Faster, Safer Drives

Are drive partitions worth the hassle? For many users, yes. Here's why.

Storage space: Windows divides your hard drive into segments called clusters. When writing a file to the hard drive, Windows fills as many clusters as it needs to hold the file. The final cluster is only partially filled, so if your drive is formatted with, say, 16KB clusters and you save a 6KB e-mail file, there's 10KB of unused disk space in that cluster. Multiply that by the thousands of files on a hard drive, and you get a big chunk of wasted storage.

Large partitions under FAT32 require large cluster sizes (see FIGURE 1), but cutting your cluster size--from 32KB to 16KB, or even 8KB, for example--can free a substantial amount of disk space. Partitions with cluster sizes smaller than 8KB won't save much storage space, however.

Faster performance: Windows maintains a large file on the hard drive, called a swap file, that extends your PC's physical memory (aka RAM) when you run out. If you place the swap file in its own partition, it will never get fragmented, which will help Windows quickly find data in the file and swap it back to your PC's RAM. Make your swap file's partition at least twice as large as your RAM. Then change the location of your swap file in your Virtual Memory settings to the drive letter of your new partition. In Windows 9 x and Me, right-click My Computer and choose Properties. Click the Performance tab and select the Virtual Memory button. In Windows 2000, right-click My Computer, select Properties, choose the Advanced tab, click the Performance Options button, and select Change under 'Virtual memory'. In Windows XP, right-click My Computer, choose Properties, click the Advanced tab, and click the Settings button under Performance. Now click the Advanced tab and the Change button under 'Virtual memory'.

Safer data: Storing your data files in their own partition can shield them from problems elsewhere on your hard disk. If Windows becomes corrupted, simply reformat and reinstall the OS in its own partition with no fear of losing important data files stored in other partitions.

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