Chilly McFreeze

This is a bit of a weird one - basically I intended to set my new hard drive up as follows:

Partition 1 - 4 GB Fat32 Partition for my Windows swap file
Partition 2 - 147GB NTFS Partition for my Windows install
Partition 3 - 147GB NTFS Partition for whatever (stuff that I don't want to lose if I have to reinstall Windows etc).

Anyway, I messed it up - during install I accidently started installing to Partition 1. I stopped it, but the end result is that all 3 partitions are now formatted as NTFS (although Windows is on partition 2, so that's one saving grace I suppose!).

As partition 1 is NTFS, my swap file on there is fragmented, and not as efficient as it could be due to NTFS being slower than Fat32. I tried to reformat it in Windows, but it gets all the way to the end of the process and then says it cannot complete the format.

I then booted using an Ubuntu live CD, and took a look at Gnome Partition Manager. This is what I have:
<table frame=border border=5>
<tr><td>Partition</td><td>Filesystem</td><td>Size</td><td>Used</td><td>Flags</td><td>etc....</td></tr>
<tr><td>/dev/sda1</td><td>NTFS</td><td>4GiB</td><td>23.7MiB</td><td> boot</td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>/dev/sda2</td><td>extended</td><td>294GiB</td><td>--</td><td>lba</td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td> /dev/sda5</td><td>NTFS</td><td>147GiB</td><td>9.86GiB</td><td></td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td> /dev/sda6</td><td>NTFS</td><td>147GiB</td><td>7.19GiB</td><td></td><td></td></tr>
</table>

So is the reason Windows won't format it because of the NTFS crap on it, or because it has the boot flag set?

If so could I use Gnome Partion Manager to set another partition as bootable (presumably /dev/sda5 as it has Windows on it) and format it as FAT32? Or having removed the boot flag would Windows then be cool about formatting it?
Any advice would be much appreciated.

Pragma

Out of curiosity, why do you want to keep Windows on FAT32? There's no really good reason why anything should be formatted with that filesystem anymore. I don't think you'll notice any significant speed differences on your swap file between FAT32 and NTFS - not to mention that fragmentation is not really a major issue because it's just one file.

My advice (and how I normally partition) would be to have a 20-30GB drive with the Operating System on it and then everything else on a second (or second and third) partition.

As to your question as to why Windows refuses to format the 4GB partition, I've seen Windows refuse to format stuff if the partition table gets corrupted or otherwise wonky. Given the confusion between disk formats on the first partition, I'd recommend blowing away the partition table and starting fresh anyways.

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cyrnel

Pagefile.sys is locked hard. XP reads it as if the filesystem wasn't there.

I'm curious why it would become fragmented unless you keep up-sizing it in between copying files to the swap partition? A separate partition and fragmentation don't seem to go together. Set min and max to equal values and be done with it.

Really, if you have some need for huge disk paging space you should add another disk.
Going to this effort on the same spindle won't help nearly as much.

With memory prices, you're better off reducing possible paging hits to the disk. If you have even 512MB, set disablepagingexecutive=1 in CurrentControlSet and minimize the pagefile size as appropriate. Tiny if you have more RAM, a little bigger if you don't. Unless your needs are very unusual there's no need for a big pagefile, let alone a separate partition.

I'll second the windows partitioning oddness. MS tools have always been delicate on anything but a clean drive.

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JStrider

I agree that a seperate swap partition isnt really necessary.

I always partition my drives like this for windows
15ish Gigs for windows/office install
30-40 for programs
and the rest for storage.

If I can get the first 2 partitions onto one smaller faster drive I will, then use th big slow one for storage.

having those 3 partitions... if windows craps out on me I can format and reinstall it, then go to my programs partition and pull out game saves or whatever files I want to keep. then I'll format it, since most programs would need to be reinstalled anyways.

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guthmund

I do much the same.

I bump up the windows partition to somewhere around 40Gbs and install all my programs, games and such on the same partition. A bit allotted for whatever Linux install I'm currently infatuated with and the rest for the storage of my personal stuff (typically on a whole separate drive, if I have my druthers...)

I don't really see the need for a distinct swap partition, but that's just me. If you want to keep the setup, I think resetting the boot flag might work, however, if it were me, I'd just wipe it all out and start from scratch since dealing with partitions from inside windows is just...well, horrible in almost every sense of the word.

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