Disk Partitioning

[Dale Fye]

My HD crashed this past weekend, and when I put the new one in, I formatted
the first 40G as the C:\ drive (assuming that Windows XP would use that for
operating system and program files). I then formatted the remaining 120G as
D:\. Unfortunately, Windows decided to install the OS, program files, etc
on the larger of the two drives.

Is there a way for me to resize these two partitions so that I can use the
larger one for all my working files, and only install software on the
smaller segment?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

My HD crashed this past weekend, and when I put the new one in, I formatted
the first 40G as the C:\ drive (assuming that Windows XP would use that for
operating system and program files). I then formatted the remaining 120G as
D:\. Unfortunately, Windows decided to install the OS, program files, etc
on the larger of the two drives.

Is there a way for me to resize these two partitions so that I can use the
larger one for all my working files, and only install software on the
smaller segment?

You need a partition manipulation program, e.g. PQMagic (PowerQuest)
or DiskDirector (Acronis).

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Why do you feel you need two partitions? Chances are that you are
increasing drive head distances and slowing down your computer. Whatever
reasons people had for partitioning a drive under earlier versions of
Windows, those reasons are largly irrelevant today. Consider simply running
the XP install and deleting all partitions and then creating a new partition
using the whole drive and install on it. The prompts will guide you through
the process.

 

[Dale Fye]

Colin,

I always found it easier to backup and restore my system (running Win 98 and
prior) when I had all my personal files in a separate "drive". Have only
had XP for about a month, and have not finished migrating data (thank God)
from my old PC to the new one. I noticed that there is some sort of backup
utility in XP Pro, is this functional? Can you schedule the backup? Can
you schedule it to do incremental backups?

Thanks for your feedback.

Dale

Why do you feel you need two partitions? Chances are that you are
increasing drive head distances and slowing down your computer. Whatever
reasons people had for partitioning a drive under earlier versions of
Windows, those reasons are largly irrelevant today. Consider simply
running the XP install and deleting all partitions and then creating a new
partition using the whole drive and install on it. The prompts will guide
you through the process.

--
Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine]

My HD crashed this past weekend, and when I put the new one in, I
formatted the first 40G as the C:\ drive (assuming that Windows XP would
use that for operating system and program files). I then formatted the
remaining 120G as D:\. Unfortunately, Windows decided to install the OS,
program files, etc on the larger of the two drives.

Is there a way for me to resize these two partitions so that I can use
the larger one for all my working files, and only install software on the
smaller segment?

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Yes, Backup.exe is found at Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools. It
has limited functionality for some but may do what you want. It is a
limited version of BackUpMyPC (Stomp software, originally written by
Veritas). It's main drawback is that it does not support backups on cd or
dvd. You can schedule. You can do Normal, Copy, Incremental, Differential,
and Daily backups. You can copy to folders on any local hard drive. You
can back up the system state.

One concern: Backing up to a partition on the same drive that is being
backed up is not useful for other than recovery from bad installs (and XP's
System Restore utility can do that). It gives a false sense of security.
This is the backup strategy least recommended by users. Should the hard
drive fail, ALL the partitions on it most likely will be lost. I recommend
that you back up to a drive (spindle, not just another partition) other than
the hard drive your system is installed on. Specifically, I recommend an
external drive. My preference is for usb2 external drives. I also use dvd
backups, but I use a third party backup package for that (Retrospect from
Dantz).

Since Stomp allows you a thirty day trial of BackUpMyPC, I would certainly
look at that. It will be very familiar to you since you have used the
Windows backup tool. If you buy BackUpMyPC, be sure to get it on cd.
Should you have to do a reinstallation of the system, you will need to
reinstall the backup program in order to do a restore.

--
Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine]

Colin,

I always found it easier to backup and restore my system (running Win 98
and prior) when I had all my personal files in a separate "drive". Have
only had XP for about a month, and have not finished migrating data (thank
God) from my old PC to the new one. I noticed that there is some sort of
backup utility in XP Pro, is this functional? Can you schedule the
backup? Can you schedule it to do incremental backups?

Thanks for your feedback.

Dale

Why do you feel you need two partitions? Chances are that you are
increasing drive head distances and slowing down your computer. Whatever
reasons people had for partitioning a drive under earlier versions of
Windows, those reasons are largly irrelevant today. Consider simply
running the XP install and deleting all partitions and then creating a
new partition using the whole drive and install on it. The prompts will
guide you through the process.

--
Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine]

My HD crashed this past weekend, and when I put the new one in, I
formatted the first 40G as the C:\ drive (assuming that Windows XP would
use that for operating system and program files). I then formatted the
remaining 120G as D:\. Unfortunately, Windows decided to install the
OS, program files, etc on the larger of the two drives.

Is there a way for me to resize these two partitions so that I can use
the larger one for all my working files, and only install software on
the smaller segment?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I think we discussed this before, and there is room for
two opinions. Having two partitions gives enormous
advantages in these situations:
a) Natural division between the operating system + applications
(drive C, and user data (drive D.
b) The ability to take disk images for subsequent restoration,
using products such as Ghost, DriveImage, TrueImage
c) Reloading the operating system onto a clean, formatted
partition without affecting user data.

