Boost performance
Although a PC used for writing doesn't need to be a high-performance computer, its performance can be improved by a good partitioning scheme. The biggest boost comes from my Paging partition on drive H, which is found on my second physical disk. I use this partition to boost performance in the following ways:
| • | Move the paging file there. A well-known method for improving performance on a Windows-based computer is to move the paging file (pagefile.sys) from its usual location on drive C to its own separate partition on a separate physical drive. |
| • | Keep the Paging partition small (4 GB). By default the initial size of your paging file is 1.5 × RAM and its maximum size is 3 × RAM. So if your computer has 1 GB of RAM, which is pretty good for a desktop productivity computer, then setting your Paging partition to 4 GB gives you more than enough room for your paging file without wasting disk space that could be used for other purposes like storing data. |
| • | Format it using the FAT32 file system. Although the version of NTFS in Windows XP has features that make it perform better than earlier versions of NTFS, you can still eek out some performance gains for small volumes by formatting them as FAT32 instead of NTFS. I'm not overly concerned about the lack of security from not having pagefile.sys protected by NTFS permissions since it's an unreadable binary file. If someone hacked into my system, they wouldn't need to bother with the paging file anyway. |
| • | Replace old 5400 rpm drives with newer 7200 or 10000 rpm drives. If you have the budget, you can speed performance of disk activity by installing one of these faster drives. |
If you have IDE drives, you can also boost file system performance by setting both physical disks as masters on separate channels. That way data can flow freely and simultaneously between both disks and the system bus. This setup allows Windows to access and load system files while simultaneously paging to disk. The end result—increased performance. Of course, Paging isn't the only partition I have on my second disk. But since I only access the Archive and Other partitions only a few times per day, the disk is pretty much dedicated to paging activity. But overall the biggest performance gain is usually achieved by moving your paging file to a partition on a separate drive as described above, especially on a system that has limited physical memory. Buying more RAM is of course another way to boost performance.
Tip: NTFS tweaks can also help squeeze some additional performance as I describe in NTFS Performance Hacks, an article I wrote for O'Reilly's WindowsDevCenter.com.
Whether you spend most of your time working or playing on your system, partitioning your disks appropriately can help you keep your work organized, your data safe, and your system humming along. Of course, don't forget to back up all your data before you start partitioning your disks!
