I've been spending some time strategizing my next partition layout for the new 150GB Raptor I just ordered.  Ever since I started partitioning my current 200GB hard drive, I became a junkie on the concept, and have been trying to get as efficient a setup as I can.

Now currently my 200GB is partitioned as so:

C: (Boot) - 30GB (7GB now free, but with NFSU2, NFSMW, Guild Wars, a few random games, and all of my programs installed on that drive)
D: (Dual-Boot) - 15GB (currently empty, used for Vista CTPs and such)
E: (Multimedia - 145GB (Remainder.  This is where I moved all of my special folders, such as Desktop, Favorites, My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, and other folders like my shared folders, video and photo collections, DVDs, and all other large and irreplaceable files that I'd have to backup every time I reformatted if I left them on the C partition)

Now what I'd like to do now that I'll have my Raptor (which formats to approximately 139GB) is the following:

Raptor:
C: (Boot) - 25GB (Giving myself a lot of headway for temp folders, swap files, Google Desktop database, programs that don't let me change their default drive location or store folder, etc.).
D: (Dual-boot) - 25GB (I'm purposefully making this one the same size, as when Vista IS released I'd like to dual-boot to it for a while, until I'm comfortable that all of my software and drivers are fully supported).
E: (Fragmentable) - 10GB (This would include my massive Outlook Personal Folders file [currently nearly 2GB in size], the My Documents folder, Desktop, and similar folders in which files are constantly added or deleted or modified or, in the case of the Outlook file, likely to frequently fragment.  This small partition would be designed with frequent and easy defragmentation in mind)
F: (Program Files) - Roughly 69GB (This would be the remainder, and would be where I'd now install all my programs, especially games.  I've generally heard this is a good way to preserve SOME settings and save games and such during a reformat, so I'm going to give it a try.

PATA 200GB:
G: (Multimedia) - One big partition for My Music, videos, shared files, downloads, DVDs, My Picutres, etc.  Most of this won't be high-access or frequently-modified (except maybe the shared folder), and therefore won't demand the speed or defragmentation of the other drives.  Will also be used for backup purposes.

I've also got an old 17.2GB PATA drive I'm going to keep attached for backing up the irreplaceable stuff that's scattered about both of those two drives, such as My Documents, My Pictures and the Outlook e-mail.

So my questions are two-fold:

What do you think of my strategy (Is it sound?  Am I missing something?  Is part of it overkill, or underkill?  Are there problems with the sizes I chose?)?

What would be the smartest order in which to physically place the partitions on the Raptor drive?  I know to put C (I'm not going to bother with a dummy letter for my boot partition) as the first partition for the best performance.  Likewise, I'm putting the dual-boot partition immediately after it so when I do install Vista it won't be on a drastically slower partition than XP (I'll want to figure out how to switch them later, although maybe by the time I'm ready to remove XP I'll be ready to reformat Vista).  The real question mark is what order to put the 10GB and 69GB partitions in.  Logic tells me to have the Program Files partition as close to the outside of the drive as I can manage, but that'll already be over a third of the way in as it is.  Plus it's a large partition that'll porbably fragment easily anyway, possibly undoing some of those benefits.  Plus it's easier for me to get the 10GB partition that exact size if I place it first, although that's a minor point.  Is it worth worrying about at all, or is the speed of the Raptor enough to make this minor choice of placement a moot point?

Thanks!

if you read my ditty on partitioning strategies ...

http://partition.radified.com/

... you know partitioning is a personal thing, and it's hard for someone else to know what is best for you.

and the fact that you will have more than one drive makes partitioning life all the easier. the basic concept is that you want to try to configure you partitioning so that you have *two* drives doing the work, where one normally does the job.

and you want to put Infrequently-accessed files at the end of the drive, which have higher seeks and slower STRs.

Jarrett,

A few things to consider....

Page file
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm

Moving Windows XP default folders
http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=49222

Brian: The former article backed up most of what I've read.  I have 1GB of memory, and my next build will have 2GB, so my page file is hopefully accessed infrequently-enough as to not see a notable performance gain from moving it to a separate drive, particularly one notably slower than my C drive.  The second article contained all common knowledge for me, as I've been keeping my default folders off my C partition for several years now, and even moved my Outlook Express (before switching to Outlook) store files off the C drive without any written instructions (merely dug through the registry and made the obvious changes).  Really, keeping my irreplaceable files off the C partition to speed up and simplify reformats and image restoring has and remains my primary reason for partitioning.

Pleonasm:  Well, his partitioning scheme is quite different, although I don't think it would work for me.  He certainly draws a different conclusion on the benefits of partitioning the swap file, though.  I'm still wondering whether the speed difference between a 10k 16MB cache Raptor and a 7200 8MB PATA would undo that benefit, though.  I suppose, though, as a worst-case scenario I could simply experiment with it.  When I reformat my 200GB drive I can make a 4GB partition for my swap file (a small amount of space to waste) and then test out my system both ways.  Anyone recommendations as to a benchmarking program that might show me the difference in performance?

As for the Ghost problems, it's a moot point for me.  I've had poor luck with Ghost.  I used to use Drive Image before I started having a severe problem with my computer locking up (in an odd way, too, with the mouse and Alt+Tab still functioning, but the programs useless) shortly after startup and on the occasion where my system would make it past startup, it would lockup on random occasions in the same fashion while using it.  After using the Event Viewer I began to notice that Drive Image's system process would launch within about five seconds of every lockup.  I disabled it and the problem went away.  After switching to Ghost, which is based off of Drive Image, the problem went away... and then slowly started again.  After disabling Ghost the problem instantly went away.  I've since switched to Acronis True Image with, knock on wood, no problems.

And I have to agree that most of the performance gains are undone by regular defragmentation which is why I have my computer scheduled to do this regularly.  Still, though, smaller partitions are easier and faster to defragment, as well as not fragmenting quite as severely.  In particular, the logic I picked up from Rad's strategies guide that should have been obvious to me already, is that by keeping my OS on a small partition at the beginning of the drive, it's far less likely to fragment across the entire drive later on with patches and updates.  Even if it is fragmented, it's at least constrained to the fastest area of the drive.  I definitely like that logic.  Still, though, my primary reasons for partitioning remain safety of data, ease of reformatting, and dual-booting, so any performance gains are merely icing on the cake.  But since I'm doing something that could produce them anyway, I might as well do it right.

You will want your swap file, your operating system, and your programs all near each other in order to keep seek times to a minimum. 

Personally, I make a small partition at the beginning of the drive for the swap to keep it on the fastest part of the drive and to keep it from fragmenting.  Next is the OS and most of the programs.  My final and largest partition is file storage (usually an extended partition in case I want to subdivide it at some point to organize my movies or music.)

i would put part of the swap on each disk. you can use multiple partitions for that. windows  lets you configure it that way.