Hey,

I have 3 hard drives:
250GB - SATAII
20GB - IDE
9GB - IDE

And the following uses for partitions:
20GB - Main Linux Distribution (where I would do most work)
10GB - Windows XP 64-bit (used for the minimal gaming I do)
5GB - Linux Test Distribution (to test new distributions without effecting my main one)
1GB - Swap Space
The rest - Other Data (Work, Videos, Music, etc.)

Are there conditions to what can be placed where, am I right in thinking that wherever Windows is, it must be at the start of the disk?

Also, is it more efficient to have 3 swap space locations as opposed to one (assuming the sum of each was equal)?

Thanks in Advance
Tom

If I were you, I'd use the SATA hard drive for the lot, as you're going to get quicker access times. You can easily fit everything you want onto the single SATA hard drive. But, if you're wanting to run other Linux distros for testing, why not use the whole of the 9Gb drive? That way, you have you Win XP system + core Linux system on the SATA drive, 9Gb drive for Linux testing, and gives you the 20Gb drive to play with, or just remove completely.

With positioning, it doesn't make that much of a difference AFAIK, and you don't *have* to install Windows within the first partition of your hard drive. It's the boot loaded which gets install in te MBR of your hard drive, which is the right at the very start. As for swap, if you're running a 1Gb swap partition, I'm guessing you've got plenty of RAM. You probably won't even touch the swap space to be honest, but rather than splitting it across three drives or partitions, just create the one swap partition. If you were running 3 drives or more in a RAID array, you might get a performance improvement, but chances are it won't even be used.

Thanks for the quick reply.

Having considered your comments, here's what I'm thinking at the moment:
250GB (SATA)
1GB - Swap
20GB - /
20GB - Windows XP 64-bit
200GB - /home

20GB (IDE)
20GB - Backup of important files in /home

9GB (IDE)
9GB - / (of secondary Linux distribution)

But I have one query about this setup:
1. What filesystem would I use for the swap partition, since I would prefer it if it was able to be accessed by Windows XP?

In fact, I'll most likely just use the SATA since the IDE would just make a what-would-be silent computer into a not so silent computer.