Partitioning 320GB in T60

Question

G'day,
I'm a new subscriber, with limited pc knowledge and expeience.
I had trouble with my T60 (Type 6369 - A56) supplied 120GB drive.  Lenovo sent me a Rescue and Recovery CD with six Product Recovery CDs.  I fitted a new hard drive (WD3200JBKT - 75F4T0)  and restored it to the original factory contents following the instructions that came with the disks..  I will fit the original drive into a case and copy across only the data I really need and then use the 120GB drive as a back-up. 
Before going any further I would like to partition the new drive so I can separate programs and data.  During the installation from the Lenovo disks I had no opportunity specify any partitions.  Can anyone advise how best to go about it and advise on a suitable partition size for the C:\ drive, please.
I understand I should defrag the disk before I attempt to partition it.  Does the Diskeeper Lite pogram do a good defrag?  Would I get a better result from UltraDefrag?
Thanks,
John.

Answer 1

You can spend money on PartionMagic or use FREE GpartD LIVE which is 90% equivalent and perform your partition resize operations. ( Go Use Google to find them)
It goes w/o saying but you better backup the data you consider invaluable from the disk before partition resizing, the risk of losing a parition is about as low as dying in the middle of tonsils surgery but it does happen and the resultsw are profound when it occurs.
You have to be familiar with burning ISO files into CD's or at least have a Floppy drive / USB floppy drive or writable CD when using Partiton Magic.
Regarding how to spec your OS partition, examine the current size and allocate an additional amounnt of free space  to include your systems MAX RAM regardless of your currently installed RAM since you may upgrade in the future
Also, another equivalent  amount of RAM for free space on the same parition for your hiberfil.sys if you hibernate your T60.
Next, add approxmiately another GB of free space for software installs, Microsoft Service Packs and Windows Update rudely ignore your systems %temp% variable and will sequester temp space at %systemdrive% (C:\..for most people) for temporary download and expand space when you run Windows update from their website or if it runs itself.
ServicePacks can be launched with flags to redirect their temp space to another partitoin but I'll assume you aren't comfortabloe with swtiches and avoid the tutorial.
You can always resize if you run out of space on either partiton and consider the following tips:
1. Multiboot systems can use the same pagefile.sys on any partition since only one OS will be running at a time and if your system is configured to keep permanaent swap space on the HDD with numerous OS's, then just set every kernel to the same location to avoid wasting gobs of space on multiple pagefiles. The Pagefile can be relocated, I haven't learned of a method to relocate hiberfil.sys
2. New applications considered crucial to your professional and personal life should be the only ones installed to the c:\ partiion since that partiiton may have to be hastily backed up and restored to a different hard drive or entirely diffrent PC.  If the OS requires applications installed on an unrescued partition then the recovered system may not boot and is the same thing as a family evacuating ship but leaving crucial siblings behind to sink.
3. Forget the defrag, the catch22 of defrag is if you use spindle based drives, the peformance advantage gained by defragmenetation is constrained by your 5,400 or 7,200 RPM platters on spindles.
If you're using SSD's and their blazing I/O, you never defrag since you're shortening the lifespan of the disk and SSD's just don't need defragmentation since the super performance more than compensaetes for any trivial latency of seeking your scattered data.
4. Relocate your %temp% variables to the new data paritions to help skinny out your C drive, RTFM to learn how and query for other techniques to skinny out your %systemdrive% such as relocating all of those HotFix unisntall directoreis from %systemroot%.
Don't just sit there, take a second and use the Kudo's button to compliment the people who help you.