Partition size

[SANTANDER]

it's not easy calculate partition size use this method, since we dont know
how much space will take 3rd party software I want to install. Lets say I
want to install Office2003, Photoshop CS3, Illustrator CS, TMPGEnc DVD
Author, Nero, and a lot of other, much smaller, apps. So 40Gb will be fine?

S.

 

[Bill in Co.]

I believe so. And in the unlikely event it weren't, you could always use
some third party software (like Partition Magic) to expand the partition.
But I seriously doubt you would need to do that with what you've stated
below.

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was Wednesday, December 31, 2008 2:09:15 PM, and on a
whim, olfart pounded out on the keyboard:

You have to know the difference between Imaging and Cloning.....
with a Cloning program like Casper you don't copy and write the data every
time. After the first copy is made the "clone" process takes over. The
program reads and compares the data on the source and destination discs.
Only data that has changed...or been added since the last time is written to
the destination disc. Unchanged data is already written to the destination
disc so the only writing done is the "updating". If very few changes have
been made since the last clone an updated disc with 250gb of data can be
made in a few minutes.
I have used Casper for years with good results. On 2 occaissions I have had
HD problems with my computer and after removing it and installing the clone
I was back up and running in a matter of minutes. The only data lost is that
which was created after the last clone was made....which would be the same
if you were making an image.

The statement was, "initial imaging". So that eliminates what you're
talking about.


--
Terry R.

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[Twayne]

The date and time was Wednesday, December 31, 2008 10:29:02 AM, and

My backup method works fine for me. I have 3 hard drives; 1 for
OS's, 1 for data, 1 for programs. Data is backed up to a different
drive each day. I create backup partitions of the OS's & program
partitions alternating between the other 2 drives. I use Partition
Magic to copy the partitions to the other drives, and also have
images of each once per month on 2 external drives.

But I still don't see someone imaging/cloning/whatever a full 250 gig
in 15 minutes...

I think it's probably an OK number. I have a fairly large, not huge,
amount of data on my system drive on this machine and it takes about 37
minutes to create an image, about 23 minutes to bring an image back. I
use Ghost 14. On my other production machine, using a different imaging
program, it takes MUCH longer to do the backup, and similar for the
Restore of an image.

How long it takes is going to depend on how much data there is to
move in the faster programs. Also remember that many programs will
default to ignore things like restore points, recycler, recycle bin,
etc. so the amount of data drops again. The unused portions of a disk
aren't really copied; they're only verified to be empty and created all
at once in the backup (which I always turn OFF), so it isn't a full 250
Gig or whatever that actually gets moved anyway; only the actual data
and its locating tables, less whatever was defaulted to not back up.
An application such as cloning, etc., however may very well copy
every sector and track, in order, and will thus take a lot longer. It
depends on how the app handles the job. AFAIK, anyway. Personally I
don't care as long as the "image" is a true "image", how it was made.
It's more important that it do what it advertises and does it well.

Twayne

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was Friday, January 02, 2009 1:55:50 PM, and on a
whim, Twayne pounded out on the keyboard:

I think it's probably an OK number. I have a fairly large, not huge,
amount of data on my system drive on this machine and it takes about 37
minutes to create an image, about 23 minutes to bring an image back. I
use Ghost 14. On my other production machine, using a different imaging
program, it takes MUCH longer to do the backup, and similar for the
Restore of an image.

How long it takes is going to depend on how much data there is to
move in the faster programs. Also remember that many programs will
default to ignore things like restore points, recycler, recycle bin,
etc. so the amount of data drops again. The unused portions of a disk
aren't really copied; they're only verified to be empty and created all
at once in the backup (which I always turn OFF), so it isn't a full 250
Gig or whatever that actually gets moved anyway; only the actual data
and its locating tables, less whatever was defaulted to not back up.
An application such as cloning, etc., however may very well copy
every sector and track, in order, and will thus take a lot longer. It
depends on how the app handles the job. AFAIK, anyway. Personally I
don't care as long as the "image" is a true "image", how it was made.
It's more important that it do what it advertises and does it well.

