Partitioning a 500GB HD?

I am a great proponent of partitioning drives - have 3 hard drives installed with 17 partitions. This makes it very easy to backup specific areas containing specific data.

The advantage of installing the OS on a small partition of say 20 - 30 Gb - mine is 50 Gb of a 500 Gb drive with 20 Gb used, and storing all data on other partitions is that the OS partition can be formatted at any time without the loss of data. This does not preclude the need to back up as no amount of partitioning can cater for mechanical/electronic failure of the drive.

For complete 'safety' I locate the My Documents folder, OE message store, favourites, etc on another drive along with my daily accessed data to another drive and back it up hourly to another internal drive and weekly to an external drive.

I could ramble on, but the bottom line for me is OS on a small partition, Data elsewhere and everything backed up regularly - preferably to another hard drive to reduce the effect of total disk failure.

 

Not quite sure what you mean by that - two internal hard drives?

When I understand that I will respond to the other points you raised

 

Now I'm clear ....

XP Pro SP3 - on my last hard drive I had a 30 Gb partition for the OS, but found it quickly filled up with programs - I usually have several versions of Photoshop installed, full Office suite, etc - and the free space was getting down to < 25% which is not ideal. When I put the 500 Gb drive in I selected 50 GB for the OS partition to give me more leeway as I then had over 0.8 Tb of storage in the box. For most people a 50 Gb OS partition is excessive and 25 Gb is nearer to the mark.

Programs can be installed on any drive, but it is not really a good idea. All programs instal a lot of files in the bowels of Windows, so if the OS partition is formatted the programs need to be reinstalled anyway. In addition if the programs are installed on another drive the performance will be marginally reduced.

Not essential by any means, but ....

With that arrangement you would need to back up your data to the OS drive. I would be more inclined to store data on a partition on the OS drive and use the second drive or an external for data backups.

 

Everone will have their own view on this - it really does not matter which of the two drives you keep the data on or the backup - the important thing is to keep the backup current and on a separate physical drive.

I use SynchbackSE to automatically back up my data on the hour, every hour the computer is booted up to a partition on another hard drive - this hard drive is manually backed up using SynchbackSE weekly to an external hard drive. The OS is automatically incrementally imaged to another (internal) hard drive on a weekly basis using Acronis and those images are backed up to an external hard drive on a weekly basis.

Your point of keeping your data on a physical drive other than the OS drive on the basis that the OS drive will work harder and is more likely to fail is moot. Hard drives are designed to run continuously, but can fail within 1 hour, 1 day, 1 month, 1 year ..... you just do not know. If you experience drive failures with a specific make of drive steer clear of it in the future. The greatest load is put onto the drive on start up as with any electrical device. For that reason I have my power settings such that the drives run continuously while the computer is booted up, which is usually 16 hours/day.

My main external backup drive - I have 3 - is fired up once a week, so, in your line of thinking, suffers minimal wear and tear.

Bottom line is do what your are comfortable with, and IMHO if a backup is crucial to your operration back up the backup

Belt, braces and a piece of string as we say over here

 

Chas

The main point here is that backups should be independent of the physical drive on which the original data is stored from the aspect of disk failure. If the backup is maintained current there is no strong argument against placing it on the OS drive if the data itself is on a separate drive or vice versa. I just feel more comfortable with the backup on a separate drive and the data on the OS drive. It makes life simpler when rebuilding/upgrading as I tend to do every 2 - 3 years.

I started using external drives a few years ago when I was away from home for long periods of time - months, looking after my parents in their last years. I was able to take the relevant contents of my desktop (~200Gb) with me along with the laptop and continue working.

So data portability is the plus factor together with the fact that when the external is used for backup it is not running continuously.

The negative aspects are minor, but worthy of mention. Externals take up real estate on your desk - not a problem for me and by nature of their construction tend to run hotter that a bare drive in the computer case. With good makes this is not a real issue, but beware, IMO, those which incorporate a cooling fan which can be noisy.

So to your specific requirements .....

Is the 500 Gb drive the one you mention in another thread which is being replaced?

Based on your statement .....

Without knowing your priorities re. computer purchases or the amount of data we are talking or of the capabilities of your motherboard re. SATA/PATA I would tend towards this arrangement .....

2x 500 Gb drives fitted internally. One drive with the OS on a small partition as discussed above, one partition for data, one for music, one for photos and one for miscellaneous. I would repeat the partitioning on the second drive with the exception of the partition for the OS although I would maintain that partition and image the OS partition to that automatically using Acronis. I would also use SynchbackSE to keep your other backups current on a scheduled task.

The alternative is an external 500 Gb drive if you are not comfortable with the backup drive running continuously.

I would be wary of old drives unless I could remember their history, but having said that if one of those drives failed - I would not use them for the OS - only the backup is lost and can be replaced fairly quickly.

FYI - my arrangement of internal drives - screenshot

 

I see no reference to a partition for programs in the quote

For me it makes the Windows Explorer view much simpler - I can immediately go to the partition of my choice without wading through a whole list of folders and a number of those partitions are hidden in Explorer view which make things even simpler. I have System Restore active on the OS partition omly - any other drive/partition contains no system files and I would argue that fragmentation of the drives is less than if it were all one partition. Not that fragmentation is a problem as I run Diskeeper Pro 2008 which automatically defrags invisibly when needed. Photoshop prefers the Scratch disk to be on a partition other than the OS so that it does not tangle with the pagefile, although you can get away with both on the same drive with a fixed size pagefile.

Thet's just the way I prefer to arrange my data - multiple folders would suit others just as well.

Not exactly in the Midlands ~80 miles south of Liverpool.

Acronis or Ghost are designed to image the drive while Windows is running - an image is not the same as a straight backup via copy.

 

Indeed it does - on the OS drive. By default the majority will install into C:\Program Files.

I can't give you a template as such - the size of the partitions is up to you, but I can give you the method .....

Boot from your XP CD and on the screen where it asks what partition size you want enter 20/30/40 Gb for the OS partition and follow the on screen prompts.

When Windows is loaded and at a time convenient to you right click on My Computer > Manage > Disk Management. There you will see your drive with the OS partition - the remainder of the drive will be shown as unallocated space. Right click in the unallocated space and in the dialogue which opens select create partition and enter the size of the first data partition you require and follow the prompts to format it - quick is adequate on a new drive. When that is complete you will see two partitions in disk management plus a now smaller unallocated space. Repeat the steps to create as many partitions as you require until you run out of unallocated space. When making the last partition use all the unallocated space remaining.