>>>>So what exactly is a good layout to have? I've got a machine with a 2.5GB and a 7GB hard drives that I want to upgrade to W2K Server. Should I partition the drives into any particular sizes? Where should the OS live (and size)? The swap file (size (128MB ram))? I'd really like to know from someone who's been down these paths before. Thanks!
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>>>It depends on your needs. I recommend using a couple of IDE drives, one for the primary install of your NT Server, and the other to Ghost. Put your data on the SCSI drives if you have to. The newer IDE drives are almost as fast and a lot cheaper. If you are exposing this server to the web, you'll need to convert the installation from FAT16 to NTFS for security. As for swap files, I like to create a FAT partition for that because it's my understanding that it's faster than a NTFS partition (due to not having the security overhead, etc.) Also, the pagefile should be at least twice the size of installed RAM.
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>>Thanks, John. Quick question: if I partition the 2.5GB drive into say a Bootable (1GB) for the OS (NTFS), a 500MB swap partition (FAT), and the rest for misc (NTFS), does this sound right? I'd use the entire 7GB drive for data and app installations (NTFS). Or should I put the swap partition on the other drive from the OS?
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>Bad idea. On any physical drive, you want to have a swap file on only one logical drive of that physical drive. Win2K requires a minimum size swap file on the operating system partition; you don't want to have a second swap file on the same physical drive, so simply allocate a swap file on the boot drive of fixed size to prevent fragmentation, rather than setting up a separate partition for the swap file.
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>The situation is different under Win9x; only one swap file can exist, and there's no OS requirement for a swap file on the boot partition, unlike NT and 2K, which rely on having a minimum-size swap file to deal with certain types of system failure. You can create a partition and let Win9x grow/shrink the swap file at will on a separate partition, with no fear of accidental fragmentation, since nothing else will go on the partition.
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>You can allocate swap file space on multiple physical drives under NT and 2K, and doing so will improve overall system performance by letting the OS decide which drive to use for swap file activity based on disk I/O activity at the time virtual memory is created. In this situation, it makes some sense to create a separate logical drive for swap file purpose, in order to let you use FAT rather than NTFS for the file system for the swap file, which has a slight edge as far as swap file performance.
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>Realize that by creating a separate swap file partition, you're setting aside disk space for swap file use; you can get equivalent results if you don't want to create a separate partition under NT/2K by simply allocating swap files of fixed size on a drive out of unfragmented disk space. IOW, rather than creating a separate partition of 300MB for use as swap space, simply pre-allocate a fixed size swap file of 300MB on the single partition right after defragmenting the drive - the effect is to set aside 300MB of unfragment space for swap file use.
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>See the NT/Win2K FAQ sitge in my sig block for details on allocating swap file space.

Thanks, Ed. I'll look at the FAQ right away.