win xp

[Sammy Castagna]

Can Windows be installed on say C drive and all the program fills on a
different hard disk say F?
So if windows had to be reinstalled or crashed all the information would be
on a different hard drive. Forgive if this is a silly question.

Sammy Castagna

 

[JS]

Not exactly, even if you install an application to say the D drive, most
applications still install some of their files to the C drive. In addition
most applications rely on information stored in the Windows Registry which
is also on the C drive (and can not be moved). So if the hard drive crashes
or you need to perform a total re-install of Windows, then all is lost.

If you have concerns about this then look at Symantec Ghost or True Image as
a way to perform an image backup of what on the C drive or partition.

Ghost:
http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/overview.jsp?pcid=br&pvid=ghost10
True Image: http://www.acronis.com/

JS

 

[Bert Kinney]

Hi Sammy,

Can Windows be installed on say C drive and all the program fills on a
different hard disk say F?
Yes.

So if windows had to be reinstalled or crashed all the information would be on
a different hard drive. Forgive if this is a silly question.

All the applications installed on F: would function it a repair install is
performed. The same if all the applications were installed on C:. Performing a
clean install or a system recovery would require all the applications to be
reinstalled.

 

[Rock]

Can Windows be installed on say C drive and all the program fills on a
different hard disk say F?
So if windows had to be reinstalled or crashed all the information would be
on a different hard drive. Forgive if this is a silly question.

Yes it will work fine installing apps on another partition, however
there isn't a significant advantage to this. If XP needs to be
reinstalled, a repair install will keep the installed programs, however
a clean install of XP will still require programs to be reinstalled.
Most all programs, except for the simplest, write to the XP registry and
a clean install recreates a new registry without these entries
necessitating a reinstall of the apps.

Put data on a separate partition and install apps on the same partition
as the OS.

You could also look into a drive imaging program to save an image of the
drives on an external USB hard drive, then in the event of a crash all
partitions can be restored as they were previously, saving a reinstall
of XP.

Some of the programs that do this are Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image,
and Terabyte Unlimited's Image for Windows.

 

[Sammy Castagna]

Thanks JS, Bert, Rock

Sammy

 

[JS]

Your Welcome!

JS

Thanks JS, Bert, Rock

Sammy

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Can Windows be installed on say C drive and all the program fills on a
different hard disk say F?

Yes, but it won't do you any good. See below.

So if windows had to be reinstalled or crashed all the information would
be on a different hard drive. Forgive if this is a silly question.

Installed programs (except for an occasional trivial one) have many
components and entries referring to them throughout Windows (in the registry
and elsewhere). If you reinstall Windows, all of that is lost and the
programs need to be reinstalled anyway. For that reason, there is generally
no advantage to separating programs from the partition Windows is installed
on.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Can Windows be installed on say C drive and all the program fills on a
different hard disk say F?
So if windows had to be reinstalled or crashed all the information would be
on a different hard drive. Forgive if this is a silly question.

Sammy Castagna

Placing data files on a partition or physical hard drive separate
from the operating system and applications can greatly simplify system
repairs/recoveries and data back-up.

There's very little point, however, in having a separate partition
for just applications and/or games. Should you have to reinstall the
OS, you'll also have to reinstall each and every application and game
anyway, in order to recreate the hundreds (possibly thousands) of
registry entries and to replace the dozens (possibly hundreds) of
essential system files back into the appropriate Windows folders and
sub-folders.


--

Bruce Chambers

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[JS]

Not if you have an image backup of the C drive. Those monthly (Patch
Tuesday) security updates and daily AV updates go to the C drive. Most
applications on the other hand don't get daily or even monthly updates, just
Service Patches. So making image backups of the partition or drive that the
apps are located on are not needed as often.

The results is the C partition has less space consumed since the app(s) for
the most part are not on it and therefore the C drive image backups take
less time and are a lot smaller and the image backups of the apps can be
done quickly and less often.

JS