The size of your hard disk and how you intend to use your computer will determine how big you should make your partitions. I would always suggest that you have a minimum three partition structure: one for Windows 8, one for files, and one for a backup copy of Windows.

Your backup partition should be the same size as your Windows 8 partition if you only want to keep a backup copy of Windows 8 on it. It will need to be bigger if you also want to keep files and software installers there, too.

You can use Table 2 as a guide for how large your Windows 8 partition should be. Please note these figures are suggestions only. If you use development software (web, programming, or design), you might find you will need more space for your programs.

So what do you do about creating partitions for your files and Windows image backup? The best practice advice is this: if you have more than one physical hard disk in your computer, always put the image backup on the secondary drive and probably the files there, as well. This ensures that if the hard disk containing Windows fails, you don’t lose your files or backup, and if the disk containing the files and backup fails, you still have a working copy of Windows.

However, if you are on a single-disk system—which is much more likely, especially given that most new Windows 8 computers these days are either all-in-one affairs, laptops, or tablets—your backup partition should be the same size (perhaps slightly less as you need some extra overhead room for temporary files, downloads, and the like on your main Windows partition) than the Windows 8 partition, and your files partition should occupy all the space you have left.

This is generally fine on a desktop or all-in-one computer which will come with a hard disk of 1 TB or more, but what if you are installing Windows 8 on an Ultrabook or a tablet that only comes with a 128-GB solid-state drive (SSD)? In this circumstance, I would suggest skipping the backup partition and instead creating a backup image on a DVD, or better still, an external USB hard disk.

After Windows 8 is installed, you need to complete the following important tasks before you get to the job of installing all your software and using the OS in earnest:

For a new installation of Windows 8, I recommend the following series of steps:

By default, Windows 8 is set up to be efficient and you don’t need to tweak many settings. There are still, however, some that I would recommend you make that can enhance performance (the computer’s performance, that is, not the type you get told about in spam emails!) and make the operating system run more smoothly in general.

You access these settings in the desktop Control Panel, as shown in Figure 3. To access this, on the Start screen, type the word control to search for it.

Figure 3. The desktop Control Panel in Windows 8

Windows 8 uses a space on your hard disk drive called virtual memory to help better manage the computer’s physical memory and to load programs quickly. By default, Windows manages the size of the virtual memory file (also known as the paging file), but this means that it can grow and shrink and cause problems that ultimately slow down access to the files and data on the hard disk.

To change the virtual memory size, follow these steps:

Figure 5. Setting the virtual memory page file size

Clearing the Automatically Manage Paging File Size For All Drives option and selecting the Custom Size option instructs Windows to keep this paging file the same size all the time. This can help keep access to your files fast.

The recommended amount of disk space is displayed toward the bottom of the Virtual Memory dialog box (4577 MB in the example in Figure 5). Enter the recommended paging file size for your computer in both the Initial Size (MB) text box and Maximum Size (MB) text box, click Set, and then click OK to close the dialog box.

In Control Panel, you can also change regional and language settings and get access to the Device Manager to check that the drivers for all of your hardware are installed.

When you wanted to manage your Startup programs in previous versions of Windows you would launch MSConfig and go to the Startup tab. MSConfig is still in Windows 8, but it no longer manages programs that run at startup. For that, there’s the new Task Manager.

This not only makes sense but it also makes it much simpler for users to manage what runs when their computers start; after all, it’s been years now since programs could almost always be found in the Startup folder in the Start menu.

You’ll want to run the Task Manager in More Details mode. To do so, click the More Details button on the lower-left corner of the Task Manager window.

Click the Startup tab to display a list of software that runs when the computer starts, as illustrated in Figure 6.

Figure 6. The improved Task Manager in Windows 8 now manages Startup software

If you want to disable a program, highlight it, and then in the lower-right corner of the window, click the Disable button. It really couldn’t be any simpler.

One thing that’s very worthy of note on this tab is the new Startup Impact column. This helps you to make much more informed decisions about what needs to be disabled and what can be left enabled because it gives you a reasonable indication of how long it takes each program to load when Windows first starts.

One of the biggest problems with Windows traditionally—well, so far as I am concerned anyway—is that it’s always kept your important files and documents on the same physical partition as your copy of Windows. This can cause all manner of problems if Windows fails .

Despite Windows 8 being more stable and reliable than any previous versions of Windows, the thought of keeping my files on the same partition still fills me with dread, and I never recommend that anybody ever do this.

Now there are several ways to move your files and data away from Windows 8, including the official way, which involves changing all the default store folders for libraries, one at a time. This is a very long and, dare I say, arduous way to do the job when there’s actually a much simpler and quicker way to perform the same task, which I describe in the following:

When Windows Vista introduced a full image backup system, IT professionals became very excited (well, I did anyway). When this was expanded to include every edition of Windows 7 (not just Professional and above), people became even more excited (even if was just me again).

With Windows 8, there are not one but two ways to create an image backup. 

The reason for this is that if Windows spectacularly fails and you can’t load the refresh option from the boot loader, you will need a full image containing both Windows 8 and the boot loader that you can reinstall from a USB pen drive or from a DVD startup repair disc.

This option has been moved (slightly) in Windows 8, and there is no longer a Backup & Restore option in the Control Panel. It is now called Windows 7 File Recovery, but you can still find it in the Control Panel.

Windows 8 is now backed up, although it is also advisable to create a refresh image, as well. This can usually be stored on your Files partition if no space exists on your Backup partition for it.

Although Windows 8 is very well configured and very robust on a clean install, there are still many things that have not changed since the days of Windows 98. The auto-sizing of the virtual memory Page File, for example, still means that you have a file that will expand and contract all the time. On a mechanical hard disk this can cause problems with file fragmentation, slowing down file access times, and on a solid-state disk it simply wastes usable space.

Ensuring that you have suitable image backups is essential, too. Even though it might seem overkill to create a system restore image and a custom refresh image, the latter means that you don’t have to configure all the changes you have made to your computer since you first made it, and the former means you’re covered for almost any disaster than can befall your computer.