My biggest convenience from having partitions is that you can: erase,
format, defrag, search, and copy a partition in a lot less time than a
drive. Plus, you can have the same absolute folder pathnames in multiple
partitions, keeping you away from folder pathnames that are as long as your
arm. I keep a \my documents and an \outlook folder on every drive, for
instance.
As for performance, if you plan on managing the swap file, locate your swap
file if you can, at the very beginning of the first partition on your
fastest disk.  Personally, I don't, but its supposed to be best.

Tom Turak

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Rode [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2001 3:19 PM
...............
You do want to make sure that your swap file is on the first partition of
the drive. This is the fastest area of the drive. If you have two physical
IDE hard drives installed on two separate channels (Primary and Secondary),
then put the swap file on the first partition of the second hard drive so
that your computer can access the operating system and the swap file
simultaneously. I am assuming that the two hard drives are similar in
performance. As a general rule you want the swap file on your fastest hard
drive.
...............
Rode
The NOSPIN Group

>I am upgrading a Win 98 SE machine with a large hard drive, 30
>Gigabytes. There is the option of dividing the drive into
>smaller logical drives.  Does anyone have any suggestions or guidelines as
>to whether efficiency of the drive in speed of read/write, retrieval would
>be increased or decreased by dividing the drive or not, what the optimum
>sector size would be by adjusting the logical drive size, etc.?

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