Ah right. Ok, ignore the Linux comment [smile]. Quote: Original post by Gage64 Quote: Original post by Evil Steve The exact way you split it up depends on your usage - if you have lots of general applications in Program Files , you'll want a larger C drive. I believe you are overreacting as far as Linux is concerned unless you are planning on using a very old distro. Besides if you don't need the compviz or 3D acceleration in Linux virtualbox or virtualpc is a simpler way to use Linux on your Windows machine anyways!
Only reason you would ever want to use FAT32 is for something small like flash drives. Anyways, I would never use FAT32 again since I always kept running into the it's 2 major limits all the time!
What are the advanatages and disadvantages to this new file system? Finally, as far as partioning goes yeah I find that creating multiple partitions is usually a good idea for power users as myself. The main reason as was already stated is easier to backup stuff and restore the OS. If Vista or XP gets messed up on me I can just break out and restore a good image in like 10 minutes instead of spending hours restoring all my data and programs!
That's what most OEM's do nowadays anyways I've noticed on all the new laptops and desktops they will usually have a hidden 2nd partition called a recovery partition that will basically let you restore the OS if it gets hosed. The only time I would suggest using a single partition is for new computer users that are easily confused by multiple drive letters or if you don't plan on installing very many programs or using much diskspace so that you can easily back everything up to an external driver or dvd.
Quote: Original post by SimonForsman The main advantage you gain by having a separate partition for the OS is that you can reformat it without loosing your data, around 40GB should be enough for this. I use a 3gb partition for XP and I store all the programs and "my documents" folders in another partition along with the swap file.
If you're going to browse lots of porn without emptying your temporary folders then 40gb wouldn't be enough though Quote: Original post by owl 40gb is crazy for just the os. What OS? Quote: If you're going to browse lots of porn without emptying your temporary folders then 40gb wouldn't be enough though Hmm you're right.
Better make it GB just to be safe. Jarrod You really want NTFS for your file system. FAT32 forces extremely large cluster sizes with larger more than a couple gigs volumes. And FATs allocation table is simply a table, whereas NTFS' MFT is more so a relational database, so even its method for resolving files to clusters is faster and more efficient as the volume grows.
As far different paritions, its not worth it unless you're a neat freak or have some other more obscure need for doing so. As i mentioned in my guide stickied in this section , if you create 1 partition, and make it large enough, you'll be effectively reserving a large chunk of the outer platter space. When you then create your programs partition, you'll effectively be forced to use the remaining, mostly inner, space.
The inner platter space has a slower angular velocity than the outer, resulting in a lower transfer performance and worse access times. Effectively crippling performance. If you're worried about having to reinstall windows, then just keep one partition. If windows ever craps out of you, you can simply do a windows repair. Or you can do a complete reinstall of windows and simply not delete and reformat the drive no one says you have to , as you can skip the format option and install windows on an existing partition.
Why has this happened,i have restarted the Samsung NC10 but still no gain in the C drive. Thanks Alan. Is a partition useful against virus attack?
I think to duplicate data in D and E disk-partition so if one is attacked, I have the back-up here in the same hard drive. Is it OK? Hi Leo — good article. In context of size of hard drives these days, is this a reason not to partition? In fact, it would tend to decrease usable space. If one drive fills up to almost full, some of the free space in the drive might become unusable.
I find partitioning very useful in organising major types of data such as: documents, software, movies, recovery, projects. Its also very useful because when the system goes down, only c: drive is affected none of the data.
I also have a second internal hard drive for backup of the first drive. External hard drives are useless, two of them went down with mechanical failure. Hi Leo, Thanks for nice explanation. My new laptop is configured with a single partition having window7 installed in it. What you suggest?
Rgds, Bhupender. Hi Leo, Thanks for your prompt reply. My system is also having a one key recovery feature, changing the partition size will also make the recovery feature useless, as it will not work. So I will go with you and not planning to go for hardisk partitioning any more. Also i have already purchased a good licensed antivirus software to make the system secure. Just one more query, I have heard about system restore application of windows, i just wanted to know how effective it is in case of some malware attack.
