Tutorial Author : [SHR]Thanatos

This tutorial will show you how to setup your new blank hard drive for optimum system performance.

Some disclaimers first:

1. If you are one of those people that insist on getting every byte of space from your hard drive then stop reading. This tip is not for you.

2. If your hard drive is less than 4G in size then this probably won't help you.

3. If you're using Win95/98/M E then I wouldn't bother with this. Those operating systems are so different in the way they handle memory, virtual memory, and machine resources that I consider them separate from NT/2000/XP. They're not even the same species.

Alright with that out of the way let's get started.

So you're sitting there with your brand new PC or your brand new hard drive, you've got your XP (or 2000) CD in your hand and you're ready to build your machine.

You boot to the CD and you get that lovely blue screen (no not that one) with the text "Setting Up Windows". It loads all the necessary drivers and you get to the point where it asks you where to install.

Your system is in one of two states at this point. The drive is truly blank (unpartitioned and unformatted) or you already have an OS and some applications installed. If you bought the PC from a major manufacturer (i.e. Dell, Compaq) then it probably came with a version of Windows previously installed along with some support applications. If you're happy with how they've installed it then that's fine. I'm not. I wipe out new PC's as soon as I get them so I can install things the way I want.

If you have existing partition(s) then you have the option of wiping them out. If you're building the system from scratch it's never a bad idea to delete the existing ones and create new ones.

Note: Someone once recommended that you format a partition prior to deleting it and creating a new partition. This is false. There is absolutely no point in doing that. Deleting a partition deletes all the information on that partition along with it's formatting.

Step 1: Let's assume you have a 20G hard drive. What I do with a drive that size is create a primary partition of 4096M (4G), NTFS file system, and tell it to install Windows there. This is the only partition we're going to create at this point of the install. That leaves us with 16G of space that's unpartitioned. That's fine. We'll get to that later.

Windows installs and we reboot. Hopefully it knows what all our hardware is and we can continue.

Step 2: After you're all rebooted and sitting there at your desktop, do the following:

Open up the Management Console (you can get to this through Control Panel | Performance and Maintenance | Administrator Tools or simply right click on My Computer and go to Manage) double click on Storage and then double click Disk Management.

You should see on Disk 0 a 4G primary partition and 16G unpartitioned space.

Before we do anything we're doing to select Disk 1 (the CD/DVD), right click and change it's drive letter to F: . You'll see why in a bit.

Step 3: Now highlight the unpartitioned portion of Disk 0, right click and select Create Partition. What we're going to do is create an Extended partition and not a primary one. Use the full amount of space left, whatever number is left there automatically.

Why?

Two reasons:

1. Extended partitions aren't bootable. Which is fine because we already have our C: drive as bootable and that's where our OS is. No need for another one.

2. We can create Logical Drives within Extended partitions. Which we will.

After the partition is created then right click on it again and select Create riLogical Dve. Set it's size to 4096M (4G), NTFS file system, label the volume PageFile, drive letter D: , and tell it to format. This is going to be our virtual memory.

Step 4: After the format is complete select the remainder of the Extended partition (12G), right click, Create Logical Drive, take whatever number is in there (remainder of the space), label the volume Apps or Programs (or whatever you want), drive letter E: , and format it. This is where all our programs (and games) are going to be installed.

Now you're done with your disk. What you have is:

Drive C: 4G - Primary bootable partition containing Windows
Drive D: 4G - Empty but not for long
Drive E: 12G - Empty but only until you start installing... stuff
Drive F: CD/DVD

But you say. Why? Why am I going to all this trouble? Why can't I just create one big partition in the beginning?

You certainly can. And I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that per se, but let's think about it.

Say we create one big partition and a Windows system file goes corrupt on us. We try to fix it through disk checks, recovery console, repair disk, etc. , but everything fails. Our only option is to repartition and reformat. With one big partition you lose everything. My way we only have to go back and do it to the primary partition. Everything on the E: drive can stay the way it is and will still be there after the reinstall. Now granted, you're going to have to reinstall all those programs and games because a lot of times installers will drop necessary files into the WINNT directory but you'll still have all the stuff you added later. Like maps in TFC. Or maps that you're making that are still in progress.

Alright but what's the D: drive for then?

Virtual memory.

Step 5: Change your virtual memory settings.

For WinXP: Right click on My Computer | Properties | Advanced | Performance Settings | Advanced | Virtual Memory | Change. In XP you'll see this probably set to System Managed Size.

For Win2000: Right click on My Computer | Properties | Advanced | Performance Options | Virtual Memory | Change. You'll see values listed there.

What you're going to want to do here is move the virtual memory to D:. You don't want any on C: . Take the recommended size and set that as the initial value, double the recommended and set that as your maximum. Again, all set on D: .

What this does for you is give you one continuous paging file for your virtual memory no matter what size it grows to. This will also prevent the virtual memory from inadvertently filling the C: drive due to growth. Because that's a bad thing. It will also let you go back later and readjust it if you find you need more than what you've currently set. Again, all the time keeping the pagefile.sys physically continuous on that partition. Which is what you want.

That's it. We're done. Reboot and feel free to install what you want. Just remember though... everything goes on the E: drive. That's where the majority of your space is now.