new build finally

seanandnik

seanandnik

New Member
well i've been debating on building a new rig for awhile now, my brother helped me along by crashing my hard drive, so i went to newegg and moved my wish list into the shopping cart and pulled the trigger. core 2 duo e6600,gigabyte aurora case,2 gigs wintec ddr800, 2 340 gig seagate perpendicular recording hdds running raid 0,xfx 256 7900gs video card,asus p5b-e mobo,sunbeam 550 nuuo psu, 2 sata dvd/cd burners,gigabyte galaxy II liquid cooling,and evercool copper cpu cooler,(will return 1, just not sure which yet) sony floppy drive, fan controller/card reader,ram heatsinks,hdd heatsinks,roung floppy cables, went with xp pro with a vista coupon for later. 1st build so i have lots of questions, like how do i partition my hard drive? the physical build i think i can handle, but you guys are going to have to help me with the programming. thanks in advance. spent $1650 and cannot find comparable prebuilt for under $2200.
 
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Cool post pics along the way, I like seeing a new computer being built, I am sure everyone here will be glad to help you.
 
Partitioning while installing Windows is actually quite easy. Part way through the first stage of the installation you will see a screen like this:
5185.jpg


Choose c to create partition, you will see a screen like this:
5186-500-275.jpg


Enter the size of the first partition. Continue pressing c and entering the size of the partitions you want until you've used all available space. Then choose the partition you want to install on and continue the installation.

Once the installation has been completed you will be able to format the additional partitions through Windows.
 
size?

ceewi1, i know nothing about partitions,what do you mean" continue creating partitions until all space is used up" How many partitions do i need ? also i am using two 320gb drives in a raid 1 (mirror), do i format and partition both drives? format first or partition first? what size do i need for winxp? so by reading that it leads me to believe that i have to make a 320 gb partition on each drive , correct?
 
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I assumed you wanted to split the one physical drive into several various sized partitions.

If you're using a RAID array, you'll need to configure that first. Your motherboard manual should tell you how to do this (assuming you're using the built-in RAID feature). You will also need to load the appropriate RAID driver at the start of the Windows setup (one of the first screens asks you to press F6 to install RAID drivers). Once done, the two drives should appear as a single drive to Windows setup. If you only want a single partition, follow the instructions in my previous post but select the entire size of the drive as the size of the first partition.
 
partitions?

what are the advantages/disadvantages of one large partition? do i want a few smaller partitions? like i said i know nothing about them. yes my mobo (asus p5be) comes with a raid driver/controller, i have never used raid before but after my hdd just crashed it would have been nice to have had it backed up and whereas my mobo already comes with it, all it cost me was $94 for another drive and 320 gb is a large enough drive for me,so striping it to get 640 g would just give me a useless speed advantage.my last drive was 120g and i had it for 3 years and was only 40gs on it.:confused:
 
i made a 20 gig partition only for the OS (for vista) and left the other 140 gigs for storage (i called it MAss Storage as the E drive). thats personally the best way cause it keeps everything organized. (i had a 160 drive, so for 320 maybe 30/290)
 
30/290

30/290 sounds like a good partition to me, what is the actual purpose of a partition though? why does xp have to be "partitioned" from the rest of the drive?
 
it takes awhile to defrag if it is big so if you make a small partition for boot and remaining for data then when you need to defrage you can just defrag the boot partition.
 
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