Hard Drive Partitioning

[JayD]

I just purchased a new computer running XP that came with a 160GB HD,
and picked up a 2nd
160GB HD as it was only $39 (after rebates).
I have a few questions re partitioning -
I plan on dividing the second HD into seperate partitions for
Data/Downloads/Photos/Music/.
I was also thinking of making a small partition at the beginning of the
drive to use for swap/paging.

Is it best to leave the primary drive intact, or make a seperate
partition for the OS, so if/when I need to do any maintenance, I only
need to deal with a 10GB drive.
Does it make sense to have a seperate drive for programs (install to
D:/program files instead of
C:/program files)?

Thanks,
Jay D

 

[Peter]

I just purchased a new computer running XP that came with a 160GB HD,

and picked up a 2nd
160GB HD as it was only $39 (after rebates).
I have a few questions re partitioning -
I plan on dividing the second HD into seperate partitions for
Data/Downloads/Photos/Music/.
I was also thinking of making a small partition at the beginning of the
drive to use for swap/paging.

Is it best to leave the primary drive intact, or make a seperate
partition for the OS, so if/when I need to do any maintenance, I only
need to deal with a 10GB drive.

That depends on your backup strategy.

Does it make sense to have a seperate drive for programs (install to
D:/program files instead of
C:/program files)?

No. Better to leave them on C:. But you may keep data on separate
partition(s).

 

[chad]

Hi Jay,

Partitioning is total waste of time and provides no additional data
security. If you want an optimized swap file then set the minimum and
maximum size to be identical -- this will prevent fragmentation. Want
to store music and photos in their own area? Create a folder.

If you want to seperate personal data from the system data then
consider moving all personal data into the MyDocuments folder -- you
can use TweakUI to move the Favorites and Desktop folders. Make sure to
also relocate your email and address book data. (I also like to move
"MyDocuments" to "c:\data" to make it all more accessible. With all
critical personal data thus centralized in a single folder, it's easy
to use freeware backup software to keep a running backup on your second
drive (not a second partition on the same drive).

Here's a collection of freeware data backup tools which you might find
useful for this:

http://free-backup.info/backup-software.htm

And a link to TweakUI:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

Regards,
Chad

 

[Odie Ferrous]

Hi Jay,

Partitioning is total waste of time and provides no additional data
security.

And what about the benefit of having your data on a partition separate
from the system and apps?

That way, if you need to reinstall Windows or whatever, your data
partition need not be affected.

Makes sense to me.


Odie

 

[Peter]

And what about the benefit of having your data on a partition separate

from the system and apps?

That way, if you need to reinstall Windows or whatever, your data
partition need not be affected.

Makes sense to me.

That implies that there was no backup of data. Someone does not care about
data then.

 

[chad]

Hi Odie,

I still don't see any benefit -- even with apps. If you have to
re-install, the registry will be wiped clean meaning that almost all
apps will need to be re-installed anyway.

What you can do to avoid this is to ghost your system periodically and
store that on your second drive also. That way you have daily backups
of critical personal data and periodic (say monthly) ghosted system
backup. That would be the best of both worlds because you can then
completely recover from a total main disk failure in a matter of
minutes.

Chad

 

[Peter]

What you can do to avoid this is to ghost your system periodically and

store that on your second drive also. That way you have daily backups
of critical personal data and periodic (say monthly) ghosted system
backup. That would be the best of both worlds because you can then
completely recover from a total main disk failure in a matter of
minutes.

There is an issue though, if OS + applications + critical data take only
10GB but non critical data 150GB.
Non critical data does not need to be backed up frequently or does not need
to be backed up at all.

You will be wasting a lot of resources if you ghost all 160GB as a system
backup. With a long restore time.

 

[frodo]

Gee, why not use that pair of 160's to make a RAID 0 Array?

Best Bang for the Buck, for sure. You WILL notice the speed improvement.

Set a large stripe size (most default to 128K; use it! Ignore benchmark
"hounds" that recommend 4K or 8K.)

-------

Seperate partition for data is a fine idea. It's a personal choice tho.

-------

Seperate PARTITION for swap file doesn't make a whole lot of sense;
seperate DRIVE does tho, if it's an independent channel.