Twayne

"Fairly large" doesn't mean anything. There isn't any hardware/software
out there I know of that can back up 250 gigs in 15 minutes, whether
it's tape, hard drives, or whatever.

I backed up my workstation partitions earlier today to external USB2
hard drive using ATI. 50 gig of data on the partition took 30 minutes.

At the network I was at today, I did a differential backup of the
Exchange mail store. 40 gigs took 28 minutes, w/verification. That's
with a fast IBM Ultrium 3 LTO-3 drive (80 MB/s). The last data backup
performed was 266 gig that took 5 hrs.


--
Terry R.

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[Bill in Co.]

The date and time was Friday, January 02, 2009 1:55:50 PM, and on a
whim, Twayne pounded out on the keyboard:

"fairly large"?

"Fairly large" doesn't mean anything.

Pretty ambiguous, but not too surprisingly.

There isn't any hardware/software
out there I know of that can back up 250 gigs in 15 minutes, whether
it's tape, hard drives, or whatever.
Nope!

I backed up my workstation partitions earlier today to external USB2
hard drive using ATI. 50 gig of data on the partition took 30 minutes.

I can do a full image backup (not incremental) of about 20 GB in 10 minutes,
using ATI. And to restore that image takes about twice as long (or
actually more like 25 minutes, in total). However, this is between two
internal SATA drives, and not an external one (which takes more than twice
as long when I use that one).

 

[Lil' Dave]

Put the installation CD of each in the CD/DVD player on a PC. Determine the
total size in terms of MBs of all its files in each installation CD.
Multiply by 2 for actual installation of each that may be a little high in
estimation. Usage of some will add temp files that you may overlook.

--
Dave

it's not easy calculate partition size use this method, since we dont know
how much space will take 3rd party software I want to install. Lets say I
want to install Office2003, Photoshop CS3, Illustrator CS, TMPGEnc DVD
Author, Nero, and a lot of other, much smaller, apps. So 40Gb will be
fine?

S.

 

[Gerry]

Dave

Has he bought the computer yet?


--



Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[SANTANDER]

Most program installs come as digital downloads form, not on CD/DVD media,
so it's not easy.

------

Put the installation CD of each in the CD/DVD player on a PC. Determine the
total size in terms of MBs of all its files in each installation CD.
Multiply by 2 for actual installation of each that may be a little high in
estimation. Usage of some will add temp files that you may overlook.

 

[SANTANDER]

I recently saw two Acer laptops models, Vista OS, one was 250Gb drive, 2nd
320Gb drive, where hard disks have been factory divided on two identical
partitions, just in half. What's the catch? Difficult to explain.

S.
-----

 

[Twayne]

The date and time was Friday, January 02, 2009 1:55:50 PM, and on a

whim, Twayne pounded out on the keyboard:


"Fairly large" doesn't mean anything. There isn't any
hardware/software out there I know of that can back up 250 gigs in 15
minutes, whether it's tape, hard drives, or whatever.

All relative; and the points aren't based on 250 Gig of data but rather
an unspecified amount of data on a 250 Gig "drive".

I don't believe the claim was that 250 Gig of data was backed up, was
it? It was stated to be a 250 Gig drive, I thought. There wasn't any
indication of the amount of data so unless it was a sector by sector,
track by track backup of the entire disk surface, regardless of any data
being in it, the time to backup would be considerable shorter. All the
words were about "backing up a 250 Gig hard drive" not 250 Gig of data.
Most software doesn't actually copy unused sectors; it simply creates
unused sectors at the destination via tables. In addition, I don't think
the words "Full" or incremental or partial or any other types were ever
used to define what was backed up, unfortunately. Thus it has led to a
lot of assumptions here.

I backed up my workstation partitions earlier today to external USB2
hard drive using ATI. 50 gig of data on the partition took 30
minutes.

Sounds good, a little better than mine, probably. It doesn't sound like
it'd make a huge difference, but 7200 rpm disks vs the older 5400 rpm
makes a rather noticeable time difference too. The old Dell Dual Xeon
behind me takes a lot longer to back up than this computer does and it
has a much lighter sofware install; basically 2k server & not much else,
with 2 80 Gig WDs, one compressed.

