Having problems with configuring a good partition scheme

What I propose is this let me know what you think.

Drive1 IDE/ATA 7200RPM 8mb 160GB HD
1 - 12-15GB - Windows XP-OS + My Docs + NORMAL Program Files
2 - 15-20GB - Installation of such things as games etc (bigger than 1 CD installations)
3 - 15-20GB - Data files (use this instead of my docs)
4 - 3GB - Temp Directory Consists of:
    * System Temp Directory
    * Web Browser Cache Directories
    * Downloads
    * Misc temp

This would be a transient partition, anything lost in this partition is of no real loss.

Web browsers write large numbers of small files to cache. These browser caches are beneficial, but play havoc with your drive fragmentation. I just let them do what they want on the temp D: drive and never defragment it. And defragmenting drive C: is vastly easier without this myriad of cache files.

Lots of other programs write temp files to the system temp directory as they work, and the same thing applies as with browser caches.

Reason why place downloads on this small drive? I do it because it forces me to do some file management, else the small partition will fill up. For example, I'm always downloading movies, songs, apps, games, trial software, images etc. When I find something I like and want to keep, I'll move it from Download to Data. Everything remaining in Download is destined for deletion when the partition is, say, 50% full. If I simply downloaded to Data then I would accumulate a whole lot of clutter that I really didn't want to keep, but forgot to delete. And it's really hard to identify what's what months later....


Wether or not Data should be on the primary HD or not I dont know, I am putting it there atm because this drive is 160GB and faster than my 80GB drive. Up for suggestions...

Ok so thats Drive1 done, now Drive2

Drive2 IDE/ATA 7200rpm 2mb cache 80GB (SLAVE as I dont have longer IDE cables to make it its own master on other channel)
1 - ?GB - Music Files / Images (currently Music is 20Gigs, and pics are 700MB)
2 - ?GB - Movies (Currently 25Gigs) + Anime (Currently 12Gigs)
3 - ?GB - Ebooks (Currently 3.5Gigs)
4 - ?GB - Backups
5 - ?GB - Swapfile
backups would be for a C: drive image incase of problems where I need to get my stuff back asap not just use my uA cd.
Also backups of all apps I may need to reinstall etc

My problem is that I really do need to keep a majority of my movies/music/ebooks/images/anime/backups on the bigger disc as this is quite a lot of stuff. Putting this on the 80 is kind of a bad idea im thinking.

Also my disc 1 is looking kind of bare unless i make drive 2 strictly backups and a swapfile, and keep movies, images, anime and ebooks on the data partition.

Another possibility is to switch the drives around have windows be on the 80gig and drive2 be the 160gig. Problem with this is, both drives are IDE/ATA drives not SATA.

The 160gig has an 8MB cache, compared to the 80 having a 2, and putting the OS on the 160 would make it run faster. So now im a little confused.

Some people I meet tell me Windows partition should be no bigger than 7.5GB and Program files on a dif partition with mydocs staying on C:.

So much confusion.

Thanks in advance.

If you are going to install large games into the second partition on the first disck you may want to consider making your system dual boot.  That is, install a separate XP OS into the second partition so that all the game files stay totally separate from your main OS.

To each his own is definitely true for what you are asking about, but from my perspective, you have too many partitions,  especially on disk #2.