--------

Personally, I like to partition a large drive "as I go", leaving
unpartitioned space for future uses. It makes no sense to partition the
entire drive at setup-time based on assumptions at that time. Make what
you need, leave the rest for allocation later. It is not a sin to leave
unpartitioned space!

 

[Peter]

Gee, why not use that pair of 160's to make a RAID 0 Array?

Best Bang for the Buck, for sure. You WILL notice the speed improvement.

Set a large stripe size (most default to 128K; use it! Ignore benchmark
"hounds" that recommend 4K or 8K.)

RAID 0 for what? OS, data or backup?

Yeah, just for a swap file alone, you must be joking.

--------

Personally, I like to partition a large drive "as I go", leaving
unpartitioned space for future uses. It makes no sense to partition the
entire drive at setup-time based on assumptions at that time. Make what
you need, leave the rest for allocation later. It is not a sin to leave
unpartitioned space!

That is called a lack of planning. Resizing small partitions is not a
problem.

In one, separate partition?
I prefer rather to boot from WinPE CD for recovery.

Easy security for anything short of a drive failure.

That approach is for lucky ones only.

 

[Odie Ferrous]

Hi Odie,

I still don't see any benefit -- even with apps. If you have to
re-install, the registry will be wiped clean meaning that almost all
apps will need to be re-installed anyway.

What you can do to avoid this is to ghost your system periodically and
store that on your second drive also. That way you have daily backups
of critical personal data and periodic (say monthly) ghosted system
backup. That would be the best of both worlds because you can then
completely recover from a total main disk failure in a matter of
minutes.

Chad

Yes - I do this with all my recovery systems, and re-clone all my
systems a couple of times each month.

It doesn't matter that apps have to be reinstalled; data exists quite
independently of apps - unlike the relationship between apps and the
operating system.


Odie

 

[Odie Ferrous]

That implies that there was no backup of data. Someone does not care about
data then.

I must be misinterpreting your version of things.

There's nothing at all stopping someone from backing up a data volume
independently of the operating system partition.


Odie

 

[Rod Speed]

There is an issue though, if OS + applications + critical
data take only 10GB but non critical data 150GB.

You're mangling the story considerably. There is no point in having
critical data in with the OS and apps, the OS and apps dont change
much over time and so dont need a high backup frequency.

You can however make a case for imaging the OS and apps before
doing anything much at all updates and config wise, and you can make
a case that minimising the size of that does maximise the chance that
you will bother before changing anything. On the other hand its more
complicated than that too if for example you have automatic updates
enabled, and want to be able to do more than just use a restore point
if you find the system has gone pear shaped due to an update. In that
case it makes more sense to automate that image before the automatic
update happens say daily etc.

Data is more complicated. It is actually what needs to be backed up
more, basically because its in a real sense irreplaceable quite a bit
of the time, unlike the OS and apps and config which at worst can
be done again, and so is just a damned nuisance if you need to do that.

It isnt really that practical to distinguish between critical and non critical
data and it makes a lot more sense to only backup what has changed
at a quite high rate, say at least daily if the system is used much. Its
too dangerous to have the user decide what is critical data, too easy
to forget and one hell of a mess having to put it in the right place etc.

And you have the other awkwidity of where the emails are
etc. Many consider those a damned nuisance if they are
lost, and they default to be in with the OS and apps.

Non critical data does not need to be backed up
frequently or does not need to be backed up at all.

Yes, but it isnt that easy to automatically distinguish between
critical and non critical data with no possibility of forgetting that
some data is critical, like a digital certificate or cookie etc.

You will be wasting a lot of resources if you ghost all
160GB as a system backup. With a long restore time.

Yes, but ghost is just one way of doing backups.

And modern incremental image backups dont have the same
resources problem. The long winded restore isnt really that
much of a problem because it hopefully doesnt happen much.

There is something to be said for a separate OS and apps
partition, automatically imaged every night if you have automatic
updates enabled, manually if you dont, and incremental image
backups of all the data, so you dont have to consider what is
critical data and what is not and cant risk getting that wrong etc.