Although i can any time revert to the factory setting using one key recovery feature, but this will make me loose many of the installed applications. Best Regards, Bhupender. Bhupender System restore can do very little in helping to recover from a virus. You might find these articles useful Can I get rid of spyware using system restore?
Hi, i download a lot of movies and regularly change what games im playing, which means im constantly moving watched movies to a portable hard-drive and sometimes back again to watch.
On an average month i would transfer gig of data between my main drive and my portable drives. Is this data transfer high enough that i would be better off partitioning my hard drive into system plus main programs and data files? Since installing Win 8, the backup image would be quickly outdated due to updated versions of software i regularly use. Although i still have a small encrypted partition and a large one for big, rarely accessed PDF files.
I have opted for partitioning in order to be able to install the main OS on the C drive but then install all other programs on the D drive the partition. That way if I ever need to format the C drive alone as part of some sort of maintenance I will not have to lose precious time reinstalling all the programs.
However I have never come to this point until now…and although I am about to reinstall my precious C drive with the main OS as it has slowed considerably, I have no clue whatsoever how to recall he programs installed on the D drive. Can you help me with this, please? Dan Installing your programs on the D: drive is an interesting idea, but unfortunately, if you reinstall the OS, the installed programs will no longer work. When a program is installed, it makes changes to the registry and usually installs files in various places on the c: drive.
So when you reinstall Windows, the programs will look for these files, and not finding them will cause the program to error out.
I have always had OS et al on C: and data on D: mainly for backup but it also faciltates uncomplicated copying of a whole partition over to a new computer, and allows me to reinstall OS image without worrying about the data. In addition, I use substitute drives using the subst DOS command. I heave a sigh of relief each time subst still works when I upgrade to a new OS, particularly to Win8.
I have a new HP Laptop with Windows 8. C is for everything, but recovery, which is handled by D, In the past I have partitioned my HD into several partitions for data, photos, etc. As to backing up my data, I stumbled upon a unique way of handling it. You plug it into your computer and forget about it. The first time you use it you check off what you want backed up- data, pictures, etc. The first backup takes a little time that depends on the amount of data you have on your computer, but from that point on whenever you turn on your computer the USB drive scans your internal drive and just adds any new data, photos, etc.
I find it to be the perfect solution to backing up your data, the USB Drive, as long as you leave it plugged in you can take it out after it does its back-up at start-up, but I have enough USB slots to leave it in automatically backs up your data without you having to remember to do anything. If you have a crash, loss of data. It is most annoying to fill your data partition and find you have lots of spare space on your OS partition! Each to his own, I guess. I used to set up multiple partitions in the old days, but there is little value for it now, with NTFS.
I find that speeds things up a lot. It also allows you to keep an image of your OS and Programs separately from your data, which can come in handy.
Other than that, if I am just using one drive, I just make sure that I keep all my data in the My Documents folder, and keep it classified in sub folders. Does the same thing that partitions used to do. And its easy to just back up your documents folder. I frequently backup by making an image file of drive C:, and keeping the page file off that partition saves a bunch of room in the image file the page file is 4 GB—why clutter up the image with that meaningless data?
The computers are fast enough that there is little or no speed advantage. I find that when that happens it is a time consuming pain-in-the-butt to reinstall all of the programs and all of the updates to a new hard-drive. Years ago, I would do that but, now I mirror the entire hard-drive which I update fairly regularly.
Having a mirror allows me to swap the drives in 15 minutes or less, and the computer is back to where it was before the crash. An alternative to having a dedicated mirror drive is to have a good image backup. Same result, just takes a little bit more time to restore the image after the failed drive has been replaced.
The only real reason to use partitions is for the multi-boot capability. You can also use drive spanning to increase your space without having to migrate. I started using this procedure when working on servers with raid arrays especially those that grew over time and it has worked fine for me in that environment and on home desktops.
I have always kept my OS and programs on C: drive and my personal data on one or more partitions, so that when I do a clean install or re-image my C: drive, all my data is left intact. And I move my Favorites to my data partition for the same reason.
