separate partition for roms in new setup of gameex/mame?

[sergee]

Hi guys, I'm setting up GameEx and MAME for the first time on a new computer. I have a HD that's 160gb, and I'm wondering if I should partition it for a separate section to hold the roms, or should the roms be on the same partition as the mame/gameex programs (C:\Program Files)? Does it even matter? I'm also thinking of adding a second hard drive to hold the roms. Is that even slower/worse than the roms being on just a partition? I'm sorry if this was discussed before, but I searched the faq and forums and couldn't find mention of it.

The computer I'm setting up my mame/home theater on is one I got recently for very cheap ($150 refurbished from hp): HP mini slimline 3200T, Intel e2140 dual core 1.6ghz, 1 gb ram, 160gb hd, intel 82945g graphics, dvd burner. I know it's not much at all, but it'll do for now. Any comments on this setup?

[Freelancer]

There is never ever a reason to choose to do multiple partitions for performance reasons. Since both partitions reside on the same hardware spindles (hard drive), there is no performance to be gained.

I'm no expert but even with multiple harddrives I don't see how that would impact GameEx very much. The program is running in memory and not streaming off the harddrive most times so I don't think there is much performance to be gained by splitting the roms/emulators/gameex across different harddrives.

I'd setup my harddrives/partitions to be easiest to manage/backup going forward. In my case I have a small harddrive that has my OS on it and then a big one with GameEx and all the emulators. I poached my old pc from work and know then every 6 months I'll probably be upgrading pc's. So in order to make it really simple to move GameEx I seperated it from the OS drive.

[bkenobi]

The biggest advantage to using multiple partitions is fragmentation of files. On your OS drive, you will be creating many small files here and there and then deleting them out of order (both because of the way the OS works and your typical use). In the case of roms, you won't likely have a fragmentation problem since they won't be changing much. However, the OS might cause some fragmentation. I guess I would say that it couldn't hurt to put them on a different partition, but you won't get any huge advantage from it (other than not having to defrag as much).

If you have the option to install a second drive for roms, that's the way I would go.

[sergee]

Thanks for the help guys.