With hard drives getting as cheap as his second 160G drive,
there is something to be said for bulletproof backup strategys,
tho I would personally have that backup destination on another
PC on the lan or where some damned burglar cant find it etc.

 

[Peter]

And what about the benefit of having your data on a partition separate

I must be misinterpreting your version of things.

There's nothing at all stopping someone from backing up a data volume
independently of the operating system partition.

So if you have a backup of a data volume, why do you care if data partition
is affected or not?

 

[CWatters]

Hi Odie,

I still don't see any benefit -- even with apps. If you have to
re-install, the registry will be wiped clean meaning that almost all
apps will need to be re-installed anyway.

That's one thing I wish MS could/would fix. It would be nice to be able to
reinstall an os without having to do the same for all the other progs.

 

[Peter]

You're mangling the story considerably. There is no point in having
critical data in with the OS and apps, the OS and apps dont change
much over time and so dont need a high backup frequency.

I'm not saying that I have "critical data in with the OS and apps".
I have said that "OS + applications + critical data take only 10GB". It does
not imply that they are in the same partition. But they might be left in the
same partition, why not.While apps may not change much over time, OS is a
different story. Any updates, fixes or damages from virus, spyware and alike
can happen any time. I treat my OS configuration almost as vital as critical
data. I don't have time to reistall everything (OS + apps + settings) when
something goes wrong. I want to restore it. That is why I put it together
with critical data. Those things need to be saved often.
Non critical data are mostly downloads or streaming data being worked on.
Originals are always archived.

 

[Bob I]

Well it does reduce the time for a CHKDSK to complete.

 

[Rod Speed]

I'm not saying that I have "critical data in with the OS and apps".
I have said that "OS + applications + critical data take only 10GB".
It does not imply that they are in the same partition.

OK, but its still not relevant to include the OS and apps
in with the critical data volume wise, the space taken by
the OS and apps is irrelevant to the backup question.

And he doesnt have a volume problem anyway
with the second 160G drive so cheap.

But they might be left in the same partition, why not.

Basically its too risky to try to include just the critical data in
with the OS and apps, much safer to backup the data when
it changes and not attempt to work out what is critical data.

Or more strictly it makes a lot of sense backup all the
data you create yourself that way and say the stuff
you save off the net etc as less important to backup.

While apps may not change much over time, OS is
a different story. Any updates, fixes or damages
from virus, spyware and alike can happen any time.

That's rather mangled too. The changes to the OS and apps due
to updates and fixes cant happen at any time unless you choose
to have automatic updates. So you only need to backup the OS
and apps partition whenever updates and fixes have been done.

Yes, like I said, you can make a case for having a separate
OS and apps partition to maximise the chance that you will
bother to back it up after each update or fix, but even thats
arguable if its an automated incremental backup that happens
when you arent around.

I treat my OS configuration almost as vital as critical data.

Thats mad. Critical irreplaceable data is completely different. The
worst that can happen with the OS and apps is that you need to do
a clean install and then update that if the worst comes to the worst.

I don't have time to reistall everything (OS + apps + settings)
when something goes wrong. I want to restore it.

Sure, but that doesnt mean that is almost as vital as irreplaceable
data. Its a convenience thing rather than an impossibility.

That is why I put it together with critical
data. Those things need to be saved often.

No they dont, they only need to be resaved when they have changed.

 

[Rod Speed]

That's one thing I wish MS could/would fix. It would
be nice to be able to reinstall an os without having
to do the same for all the other progs.

You can, that's what the install in place does, doesnt affect the apps at all.

Usually used when you move a hard drive to a completely
different system, or the equivalent using an image file etc.

 

[Joep]

That implies that there was no backup of data.

No it does not imply that

 

[Lil' Dave]

Just give windows plenty of space for both the OS and any applications. How
much depends on what and how many applications you intend to load. The
partition should also have freespace for "breathing room"

Frontloading the swapfile on a first partition of a just as fast or faster
hard drive is acceptable. Just let windows decide the swapfile size. Am
using a 4GB partition for that here.

You can divide your data between folders on one partition, or partitions on
a separate hard drive. Makes little difference.

Stick with NTFS.