New PC: how best to partition

Thirith

I'll probably be buying a new PC within the next 1-2 months. The one I have my eye on has a 1TB SSD and a 2TB HDD; I'd possibly buy another SSD or use an external SSD.

My current thoughts concerning the drives and how to partition them is as follows:

Drive 1 (SSD):
- Partition C:, 400GB, Windows and programmes such as the Office suite
- Partition , 600GB, non-Steam games (Uplay, Origin, Epic, Oculus)

Drive 2 (HDD):
- Partition E:, documents, OneDrive, media etc.

Drive 3 (SSD, if internal):
- Partition F:, Steam games

Does this make sense? Any changes you'd suggest? Alternatively, I could also imagine using the larger partition on the SSD for Steam games, i.e. keeping fewer of them installed, and then using an external SSD for non-Steam games. At the same time, since I'd be paying a fair amount for the PC, I'm thinking that getting the additional internal SSD wouldn't make a huge difference financially.

zepherin

I have alway been a fan of having a smaller boot drive just be windows, and cache. And then image that drive after all of the initia updates, just in case windows shits the bed in the future it’s a 30 minute fix no matter how bad things got borked

120 gig SSD (C:)
Windows

HDD
Docs and stuff...and porn.

1TB SSD
Partition 1 steam games
Partition 2 other programs.

Thirith

Is 120GB enough for Windows 10 plus updates? I remember numerous times in the past when I thought I'd left more than enough space for a Windows partition only to find that I was running out of space.

zepherin

I think windows and office with the latest updates are only about 40 gig, you can always go bigger, but I am a big fan of just windows and office and updates on a drive that’s it. But that’s just me and these days I do 95% of my stuff on a laptop or tablet.

Smurph

Thirith wrote: »

Is 120GB enough for Windows 10 plus updates? I remember numerous times in the past when I thought I'd left more than enough space for a Windows partition only to find that I was running out of space.

It is, you'll just have to clean out some junk a few times a year.

bowen

100gb is the bare minimum I'd go on windows partitions for anything higher than 7.

TBH, though, I'd just straight up do 1 partition per drive. Managing partitions sucks. Use clonezilla to make a copy of your fresh install and just restore the image when you want to start fresh again.

Unknown

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Thirith

With the size of some current games (and media, though I've got a NAS for those), it's not that difficult to run out of space, so I prefer to keep my games separate from my Windows partition.

Shadowfire

Then use a separate drive. Get a cheap 120GB for Windows and a 1TB for the rest.

Thirith

Read the top post. I'll be getting a pre-built PC with two drives, hence the partition question.

Shadowfire

I did. But 120GB is plenty for Windows and Office. You can run windows on a 50GB drive and still get updates done.

Partitioning isn't ideal anymore. If you can do a separate drive then when windows comes crashing down it doesn't take a lot with it.

Unknown

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Thirith

Cheers, that makes sense.

L Ron Howard

I ran out of room with a 300 GB partition of Windows. Granted, I am using 7, but I fail to see how Win 10 would be better.

And if you do any development, there are a stupid amount of tools, like Visual Studio, that eat up the C: drive because MS can't think that maybe you want to download all of it to another drive, and install it somewhere other than C:. Same goes for Android, because Android SDK installs to C: naturally because why would you want it anywhere else?

I say don't partition your first HD, but the rest look good.

Thirith

L Ron Howard wrote: »

I say don't partition your first HD, but the rest look good.

Thanks, that does sound like a good option, especially with people saying that partitioning is no longer really necessary. The risk of running out of space is mainly there with Steam; while I have a bunch of games from other stores using other launchers, those wouldn't make Windows feel crowded.

bowen

Thirith wrote: »

L Ron Howard wrote: »

I say don't partition your first HD, but the rest look good.

Thanks, that does sound like a good option, especially with people saying that partitioning is no longer really necessary. The risk of running out of space is mainly there with Steam; while I have a bunch of games from other stores using other launchers, those wouldn't make Windows feel crowded.

Let me introduce you to this amazing tool:

http://www.traynier.com/software/steammover

Thirith

That does sound pretty nifty, thanks!

Elvenshae

Steam will actually do that natively now; no need for Steammover.

bowen

You do have to make a steam library first though right?

BlindZenDriver

Thirith wrote: »

With the size of some current games (and media, though I've got a NAS for those), it's not that difficult to run out of space, so I prefer to keep my games separate from my Windows partition.

Not sure I follow that logic. Yes, it will it easier to move the game partition to a bigger drive and thus partition only when dividing drives one also increases the risk of having two partitions where neither has sufficient space yet combined they would easily - example you need 60 GB and have two partitions with 50 GB free each.

Since games hardly grow much when installed, I find it easy to decide if a game goes on one drive or another. Essentially for me it is fill one drive and then when I run out of space I add a new drive or uninstall something I'm done with.

When selecting what drives to get remember that games are really install once and then run lots of times, so focus on drives that are fast when reading and look less at their write speed. Doing so should mean you can go with cheaper/older drives as the SSD's which are great at writing and reading tens to cost more. It also means you can get good use of older SSD's you may have laying around, in my main rig I have two HDD and 6 SSD's where some are as small as 256 GB since why not use them.

PS. Remember to also buy storage for backup, making it slow and big conventional drives should be fine.

L Ron Howard

bowen wrote: »

You do have to make a steam library first though right?

If you're moving it, you just move the steam directory, delete the Steam executable, and then install the new steam in that directory. It does the rest.
If you're transferring the library from another drive, you just point it to the directory and it handles the rest.

evilmrhenry

Orca wrote: »

Personally, this is how I've done things (granted, with a 512 GB SSD and a 4 TB disk, but same concept):

SSD: OS, games that I have explicitly placed there for speed (e.g. Battletech, Arma, Battlefield), applications that I have allowed there also for speed (development tools), user directories (includes junctions to Disk)
Disk: Default game installation, default application installation, media

This is basically my setup as well. Enough stuff insists upon installing to C that I don't want to have to be careful. Games and media are basically the only things that use enough space to matter, anyway.