loonylion to answer before going ahead.
what do you intend to use all the partitions for? also bear in mind theres a limit to how many primary partitions you can have on a disk using the MBR partitioning scheme (off the top of my head it's 3 or 4) and some OSes may not be able to boot from an extended partition. in general I try to avoid multiple partitions unless they're necessary.
I would need : C-win8.1 D-games, emulators,movies,music E-softwares,files,app backups ,everything important F-ubuntu Can you suggest disk spaces for these
why do you not install games and software on c? I could understand the games if it was a physically separate disk, but there's no benefit to using a separate partition whatsoever., if anything there's a slight disadvantage.
If that's your reasoning, then shouldn't it be better to do the normal approach? C:/ whatever software, firmware updates, emulator, and OS D:/ files and backups E:/ ubuntu (or install it in a removable 8 or 16GB flash drive) That way you can go for 40% c:/, and 60% d:/. Or if you insist on having 3 then, 30% c:/, 50% d:/, and 20% e:/. If you need to format c:/ then d:/ won't be effected. My PC got an SSD and HDD, I installed all primary software and OS on the SSD, while secondary softwares and everything else goes to the HDD. None are partitioned, thus run smoothly. I plan to add a 2nd HDD in the future for archives and resources.
So if i do this : C-os,softwares D-games,emulators,movies,music E-backups and files Will this be okay ? Can you sugget the sizes ? I think i wont be installing Ubuntu ,if i ever need to install it ,i can create a new partition in the future right ? Just wanted to ask you is there any disadvantages in installing software's in another drive ? Also , how do you use your HDD ?
aside from the fact that some (a very small minority, and generally older) software doesn't like being on a drive other than C, and in some cases wont let you install to anything other than C, there's not really a problem with installing software on other physical drives, however if the OS gets nuked then they will need reinstalling regardless of being on a different drive. disadvantages for partitions are you lose space to the partition table and filesystem structures, and its slightly slower (by the order of milliseconds) because the head has to seek further to find the relevant sectors. I would suggest you say 240GB for C, 120GB for documents/files and the rest for games/movies etc. There's no point whatsoever in having backups on the same physical disk, even if its a separate partition, it provides no protection (possibly aside from protecting against accidental deletion). you may or may not be able to install ubuntu later, it needs at least 2 partitions so it depends whether or not it can install and boot from an extended partition. Resizing partitions is possible but probably not for the faint hearted. I have 7 physical disks in my computer. I have a 500GB SSD for OS, pagefile, and programs (except games), a separate 500GB SSD for games, and then separate (rotating) disks for backup, documents, storage (x2) and temporary.
I have finally decided to do the partition like this C(250gb or less)- os+all softwares D(around 500gb/400gb)-games,movies media) E(remaining around 250gb)-files,documents+setups(as program backups so that i wont have to download them again) This is good right ?
Today i got home and when i started installing windows i saw that there is small partition of 1gb classified as system . should i delete it ,im not sure but think it may contain free dos which was there by default in my no os laptop
if there's nothing important on it sure. When installing windows on an empty disk, work out your desired windows partition size in MB, then add 100MB to it. then tell it to make a partition of that size. It will create two partitions, one 100MB in size, and one the size you want. This is normal. Don't create any further partitions and continue installing windows, then create the rest after windows is completely installed. Similarly, if you have more than one physical disk, disconnect them all except the windows disk until windows is fully installed. Because of this 100MB partition windows needs, your E partition will need to be a logical drive within an extended partition rather than a primary partition
