possible partition?

[jhill1]

i just reformatted my hd and reinstalled xp... and when i was loading off the disk, it asks what partitions you want to put it on, so i made a 5 gig partition that i want to use for just windows, and then i want the rest which is about 145 gigs for everything else, as if i had 2 hdd's. everytime i try to install a program, it goes to c:/program files/xxxxxx, and i dont know how to do a program files type thing on the second partition...

is what i did possible, and if it is (i think it is) how do i do it?

 

[jhill1]

does anybody know i kinda need an answer

 

[HyunYu]

It's possible, but kinda pain. Most programs will let you specify where to put the files; when installing, choose "Custom" install options, not "Typical," and just change the drive letter in the path to D: (so that you'll end up with "D:\Program Files\xxxxx..."

I really wouldn't advice a 5GB partition for Windows, though. A lot of programs will put files in the Windows folder, as well as
C:\Program Files\Common Files", and you can't really change that easily. Not to mention pagefile (which can be manually relocated to a different drive), various updates over time, etc., and you'll probably run out of disk space on the C: drive sooner than later. The only time I'll partition a physical drive into two or more logical drives is if I want to put all my data files in one partition or some such; logical partitioning is never for performance gain, nor for keeping the Windows installation clean, for the aforementioned reasons.

 

[jhill1]

i know what ur saying, but there is no program files on the second partition so do i just make one?

 

[Navid]

Hello again.

You can partition the rest of the drive and give it a drive letter like D.

However, you need to be sure that is really what you want to do. There are pros and cons with such a setup (installing your programs on a different partition).

The main advantage is that every time you re-install your OS, your partition D, which could contain your pictures, music, movies etc. remains unchanged. So, you won't have restore all that.

The main disadvantage is that some programs that you install on D will not run anymore if you re-install your OS because the registry settings or dll files will be missing. So, you will have to re-install those programs anyway.

Anyway, if you are sure you want to do this, right click on "My Computer" and click on "Manage". In the left pane, click on "Disk Management". In the right pane, right click on the remaining part of the hard drive and click on "Format". After that, you will be able to use the remaining part as drive D.

When you install a program and by default it offers to install on C:\Program Files\......., just change C with D.

The Operating Systems forum may be a better forum for this.

 

[jhill1]

thanks, i got impatient with the answer, even though it was a short period of time, and just deleted all the partitions, made the 1 big one and installed windows on that one