In
RoS said:
I have a newly installed Win XP SP2 on a 10gig partition of a
new
machine. I'm no longer certain how many partitions to create in
the
remaining 100+gbs of HD. Opinion ranges from 3 to 5 in total.
Then you haven't gotten enough opinions. There are also those who
will tell you shouldn't have more than a single partition, and
others who will suggest two. ;-)
I'm not going to take any stand for any particular number of
partitions, because a lot depends on personal preference, how you
use your computer, and how you back it up. But I'll make several
comments below, and suggest some things to think about.
I had
thought of making another 10G partition for a second copy of
the OS
in case everything goes pear shaped on C at some future date,
If you mean that you will treat this second copy as your backup,
in my view you'd be making a serious mistake. Backup to a second
partition on your only hard drive is better than no backup at
all, but just barely. It leaves you susceptible to simultaneous
loss of the original and backup to many of the most common
dangers: head crashes, severe power glitches, nearby lightning
strikes, virus attacks, even theft of the computer.
However you partition, be sure you put in place a good backup
scheme that protects you against a wide variety of dangers. To
me, you can't do that unless you have external backup media.
Why? What do you see as the benefit of doing this? Some people do
this because they think that if they ever have to reinstall their
operating system cleanly, they will still have their installed
apps and won't have to reinstall tem. However that's not correct.
If you reinstall Windows, you have to reinstall your apps. That's
because almost all apps include many references to them within
Windows, in the registry and elsewhere. If Windows goes, those
refernces go with it and the apps won't run.
Again, why? What I said above about apps applies equally to
games. Moreover, games are just a special kind of apps. What's
the point of separating the two?
and a big one for digital photos.
If you separate anything at all, it probably should be data.
Depending on how you do your backups separating data and the
operating system may be useful. And digital photos are just a
special kind of data. What's the advantage of separating the two
kinds of data into partitions, rather than fodlers?
Remember that whenever you make two folders on a single
partition, you are creating a logical separation between them.
Partitions are another kind of logical separation, and one that's
harder to change. Before you make a separation that's harder to
change, be sure you have a good reason for it. Very often two
folders work just as well as two partitions.
I'm using Photoshop, inexpertly, and need to save several
copies of
large image files at various stages of manipulation.
I've read more than once that 'C' should also contain 'critical
apps'. Who he?
As I said above, as far as I'm concerned, there's no reason to
ever separate the Windows partition and your apps. So my answer
to your question is that *all* apps are critical from this point
of view.
Office and Photoshop are pretty critical apps to me
but I cannot imagine that they are to a computer system per se.
Does
it refer to things like virus checkers? And should they be on
'C' or
with the other apps?
Is there any advantage in using Partition Magic 8 over XP's
built in
tool to create and format the rest of the hard drives?
No. Partition Magic, or any similar third-party tool, has
essentially only a single advantage: it lets you change the
partition structure of the drive non-destructively. If you are
creating that structure, rather than changing it, such tools are
completely unnecessary. Do a good job of thinking out your needs
ahead of time, and you will probably never need such a tool.
I assume that two 'users' on the computer doesn't affect the
partition
situation?
It might. Think about how you're going to backup those two users'
data. If backup were done as two separate asynchronous acts,
having a separate data partition for each might be valuable.
I've asked a bunch of questions above, and also suggested what I
see as the answers to them. But my intent is not to tell you how
to partition your drive, but to get you to think carefully about
the issues. I may be wrong, but as I read your questions, it
appears to me that your tentative plans aren't based on any real
thinking about the underlying issues that affect *why* you may
want to separate one thing from another. Don't separate two
things just because you can, or because somebody else tells
that's the way he does it, but only if there's a good reason for
it in *your* situation.
So don't just accept my answers, but determine the answers that
are best for you in your situation. My answers may be right for
me, but wrong for you because your circumstances might be
different in ways I know nothing about.
