> I have followed this good advice too - since it was suggested to me several
> years ago by associates who work with NT a lot. Since then I haven't had any
> NT stability issues (I did before).
> However I don't know _why_ it is good advice.
> Anyone know why NT likes the system on a separate partition etc (or why it
> is, or was, unstable if all jumbled together) ?
There are a couple of issues... One is simply a data recovery rule of 'cover
your arse before the shit hits the fan'... If the OS and data are separate
partitions then reinstalling NT without hurting data is a breeze... The other
reason is that NTFS is very prone to fragmentation (especially as the
filesystem gets more than 80% full - yes it appears to be a percentage and
not the size of changing data) and due to the heavy use NT tends to be put
to there tends to be a lot of OS loading and unloading state saving etc. If
you want to avoid data savnig from promoting fragmentation of the system,
separate them at the partition level.
NB: Ideally data and OS should be physically separate drives since drive
thrashing can be reduced and System drive damage can be a simple unplug,
replace drive, ghost copy, boot and go...
I would like to move things like the Internet Temporary files for IE5 to my
change partition also but haven't gotten around to that stage.
Ideally I think my installation would be something like
C: Windows 98 {games only so it's a minimum install}
D: NT or Win2k {with the program files removed the size should be
fairly static}
E: Change Partition {Largish for TEMP,INTERNET TEMPORARY
FILES, HISTORY}
F: Application Drive {since I can purchase larger drive and copy
contents over to increase size easily}
G: Data1 {Fat16 for Windows98 and NT accessibility}
H: Data2 {NTFS for important files}
I would probably create ORACLE and MSSQL Databases on E:
Physical Drive 1 = C,D {SCSI 2gb}
Physical Drive 2 = E,F {SCSI 4gb}
Physical Drive 3 = G,H {EIDE 12gb} {E might be better suited here}
DVD Drive {SCSI}
CD Writer or DVD Writer {SCSI}
backups would be need regularly for G and H and possibly part of E
(IE for Databases)...
Things that made noticable perofrmance improvements
1. Repartioning and formatting to 4k clusters
2. removing temporary files from OS partion (up until I began surfing a lot
which is just as bad for fragmentation)
3. installing a cache manager (O&O cache trial)
4. installing more memory (effect boosted by O&O since removing O&O
brought the performance gain down considerably)
One thing I haven't checked is how many current games operate under
Win2k since the driver model has changed considerably. This might make
games with comms for multiplayer misbehave enough to get booted from
memory. For this reason it might be a while until I abandon Win9x from my
C drive.
Also as far as NT hardware goes - twin CPU is great - no system pauses for
drive activity, that sort of thing. Note that adapters are available for slot1 boards
to accept Celerons in MultiCPU enabled form. I'm thinking twin 500 celerons
(due out shortish I believe) should do nicely.
--
Aaron Scott-Boddendijk
Jump Productions
(07) 838-3371 Voice
(07) 838-3372 Fax
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