SSD Boot drive partition?

[9fingers]

I'm about to place an order for a new desktop and it wasn't until prompted at checkout that I remembered to allocate drive partitions. I will be using a 250 gb
SSD as a boot drive and for storing programs I use regularly, such as Lightroom. How much space, if any, should I allocate to a partition for the os(Windows 7 Premium) I will using a 1tb HDD for general storage. Thanks in advance.

 

[Mordant]

I would just have the SSD as one partition and install the OS and programs there.

Then have the HDD as one partition for data and games / any large programs you don't want on the SSD.

I used to have separate partitions for OS and programs and data and etc but got fed up with running out of space in one partition but not the others - particularly the OS partition.

 

[Spuff]

Unless you plan to very regularly take an image of your OS then I wouldn't bother with partitions.
Do you plan to stick with Windows 7 forever? If not, whatever space that may take up may not be what W10 will take.
As Mordant says, the size of your OS will change as you go on. You will either be frustrated that you have wasted space in the OS partition or that you have run out of space.

 

[9fingers]

Hi, Thanks for the reply. I managed to find another source which basically said the same with regards to the SSD boot drive. However, regarding the HDD, what do you think about 'short stroking', setting a partition at the point of the drives best performing sectors? Any experience? Is it as fast 'they' claim?
Cheers!

 

[9fingers]

Good point, thank you!

 

[Spuff]

It's up to you if you fancy tweaking your HDD about, but personally I wouldn't bother.
I have got a 1TB external drive which I partitioned into 3 and I wish I hadn't. I didn't do it for speed, but if you can speed it up much by the right partitions I don't think it's worth the gain over the inelegance of my data sitting in different rooms and wasted space.

 

[ubuysa]

Some contrary views (just for balance you understand )...

In principle I agree with the suggestion to not partition the SSD and install Windows and all programs on there. This makes it very easy to reinstall/restore the OS and programs without losing data (which will be on the HDD). However, 250GB is a big disk and a massive amount of useful space will be wasted. I have a 120GB SSD with only Windows and programs on it and I'm using less than 80GB of that space. I'm happy with that, it gives the wear levelling algorithms something to work with, but using only 80GB of a 250GB SSD seems like a waste to me. I'd be tempted to allocate a 120GB partition to Windows and programs and a second 120GB (or so) partition for high performance data. The HDD could then be used for backup and data archive.

It's true that the outer tracks of a HDD are slightly faster (because the data density is lower) and reducing seek time by "short-stroking" is always a good idea. Multiple partitions is not the best way to achieve this effect though, data optimisation is much more effective. Buy a copy of Ultimate Defrag from http://disktrix.com, it will allow you to place your high performance data on the faster outer tracks and your rarely used data (out of the way) on the inner tracks. This will give you the "short-stroke" effect you're looking for with your high performance data.