Item b) is in most cases not feasible if you have a single
partition.

In other words, having more than one partition is a question
of preference. There can be advantages either way.

Why do you feel you need two partitions? Chances are that you are
increasing drive head distances and slowing down your computer. Whatever
reasons people had for partitioning a drive under earlier versions of
Windows, those reasons are largly irrelevant today. Consider simply running
the XP install and deleting all partitions and then creating a new partition
using the whole drive and install on it. The prompts will guide you through
the process.

--
Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine]

My HD crashed this past weekend, and when I put the new one in, I
formatted the first 40G as the C:\ drive (assuming that Windows XP would
use that for operating system and program files). I then formatted the
remaining 120G as D:\. Unfortunately, Windows decided to install the OS,
program files, etc on the larger of the two drives.

Is there a way for me to resize these two partitions so that I can use the
larger one for all my working files, and only install software on the
smaller segment?

 

[Michael Stevens]

My HD crashed this past weekend, and when I put the new one in, I
formatted the first 40G as the C:\ drive (assuming that Windows XP
would use that for operating system and program files). I then
formatted the remaining 120G as D:\. Unfortunately, Windows decided
to install the OS, program files, etc on the larger of the two drives.

Is there a way for me to resize these two partitions so that I can
use the larger one for all my working files, and only install
software on the smaller segment?

If you don't want to start over, you will need third party partitioning
software. If it doesn't matter, do a clean install and this time delete all
the current partitions and then create just the 40 gig partition for XP to
setup on. After setup is complete, you can use Disk Management to create
partitions in the unallocated space.
You boot from the CD and do a clean install.
Click on or copy and paste the link below into your web browser address bar.
How to clean install XP.
http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html
--
Michael Stevens MS-MVP XP
(e-mail address removed)
http://michaelstevenstech.com
For a better newsgroup experience. Setup a newsreader.
http://michaelstevenstech.com/outlookexpressnewreader.htm

 

[Josef Gonko]

I noticed an article of interest to me in PC Magazine's February 8, 2005
publication.

The article is named "Solutions: Build an XP-SP2 Recovery Disc"

Why it appealed to me was that I have two RAID arrays; one containing the OS
and application software and the other all my data.

Of course, imaging the entire OS/app array to a very large HD drive is the
optimal backup solution but this isn't always feasible.

Check it out.
Joe

Yes, Backup.exe is found at Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools.
It has limited functionality for some but may do what you want. It is a
limited version of BackUpMyPC (Stomp software, originally written by
Veritas). It's main drawback is that it does not support backups on cd or
dvd. You can schedule. You can do Normal, Copy, Incremental,
Differential, and Daily backups. You can copy to folders on any local
hard drive. You can back up the system state.

One concern: Backing up to a partition on the same drive that is being
backed up is not useful for other than recovery from bad installs (and
XP's System Restore utility can do that). It gives a false sense of
security. This is the backup strategy least recommended by users. Should
the hard drive fail, ALL the partitions on it most likely will be lost. I
recommend that you back up to a drive (spindle, not just another
partition) other than the hard drive your system is installed on.
Specifically, I recommend an external drive. My preference is for usb2
external drives. I also use dvd backups, but I use a third party backup
package for that (Retrospect from Dantz).

Since Stomp allows you a thirty day trial of BackUpMyPC, I would certainly
look at that. It will be very familiar to you since you have used the
Windows backup tool. If you buy BackUpMyPC, be sure to get it on cd.
Should you have to do a reinstallation of the system, you will need to
reinstall the backup program in order to do a restore.

--
Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine]

Colin,

I always found it easier to backup and restore my system (running Win 98
and prior) when I had all my personal files in a separate "drive". Have
only had XP for about a month, and have not finished migrating data
(thank God) from my old PC to the new one. I noticed that there is some
sort of backup utility in XP Pro, is this functional? Can you schedule
the backup? Can you schedule it to do incremental backups?

Thanks for your feedback.

Dale

Why do you feel you need two partitions? Chances are that you are
increasing drive head distances and slowing down your computer.
Whatever reasons people had for partitioning a drive under earlier
versions of Windows, those reasons are largly irrelevant today.
Consider simply running the XP install and deleting all partitions and
then creating a new partition using the whole drive and install on it.
The prompts will guide you through the process.

--
Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine]
My HD crashed this past weekend, and when I put the new one in, I
formatted the first 40G as the C:\ drive (assuming that Windows XP
would use that for operating system and program files). I then
formatted the remaining 120G as D:\. Unfortunately, Windows decided to
install the OS, program files, etc on the larger of the two drives.

Is there a way for me to resize these two partitions so that I can use
the larger one for all my working files, and only install software on
the smaller segment?

 

[Dale Fye]

Thanks to everyone for your opinions on this subject. I need to learn more
about ghosting the applications partition, I'm assuming that will make it
significantly easier to rebuild a new hard drive, than having to re-run the
installation programs for all of my software and various external devices.

I will probably go with a some third party for the repartitioning, never
know when I might need that again.

Dale