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Fatter is better when it comes to hard drivesJun 05 '00 Write an essay on this topic.A partition is a division of space on your computer. It essentially splits your large hard drive into several smaller ones. Your hard drive is partitioned in one of two ways. Fat 16, or Fat 32. There is a third type called NTFS, but for the average user I really wouldn't recommend fooling with this one. The most noticable difference between the two is the size of partitions allowable. A FAT 16 will only allow a partition size of 2 GB. The FAT 32 will allow much bigger partitions.(I think 2000GB). Note: You cannot combine the space of two separate hard drives into one partition. If you have 2 hard drives, they must have thier own separate partitions. Fat 16 is what older computers use. The problem with FAT16 is that every file you have has to take up at least 32K of memory. If there is a file that takes up 8K of memory, then that leaves you with 24K of unusable disk space. (not too efficient). What makes FAT32 better is the cluster size(least amount of space possible for a file to take), is down to 4K. That means if you have that same 8K file, then it would simply take 2 clusters and not waste any space. The maximum amount of space that can be wasted is just shy of 4k, while FAT16 is just shy of 32k. AS I have been so humbly informed some programs such as partition magic can in fact change the FAT in your system from FAT 16, to FAT 32. Or if you prefer a less efficient machine, FAT32 to FAT16. Now that you have you FAT in place, you have to decide how many partitions to make. You can make your entire drive just one single partition, which really is the most efficient use of space, or you can divide it up into smaller partitions. My Machine has a 20GB hard drive with four partitions. Each partition is 5GB. This way I can sort my files in a way that makes them easier to manage. For instance, any system files goes into the C drive. This includes the Operating system(windows), Drivers for extra hardware, web browsers, or anything else that I don't access myself. I have another partition for utilities. This would be where my Word processor goes, as well as anything else found in MS office. One is used for my games, and the other is for data storage. The last one is where I keep any humorous movie clips, or sound files I have collected. It's also used for making CD backups. I always have a lot of space available on this partition so I can put a CD image here and then copy it onto a CD-R. I recommend splitting your drive into reasonably large partitions, but still allowing for the managability of multiple partitions. Don't put too many partitions either. I knew a guy who had 17 or 18 partitions and that's rediculous. Here is why this is so inefficient. Imagine 18 medium sized cups of water. Now, you can't fill each one up all the way because they will spill over. And on a hard drive, you can only fill it to it's maximum size. So if you want to add a new game that needs 400Mb of space, and you only have 350MB available on your games drive, then you can't put it there. Now imagine the same amount of water in only 1 large cup. now you can fill it almost all the way up before you encounter the problem of overflow. On your hard drive, If you added up all of you partitions into one you have a new situation. imagine 17 partitions each with 350MB left. Now add those into one large partition. you now have almost 6 GB to play with, which easily fits your 400MB game. The choice is yours, but remember to think about what you need before partitioning.  |
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