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| Hard Disk installation guide |
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Back to a normal installation without size limitations ( by MS)
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Since the HDD is, in most cases, run on a Microsoft operating system, the better alternative is to use Microsoft's "fdisk" utility. In order to use it, there must be at least the rescue version of W95 loaded or, alternatively, the version that is included in the setup disk for W95/98. It is a bit tedious and studded with warnings about erasing all data on the HDD but it is worth it. So, how is it done? It looks scarier and more complicated than it actually is.
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Next, type "fdisk"
You will see a DOS screen with a lot of writing and at the bottom there is a line that says:
"Do you wish to enable large disk support (Y/N) .....[N]
This option allows you to select the file allocation table (FAT) you want to use on the new HDD. That means that fdisk will analyze the HDD and give you a report on its size. If the HDD is bigger than 512 MB, you will have the options to use either FAT16 or FAT32. What that means is that you will employ either a 16 bit or a 32 bit file allocation table, that is, the number of possible files that can be saved on the HDD is either 216 or 232. This is not exactly true, because 4 bits are reserved for other purposes and thus the actual number of possible files is 212 and 228, respectively. In real life, this means that the space available on the HDD is divided into clusters of equal size and the number of clusters is 212 in the case of FAT 16 and 228 in the case of FAT 32. Since each file is saved in its own cluster, this also means that even a small file will occupy one entire cluster and the remaining free space within this cluster becomes unusable.
So, since the number of clusters in FAT 32 is so much higher than in FAT 16, the cluster size necessarily must be substantially smaller and, ergo, the amount of wasted space will be much less, too. True. But FAT 32 has some other drawbacks. Imagine that you have to scan 212 addresses to find the one that you are looking for or 228, which one is going to take longer? In fact, while using FAT 32 can save you up to 30% HDD space, it is also substantially slower. In addition, there is more strain on the HDD controller, which can lead to an earlier demise of the drive. My own recommendation for HDD installation is to use FAT 16 and as many partitions as necessary (the size limit is 2048 MB or 2Gig).
The choice of partitions
Usually I am using one partition for the OS only with enough extra space to accommodate programs that can only be run from C, that is 500 MB to 1 GB. The second partition is used as swap file only. The third partition is used for programs and the following partitions for documents, data, games etc., depending on the size of the HDD.
The advantage of this configuration is that even if the OS is completely corrupted, I can safely reformat the C drive without jeopardizing the other programs and data/documents. Of course, any program that modifies the registry has to be reinstalled afterwards but since the installation procedure looks for already present components, the reinstallation usually goes in no time at all. Other programs that don't modify the registry are not affected at all by "format C:
Having the swapfile (virtual memory) in a separate partition (drive) has the advantage that this file which constantly expands and shrinks and, by doing so, interleaves with the other files on the drive containing the operating system (if you let Windows manage it). This results in no time in severe fragmentation of the HD which slows down the file access and requires frequent defragmentation of the partition / drive (which only lasts until the next program is opened, anyway). The drawback is that the swapfile cannot be positioned at the first and fastest sectors of the HDD, as a consequence a small performance hit is encountered (less than 0.5 %).
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