HD partition for games

Heeter

Overclocked Like A Mother
Joined
8 Jul 2002
Messages
2,732
Hi Guys,

Should I create a partition on my HD just for installing games? It is already partitioned (C,D,E). Would it be better for gaming? If so, I guess putting it between C: and D: would be the logical choice.

Thanks in advance.

Heeter
 
I've made several partitions on my machine for various uses.
I had started a thread asking how people use their partitions somewere in this forum and if I remember clearly, a number of people do have a partition for games (maybe shared with backups).

I don't think it makes any difference to the performance of the games, but saves you time from reinstalling them if you had to format your C: drive of the one with the OS on.
 
I suppose it could help game performance if the games were on a different physical drive then your OS and swap. How much of a difference though? .. probably minimul at best. :p Oh and I do have a seperate partition for my games but only to keep my "C drive" from becoming full as believe it or not my games seem to grow much faster then even Windows. ;)
 
My opinion is that there is no really good reason to go to the trouble of creating an entire partition when a folder will do just fine.

Ming listed the only logical point in it. Some games are also dependent on the registry to run, so it's a good idea to run regedit and export a copy of HKLM\SOFTWARE, saving it in the same drive as the games, so after formatting Windows, you can restore your games to their original, installed glory.
 
Thanks for all your input, guys.
Just wanted to see if there was any better performance.

Heeter
 
I do exactly that 10 gig system on C:, 50 gig for games on D:, and 50 gigs for backups, video, music etc on E:.

The advantage is it minimises fragmentation (which helps performance) and makes backups or even reinstalls much easier with less data loss risk.
 
In truth, it isn't a bad idea to create a partition for games, archives and even applications if you can be bothered.

I personally would reccommend that you have at least two if you have the disk space - one for essential drivers for use in a reformat situation and the other for the core OS.

It can be difficult to work out the exact size but 20GB should be enough for the core partition and maybe 4GB for essential files.

You may also want to work out the exact size that your swap file takes up as you can place this on this own partition.. as long as its on the same disk drive then it can speed things up, as the swapfile is the most accessed windows file if it is enabled and tends to defrag alot, although to be honest with programs like O&O Defrag and its stealth quick defrag option and faster disk drives you may not want to create a partition just for this.

But my setup below is as follows

C: XP Pro OS Partition with some core windows apps (Office) and Swapfile
D: Old 24GB HD some other programs
E: CD/RW
F: DVD
G: 20GB Game Partition
H: Archive Partition with 5GB

I messed my setup up a bit, when I reformat it all I will probably try and shift more GBs into G: so its say 40GB instead of 20GB whereas the 40GB is on the C: slot. H: would be the same though.

Its all down to personal taste.. the next step of course is using your own util.. Some love Partition Magic but I personally like Paragons Hard Drive Manager as its a multi-suite toolset (it does things like copying wiping as well as standard partition stuff) and 10$ less expensive than PM but then people like different things :D

Useful URLS:

http://www.paragon-gmbh.com/n_fm.htm Paragon Hard Drive manager 5.5 URL

http://www.jr.com/JRProductPage.pro...Code=PQI+PM8&JRSource=google.datafeed.PQI+PM8 Partition Magic 8 URL

Edit: I original put the full Paragon Feature list up but just decided to use the basic info list as it could be overloading for some people.
 
I have 3 partitions on 1 hd
C.Windows
D.Apps
E.Games

I then have a second hd, for backup and my documents (moved from windows partition), and music/video

I also use the 2nd hd to backup windows partition, that way if windows gets corrupted, then I can restore the windows backup, without having to restore everything else as well. Much quicker than having to reinstall everything
 
Dublex said:
I personally would reccommend that you have at least two if you have the disk space - one for essential drivers for use in a reformat situation and the other for the core OS.
I never thought of having one for drivers. I've left most of them on CDs with the exception of the downloaded ones like nVidia in a downloads folder.
I've got 7 HD partitions... 3 of which are for OSes. lol :D
 
Pretty late jumping in here guys but I also have my 120gig partitioned off into 4 seperate hard drives. Operating system, games, more games, and p2p,. If you have to reformat your main C: drive where the OS is then you don't have to mess with everything else on the other drivers as it will already be there. I also keep a ghost image of my OS on another partition as an emergency and I update my ghost image drive every two or three weeks!
 

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