Hard Drive Configuration

[chesjak]

Hi

I have been told that "most people" set up their system with two H/D's so
that say in my case with a 160Gb and a 500Gb drive I install the operating
system on the 160Gb H/H and then all my programmes and data etc on the 500Gb.

This would aparently overcome the problem I had recently wher I tried to do
a Windows restore in XP and for some unknown reason it corupted the whole H/D
and I had to re install everything.

Is this so and would it be better than setting up the H/D's in RAID 1
configuration.

How would this work, would I make the 160gb or the 500Gb H/d the C: drive.

Would this slow the system down at all. How convenient is it rather than
having everytghing on one H/D.

Regards

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I have been told that "most people" set up their system with two
H/D's so that say in my case with a 160Gb and a 500Gb drive I
install the operating system on the 160Gb H/H and then all my
programmes and data etc on the 500Gb.

This would aparently overcome the problem I had recently wher I
tried to do a Windows restore in XP and for some unknown reason it
corupted the whole H/D and I had to re install everything.

Is this so and would it be better than setting up the H/D's in RAID
1 configuration.

How would this work, would I make the 160gb or the 500Gb H/d the C:
drive.

Would this slow the system down at all. How convenient is it
rather than having everytghing on one H/D.

Who told you this "most people" garbage. If anything - I would say that
"most people" do not know what their setup is - as they buy their computer
and it comes loaded up and ready to go - like any good 'appliance'.

As far as overcoming whatever problem you had... Looking at that short
description and concluding you likely mean a System Restore from within
Windows XP (given your wording) <-- probably a setup where you system drive
and data drive were seperated would have benefited you.

Now - also given what you have (160GB and 500GB drives) - RAID 1 (Mirroring)
would be an enormous waste of resourses. You would be mirroring a 160GB
drive to a 500GB drive and losing a LOT of usable space. Also - going by
what you have given with what happened to you before (assuming the hardware
did not go bad - this was all software) - a RAID 1 setup would not have
helped. Everything that went wrong on the first disk would have been
mirrored (particularly if you have a hardware RAID 1) to the other drive.

I am not a big fan of mirror arrays - as they only really help you recover
from hardware issues (where one drive physically dies a quick death.) It's
much better to just have good backups, imho.

In your case - sure... Install Windows XP on the 160GB drive. How you
partiton that (and the 500GB) is up to you. Know that having your programs
installed on a second drive/partition will give you little protection from a
problem that causes you to rebuild your system partitioon (install Windows
afresh) - as you will have to install most programs over again as well -
even if their installations were on a seperate drive/partition. This is
because they still write files to different places on the system drive no
matter where you install them - and then there are the multitudes of
registry values they might have. Having your data elsewhere - that's a good
thing. It does not mean you shouldn't also hook up an external; hard disk
drive aand/or use a CD/DVD writer to periodically back your stuff up - but
it does make things easier should you want/need to wipe the system
partition.

 

[chesjak]

Hi Shenan

Thanks for your quick reply.

Regretably, I was told that by the manufacturers tech support who, I think
are somewhat wanting when it comes to technical queries.

All I want to be able to do should the same problem occur in the future is
not to have to reload my third party programmes again. I already backup by
data to USB sticks each day. However as you pointed out if the main H/D with
Windows on it goes anyway, the Registry entries for the various programmes
will be lost as well.

It seems there is no way of stopping the labourious task of re-loading all
the programmes again should there be a serious problem on the Main H/D with
windows on it.

Thanks for your help once again.

Regards

 

[DL]

You use an Imaging program, eg Acronis True Image, as was suggested in your
origonal post

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hi

I have been told that "most people" set up their system with two H/D's

That's not correct. By *far*, most people have a single hard drive on
their systems. Only a very small percentage has more than one.

so
that say in my case with a 160Gb and a 500Gb drive I install the operating
system on the 160Gb H/H and then all my programmes and data etc on the 500Gb.

This would aparently overcome the problem I had recently wher I tried to do
a Windows restore in XP and for some unknown reason it corupted the whole H/D
and I had to re install everything.

No, it wouldn't overcome the problem. Having your data on a separate
drive or partition protects you against loss of what's on the other
drive or partition, but it does nothing for your installed programs.
Except for an occasional small program, almost every program has
entries in the Windows registry and supporting files within the
Windows folder. If you ever have to reinstall Windows, all of that is
lost, and all your programs also have to be reinstalled.

And whenever I hear about someone who wants to protect his data by
having it on a separate drive or partition from the one Windows is on,
I fear that that's someone who doesn't have in place a program of
regular backup. Separation of data is *not* a substitute for backup
(you can lose both drives simultaneously to things like severe power
glitches, nearby lightning strikes, virus attacks, even theft of the
computer), and if your data is important to you, you *need* to perform
regularly scheduled backup to external media.

Is this so and would it be better than setting up the H/D's in RAID 1
configuration.

RAID 1 (mirroring) is also *not* a backup solution. RAID 1 uses two or
more drives, each a duplicate of the others, to provide redundancy,
not backup. It's used in situations (almost always within
corporations, not in homes) where any downtown can't be tolerated,
because the way it works is that if one drive fails the other takes
over seamlessly.

Most companies that use RAID 1 also have a strong external backup plan
in place.

How would this work, would I make the 160gb or the 500Gb H/d the C: drive.

Your choice, depending on what and how much you want to keep on each.

Would this slow the system down at all.

No.


How convenient is it rather than
having everytghing on one H/D.

Hardly any difference at all.