I'm doing a clean installation of Windows 10 on a 2 TB hard drive. I plan on partitioning my disk into 3 partitions. C: would be where I would install the OS and keep all Windows related files, D: would contain all multimedia files (pictures, videos, music, audio, etc.), and E: would be where I would install all my games and programs.On my Windows 7 (formerly Vista) machine I partitioned a 1 TB drive into quarters because 2009 me thought 1 TB was too big to be a disk on it's own. It was useful in 2 situations: 1) When I had to reinstall windows, I only needed to format the C part and kept my other files on the disk undisturbed. 2) When running other OSes (like Linux) from another disk, I could mount my music without all the other (unreadable) files.With 2TB to play with, how should I distribute the partitions?
It's a 64-bit system with 8 GB of RAM.The minimum requirement says 20 GB. Plus some free space for memory dumps and page files, so 28-30GB? Plus some space for documents and save files (lots of games save to user's document folder, there's no way around this), right now on my current machine, my users directory is using 40GB, so maybe allow 100GB for that?With that last paragraph in mind that gives me about 150GB, is that too much or too little?This is roughly what I plan to do, the numbers won't be exact, because of the way computers handle disk space. For simplicity's sake lets assume 2 TB = 2000 GB)C: (150 GB) for the OS, save files, and some programsD: (750 GB) for all multimediaE: (1100 GB) for all programs and gamesWhat would you do? 90GB for the C: drive dedicated to windows only is more than 3x the amount windows should need.
Why Does Windows 10 Have 2 Recovery Partitions
I'm doing a clean installation of Windows 10 on a 2 TB hard drive. I plan on partitioning my disk into 3 partitions. C: would be where I would install the OS and keep all Windows related files, D: would contain all multimedia files (pictures, videos, music, audio, etc.), and E: would be where I would install all my games and programs. If you’ve bought a PC with Windows 8 or 10 installed, you may be surprised to find that there is not quite as much storage space available as you would expect based on the size of your hard drive. This could be for a couple of reasons, including a Windows recovery image occupying several gigabytes.
I usually install windows 10 on old 60GB SSDs used at boot drives and they do not run out of space. Nowadays the smallest SSDs are all 120GB, and cheap at $40. And creating a backup image. Clone of the boot drive is quick and easy.I wouldn't bother partitioning the the 2TB just to separate out media from apps. One D: drive for everything else. Creating that partition will only cause hassles for yourself.
BTW I also redirect all the windows user directory (save files, appdata/local,roaming, etc.) to the D: drive.The whole point of separating this out, is that when windows gets infested, corrupted, you do not need to reinstall everything, just re-image the C: drive and then you are good to go in less than 10 minutes. I'd make the Windows partition at least 120GB since many programs will end up installing stuff in the Windows system tree and boot drive Programs folders regardless of where you want to install the rest of your applications.I used to make my system partition only 60GB until 4-5 years ago where I wanted to install Visual Studio on my PC and it needed 3-4GB of extra space on C: to install all of the extra debug, SDK, runtimes, etc. And I had to spend a few hours moving stuff around to free up that much space.When I got my 480GB SSD two years ago, I simply went full size for the boot partition. What is your objective?With just a windows and related partition, you might think that would make it easy to reinstall windows. Not so, the programs and apps will be using the windows registry. Steam games might have a solution.On a hard drive, separating the functions will have a negative impact on performance.It will make the access arm move over a much wider range increasing latency.Space management will be harder.
120gb will fill up quickly with just windows. With another adjacent partition already mapped, you have nowhere else to go.My suggestion is to keep it simple.Install everything in a single large C partition.And. If you are of a mind to reinstall everything, consider installing windows on a SSD.240gb is reasonable, 500gb is better.Use the hard drive for large sequential files such as videos and backups. This is roughly what I plan to do, the numbers won't be exact, because of the way computers handle disk space. For simplicity's sake lets assume 2 TB = 2000 GB)C: (150 GB) for the OS, save files, and some programsD: (750 GB) for all multimediaE: (1100 GB) for all programs and gamesWhat would you do?Not really a good setup.The E partition with programs is of no real use, because you need to reinstall the applications anyway if you reinstall the OS.What would.I. do?250GB SSD for OS and applications.The 2TB as a single partition for games and everything else.But if you must, with that single drive.250+GB for the OS and applicationsThe rest of it for games and multimedia.
I assume its a new PC and the Ex vista PC was just used as an example as putting Win 10 on an Ex Vista PC won't work real well - mainly due to no drivers.1. Your partition scheme for 1 drive won't work on Win 10 due to it wanting to use GPT format for the hdd if it recognises your PC has a UEFI bios (and all new motherboards in last 8 years have). Due to way GPT drives boot, 1 partition has to be formatted as FAT so that the PC can boot. All the other partitions have to be formatted as NTFS for windows to work. You don't need to know all this if you just let win 10 install itself as it will make the 4 partitions it needs.typical win 10 partition scheme. Thank you for your replies, after further research, I find that Windows 10 is indeed another animal.
Looks like I came here asking the wrong questions. I was looking for clarification on a small part of my grand plan, which is dual booting Windows and Linux, only to find the whole scheme was flawed. The old MBR partition method that we all grew up with is obsolete, as is its way of thinking.
Looks like it's back to the drawing board to drum up a new plan. I'll have to do further research to find the best way to implement it, but that's a different topic entirely should be discussed in another thread. Sims 4 autonomy mods. For now here is my tentative revised plan:SATA0: 240/250 GB SSD (ESP table; Windows 10 'drive C' and all things that come with it; linux boot partition)SATA1: 2 TB HDD (750 GB media files 'drive D'; rest of disk 'drive E' all other files)SATA2: 1 TB HDD (2-4 GB Linux swap; rest of disk for Linux root).