Now I have a real problem

OK. I believe you are still missing my main point. Lets see igf we can fix that up so that we do understand each other.

1--If all of the drives that you mention are just one partition on each.
2-- If you store critical stuff from your mahcine on one of the others.
3-- If something should happend that you lose or have to format the C: drive on one of them you will STILL LOSE that data.

No form of backup should be stored on the same partition as an Operating system.

Same physical HD is OK but just not on the same partition.

In fact on a completely separate device with NO OS on it at all is better yet. That is what I am now working at with my 40gig slave drive wtih NO PRIMARY partition on it. And with the LAN I can store anything from any one of the 3 machines. I can also with a little work plug the physical HD into one of the other machines to get stuff off off it if need be.

And I myself keep evrything 32bit so that it is usable by all machines.

BillyBob

 

Thanks for the information! I see what you mean. I will start moving all the critical file to the D: drive on my machine. It is 100gig, but first I have to clean it off and then reformat it. All my machines are XP Home with NTFS I don't think I need XP Pro for anything and there really is nothing wrong with XP Home. I do have a laptop (old 266) that has a 5.5gig drive but there are some problems with it. I don't use it since I retired but I keep saying that I would like to install a GPS and keep it in my pickup for grins. OK so Monday I get to work moving data from all the machines to the D Drive. Thanks again. Is there any advantage that you know to partition the large drives? I really don't need any more space.

 

You are welcome.

I am glad that you did understand me.

I like your new plan.

BTW. My idea was arrived at from a SAD experience WAY, WAY, WAY back in the days of Win95. I vowed then that it would not happen again.

If you are using all NTFS then I do not know.

But if using Fat32 YES there is an advantage to partitioning.

Anything above 20gig ( I think that is the point ) wastes a lot of space due to cluster size. I have no partitions larger than 19gig and they are all 4K clusters.

As I mentioned before I do not use HTFS as the other two machines are still running Win98 SE.

Also none of my OS partitions are larger than 3.5gig for XP and 2.5gi for the others. I like keeping the OS partiton as small as possible and all else on other partitions. saves a lot of headaches if a format is needed. Cause I do not lose everything and any reinstalls needed can go right back on top of the existing.

BillyBob

 

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