I bought a HP Pavilion Envy dektop. It came with a 2TB hard drive with a restore partition. Put the 2TB drive in storage just in case. I put a small GB hard drive as the second drive for daily use called drive E. Installed a eSata card with port multiplication. The 4 bay enclosure can easily be swapped between my Windows 7 and 8. Have tons of storage space and versitility to boot. The hard drives and enclosures are very cheap as well. That is the easy way to go. I agree with you, Leo.
In the old dsya, I used to partition, it wa pretty much necessary because of the cost of drives. The cradle accepts both 3. My laptops and PC have only one drive, C:, with some data for convenience, but i mostly use the NAS for data of music, all personal files, photos, movies,etc.
But I backup, backup, and backup. Thom Souza. Hi, I have a question regarding partitioning. Is it true that when you partition some of the files from C: would be transferred to D:?
I hope I get a response soon. We have no IT person on site. We have 6 partitions and C drive. We are full in all drives. We have been told to delete or save our My Documents folder each. Should I back up create folders or copy all drives into an external hard drive for each person to work from as an immediate solution? I personally recommend not partitioning. It reduces the efficiency of your storage as when a partition gets close to full, the leftover space become difficult to efficiently use.
Folders are dynamic and expand and shrink as needed. That was a great article, very informative. I do not partition my hard drive. On Windows, I believe your user folder cannot be moved to another partition anyway.
So even if you keep your documents on a separate partition, your user profile is still on the system partition, physically separating what should belong together. I deleted one of my partition on my external hard drive is it possible for me not to lose data on other partition which is local disc D? You can never again lose any valuable data by backing up regularly.
Leo has the best instructions on how to do that! If the OS is on the smaller G partition instead of being spread around the entire 1TB drive, will this not improve boot time speed? The first thing to do is to open up Windows Explorer and see if you can find the drive listed next to the C drive. When an external drive is plugged in the computer usually assigns a letter to it automatically. And also make sure that you know that just having your data on an external drive does not mean it is backed up.
If it is only in one place it is not backed up. So , can you help me for getting back my memory back.. I spoke with a Security Camera system installer who gave me conflicting information and I would like to his info confirm with you. I have been under the impression that there really is no benefit about splitting one physical drive into multiple logical drives, unless the users want to dual boot or organize files separately.
I did not understand why and when I asked him he stated that he enabled virtual memory on each drive to speed up performance and that camera systems operate better with the multiple drives. He did not go into detail was very vague. Is he somewhat correct? There are pros and cons to partitioning. This all would have been avoided if it were all on one logical drive. I use Acronis for disk imaging but Macrium Reflect free is a suitable alternative. All images are full rather than incremental.
Make a full disk image to an external drive call it Factory. Forums Hardware and Technology Memory and Storage. JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. Previous Next. PCperson3 Junior Member. Jul 8, 2 1 1. I also have a 1TB hard drive which is made of 3 partitions. Everything is working fine but i get confused a lot around my files and I don't know where is where Right now I have 30gb of free space combing all the partitions , some files I have multiple copies of, some with different names Does partitioning affect the speed of the hard drive?
Is there a way to combine all the partitions without formatting them because I have a lot of stuff on them and I don't know want to loose it Thanks. Last edited: Jul 14, Reactions: XSoldier77X. Elixer Lifer. May 7, 10, Yeah, you can have partitions that are faster than other partitions, it just depends on where the partition is.
Yes, you can combine partitions if you want, without data loss, there are lots of free programs that will do that. Thunder 57 Golden Member. Aug 19, 1, 1, You might want to look into software that identifies copies of files. They are out there for free and work rather well.
You may also want to look into the built in tool to find ways to free up space, or use CCleaner. I don't know of any built in way to merge partitions. There may be software to do that. Otherwise, you could move everything you need from a partition to temporary storage. Then, delete the empty partition diskmgmt. You can then pick another partition and expand it into the newly freed space and copy your files to the new, larger, partition. May 19, 15, 5, Modern versions of Windows allow one to delete a partition in disk manager then extend another partition to use up the now available space as long as the two partitions are next to each other.
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