The first question that comes to mind is do you have a good reason to partition your drives? Why are you thinking about partitioning?

(Hi Gary!)

If your only using two drives put the OS on the smallest drive. If your only using this machine for audio partition the smaller drive so that the OS resides on one partition and you could store audio on the second partition or just random crap.

But if you have a few extra bucks lying around buy a small drive for your OS and keep the two larger drives for Audio/Video. I've never partitioned a drive and I don't see much need for it. I use NTFS and I have three 40GB drives and I've never partitioned them.

I don't have any idea helpfull info about Fat32. I used to but I done forgotten about all that stuff. I like NTFS it works for me but then again some people swear by FAT32. The differnce between the two camps being one likes creole and the other likes cajun.

By the way what are you using this machine for?
Audio, Video, etc.....? If your doing video it is wise to keep the video seperate from the audio drive/s.

Cheers :)

Sorry if this posts twice-

No reason really. My last system I was forced to partition my single 6.4GB drive (Win95 2GB max.) I generally saved all of my data files, driver updates, etc on the last partition that way if the OS crashed I could reformat the boot partition and my files would be intact.

I'm just looking to record for my own amusement, to record my own stuff, and maybe produce a few CD's for friends/family. I will still use this system for basic home stuff, Word, Excel, internet and e-mail. No video. I figured that if I at least partition the OS drive I can save all my data files, backups and such on the second partion, and use the second drive strictly for audio files.

I don't know if there's anything performance-related to be gained or lost (or both) by partitioning, so I posted this to get input.

Well...NTFS vs FAT32...if the machine is going to be on the internet...NTFS..plain and simple..better security for your data from hackers and so forth!
FATS 32..not much performance difference between that and NTFS...again, NTFS is only used for better security...there is one HUGE gain tho on NTFS..you can turn off your PC without having to "shut down" your system..when you do that with FAT32 you have to have the scan disk thang! NTFS doesnt!
Your best bet is to leave the hard drives as they are..you will not benefit at all for home use stuff...
Opus

P.S...hey James/Kent/Bob/Jimbob....lol :D

Regards

I have several partitions on three disks. The main reason for this set up is quick recovery in case of a crash. Each partition has it's own job; OS on one, music apps on another, actual working data/song files on another, archived data/song files on yet one more and then 2 partitions for "image" files. I use Drive Image to "take a picture" of each partition when a new app has been added and everything is getting along. Then if you add a program that screws the registry or makes something else not work right you just reformat and restore the last "good" image. Experiment with new stuff worry-free. My machine is audio only so I don't have to deal with real life on the DAW but I would think a partition for "Everything else that ain't music" apps and another for the associated data might be useful. This is where a second OS comes in as well...one set up for music w/correct hardware profiles and whatnot on it's own partition...but I'm not there yet. I have a blank partition in place figuring it was easier than adding one later(Partition Magic is good but it can be a slow process). With 100 gigs of hard drive you certainly have room to try a few things out. One more thought as far as performance goes. The outside part of the HD moves faster than the inside so there is a performance gain if you locate your primary audio partition as first logical drive on the second physical drive.

FWIW

lou

I have one physical hard drive (75 gig IBM) and I have it partitioned (partition magic) 3 times. 1st partition is a 7.5gig (7.5gigs because 98 doesn't like booting past a set number of heads or cylinders or something, and it comes out to about 7.5 gigs.... fdisk will tell you that) os partition (for games and shit, I switch off between win98fe/se-winxp-win2kpro), 2nd partition is 10gigs and runs win2kpro (for all audio and straight "business" apps), and the 3rd partition is the rest of my hard drive, and that's all storage stuff. Just about to errect my digital audio interface, and when that happens, I will probably get another hard drive for storage of the music stuff.

I would recommend not having all your valuable's on the same partition as your OS(either on a diff. partition on the same disk, or on an entirely seperate physical disk). That way if you have to format your OS partition, you may do so without risking your other stuff. I would also say that you don't really need any more space on an OS partition than say 10 gigs (on win2k). That should give you plenty of room to install all your apps and shit. I also would promote NTFS as opus does. Plus it's more stable, and there was some other reason to use it over FAT, but I forgot what that was (something along the lines of "can store bigger individual files" plus some other reason I ALSO can't remember ). Hope I could help.