At the network I was at today, I did a differential backup of the
Exchange mail store. 40 gigs took 28 minutes, w/verification. That's
with a fast IBM Ultrium 3 LTO-3 drive (80 MB/s). The last data backup
performed was 266 gig that took 5 hrs.

Sounds a bit long, but with verification & other probably differences,
it's probably right on the money. Well, it is on the money since that's
what you said<g>. My own Full/Incrementals all run at night here so
unless I look at the logs I don't notice how much time they take but I'd
imagine mine would be around 4 hours & that's just two approx 50%
occupied drives of 160 & 360 Gig, and to an external 500 Gig WD USB
drive and compressed. It's usually a little under 250 Gig of data total
IIRC. Full backups only happen once a month & the rest are
incrementals.

Cheers,

Twayne

 

[Twayne]

"fairly large"?


Pretty ambiguous, but not too surprisingly.

Nope, much less ambiguous than most of this discussion and your addition
to a wart on the ass of progress, for sure.

I can do a full image backup (not incremental) of about 20 GB in 10
minutes, using ATI. And to restore that image takes about twice as
long (or actually more like 25 minutes, in total). However, this is
between two internal SATA drives, and not an external one (which
takes more than twice as long when I use that one).

That's interesting that it would take a lot longer to Restore than to
backup. What imaging software are you using? Or was that just a
mis-speak?

How is 20 Gig a "Full" backup? Sounds like a selective backup to me.

My experience with Ghost 14 is that a full re-image takes about half
the time it took to create the Full backup. I use ntbackup.exe on the
Dell behind me and on a laptop and the experiences there are roughly
equivalent, probably only about 3/4 of the time it took to back up, but
they have 5400 rpm drives and ntbackup isn't the fastest kid on the
block. But fortunately neither has much to back up, nor many changes to
what gets backed up. One is a sandbox so it doesn't get backed up
unless enough Updates accumulate; it mainly gets restored a lot more
often. And the other is used for serving with not much more than the
win2k OS, Apache and PHP on it, along with some related utils.
In fact, the sandbox is where I learned that disk fragmentation can
double or even triple backup times for Full backups, along with some of
the other things that can add to the number. It's great for most
experiments.

Twayne

 

[Twayne]

40 Gig should be more than enough for that. However, think forward,
too. After everything is set up, if over say 50% of the disk is filled,
(or unused, however you want to look at it), then you should be
reasonably OK for the foreseeable future. My boot drive (C is
slightly under 50% occupie (~24 Gig total) and I have MSO, OO.o,
PaintShop ProX, Roxio Full, Nero, full Ulead Video capture/edit/burning
application, several other open source applications, 3 printers & their
toolboxes, LAN; wireless and wired, VB6 and its attendant subscription
files, several VB6 utils, PHP, Apache server, Python, Fusion, N|VU,
Remote Keys, Filezilla, ws_ftp, PHP IDEs, NoteTab Pro, NotePad++ and a
host of other things I use regularly over the course of a year's time.
Progam Files shows 159 entries. There is NO data on C though; My
Documents has been moved to drive E, which also hosts the pagefile.
Drive D, on the same physical drive as C, is dedicated to internet
downloads repository, system & program logs and anything else system or
install related. There is ~26 Gig free on the C/D drive. The E/F/G
drive is about 50% used, too, with anything from emails to development
work and even a couple of sandboxes, plus DOS 6.22 operating system.
So the point of all this is that your proposed number, IMO, will
serve you well for the foreseeable future. Unless you're unusual, you
may well be in the market for another machine by the time you feel a
squeeze for the OS partition. In fact, even 30 or 25 Gig may be a good
size for you, especially if you only have one physical drive and it has
to hold all of your personal data in another partition, too. If however
you have a second hard drive, then all your data can go there, and
you're a lot less likely to put a squeeze on your drive space, period.

Best of luck,

Twayne