You don't have to, but I suggest the following setup
C:SWAPFILE 1.5GB NTFS, D:WINXP 5.5GBNTFS,E:OTHER 33GB NTFS.
The logic here is placing the swapfile at the front of the drive, then have Windows and serious apps (like office, photoshop,etc.) in the Windows drive. Then have a crap-load of space for other stuff: games, mp3, w4r3z;)...
This way, when windows gets fscked up, you can just reformat the windows and swap partitons and just have to reinstall your games rather than reconfigure everything and lose all your saved games.
 
There will be a zillion different responses to this question, but this is an example of how I have one of my machines. The other one has a nice 80GB RAID 0 NTFS drive.
 
And do use NTFS, it can save yer arse if something fouls up--just don't mess with it when it's trying to fix your system back up.

Quote:C:SWAPFILE

I want to do this...but with a raid array...figure it would be the same way? and wondering how you throw the swap to that particular HD partition.



But...I would definatly go along with Brian with the NTFS thing

also....you could throw an extended partition on there and throw linux on too.

Its all personal choice and to me, its all about what you want to do and how you want it to 'look'. If I just had one 40GB HD and was only going to run one OS, then I'd break it up into two.
 
That would then allow you to store all of your settings and personal data on the second one and if/when you need to reformat or reinstall your O/S, then you don't lose anything important. It would also give you a place to ghost your primary partition too for a quick and easy restore job.
 
I'd have the main partition as NTFS, and the second as FAT32 (so you can access it easily from DOS if soemthing goes wrong with NT - though you can get programs/drivers to read NTFS drives from a DOS environment).
 
I do something similar atm.
 
If you are going to or thinking about having a muitple boot system thought, then I'd recommend having a thrid partition around 10MB thats just FAT and having something like System Commander residing on it to manage it all. I say that because in the past setting up multiple boots at a later date can be a pain if an O/S is on the same drive.
 
--Cynan.

Thanks for the replies. I will try 2 different partitions. One for the OS and some common apps and the other for games and mp3s, etc. Thanks for the advice everyone.

o....btw on the NTFS comments....you can only read files in linux when u mount an NTFS partition. If you are a linux buff, throw on fat32 for your non-os partitions

I have a 40GB and i have it split up into 5.
 
C:\ Windows 4.5GB
D:\ Apps 10GB
E:\ Games 13GB
F:\ Work 5GB
G:\ Julie (my mams drive) 5GB
 
But it is just personal choice.
 
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1.2AMD Athlon Thunderbird
Gigabyte 71XE4 M/Board
512MB PC133 Hyundai RAM
NVIDIA 64MB GeForce 2MX200 AGP
Seagate 40GB 5400Rpm ATA/100 HDD
Lite-On 16/10/40 BurnProof ReWriter
40x Compaq CDRom Drive
36x Creative CDRom Drive
Hauppage PrimioFM WinTV/Radio Card
Creative SoundBlaster 128PCI
NetGear 10/100Mbps Fast Ethernet Adapter - cable connection
Blackwidow 648 USB Scanner
Epson 580 USB Printer
 
WindowsXP Professional Corporate Platinum Edition
WindowsXP Plus Pack!
OfficeXP Professional with FrontPage
Publisher XP
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I have two 40gb hard drives connected to the raid controller. I have the HD split into 9 partitions (about 10gb each). They're all FAT32, I'll probably switch to NTFS soon.
 
C:\ D:\ E:\ F:\ G:\ H:\ I:\ J:\ K:\
 
Everything works just fine.

Wow, I am lazy and just use a single partition for my 20, 25, 30, and 40GB harddrives on my workstations (NTFS, of course). I always use servers for storage, so formatting the entire partition is never a problem.
 

I keep all my partition at one size two.. but if you have only one disk, then its handy to have another place to move stuff around too.
 
As for the swap partition, thats probably a good idea... never done it myself though.