# Partitions?



## fredtgreco (Mar 17, 2006)

Does anyone here use (or hate) partitions for his hard drive?

I'm thinking of partitioning my laptop 100GB drive into two partitions: one for the OS (WinXP) and programs, one for data.

Any thoughts on whether this would be good or bad?

A related item, how much free space should I have with the OS partition?


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## Scott Bushey (Mar 17, 2006)

http://partition.radified.com/

http://www.datadoctors.com/radio/index.cfm?id=206

http://www.sciencequest.org/support/computers/mac/topics/partition_debate.html

http://products.consumerguide.com/reviews/product.epub?productId=29517

[Edited on 3-18-2006 by Scott Bushey]


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## Greg (Mar 17, 2006)

Hi Fred,

I have my harddrive partitioned that way. Someone told me before that having your OS on one partition and your data on another is a good way to preserve your data should a problem with the OS ever arise. So far I have never had that problem. I put my OS on an 8 GB partition, which is proving to be way too small (I have less than 1 GB free space left) having installed the service packs and all other updates (I'm using XP too). The next time I'll put the OS on _at least_ a 15-20 GB partition.

[Edited on 3-18-2006 by Greg]


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## Greg (Mar 17, 2006)

Now that I'm looking at just how little space I have left on my OS partition, I think I'm going to have to get a larger harddrive. Let me ask you a question Fred if you don't mind. All the data that is currently on my data partition I want to save. So if I get a new harddrive, how can I transfer everything that is on that data partition to the new harddrive?

Or...would it be easier to repartition the harddrive and just increase the size of the OS partition?

[Edited on 3-18-2006 by Greg]


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## fredtgreco (Mar 17, 2006)

> _Originally posted by Greg_
> Now that I'm looking at just how little space I have left on my OS partition, I think I'm going to have to get a larger harddrive. Let me ask you a question Fred if you don't mind. All the data that is currently on my data partition I want to save. So if I get a new harddrive, how can I transfer everything that is on that data partition to the new harddrive?
> 
> Or...would it be easier to repartition the harddrive and just increase the size of the OS partition?
> ...



Greg,

How much space do you have on the non-OS partition? If you can transfer some of that free space to the OS partition, that would be better than buying a new drive. Any of the major partition programs do that kind of transfer "on the fly" (Norton Partition Magic, Acronis Disk Director, etc)

Before you do that, I would make sure I had a backup of the whole drive (i.e. all partitions).

If you get a new drive, any of the backup utilities will allow you to make a clone of the drive and copy it to the blank drive (Norton Ghost, Acronis Disk Image, etc) Even the new drive should come with software to allow you to do that (I know Western Digital hard drives do, and I suspect Maxtor and other brands do as well)


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## C. Matthew McMahon (Mar 17, 2006)

Fred, if you partition a section of the drive with less than 500 megs on it and place your windows os on it, it will run faster.

I have my windows on one drive, and backup all my data and storage on 2 other attached drives instead of on my C: drive.


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## fredtgreco (Mar 17, 2006)

> _Originally posted by C. Matthew McMahon_
> Fred, if you partition a section of the drive with less than 500 megs on it and place your windows os on it, it will run faster.
> 
> I have my windows on one drive, and backup all my data and storage on 2 other attached drives instead of on my C: drive.



I think I understand, but how could I get Windows in a spot less than 500Megs? My Windows folder is like 14 GB.


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## C. Matthew McMahon (Mar 18, 2006)

You can't after the fact. You have to do it on a fresh install.


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## brymaes (Mar 18, 2006)

> You can't after the fact. You have to do it on a fresh install.



What version of Windows? Isn't the minimum requirement for XP something like 1.5 gig?


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## Semper Fidelis (Mar 18, 2006)

Fred,

For what it's worth, I like to keep my OS drive on its own drive. It is the same drive I install my programs on. I've never been a big fan of partitions. I have a separate Data drive where My Documents and Digital Images are stored.

Using this method my OS and Program drive can crash without loss of critical data. I merely have to reinstall programs.

In fact, I've set my system up so that my OS drive is in a hot swappable bay. For video editing, I actually remove my main OS drive and put in a different OS drive that has nothing but the OS and the video editing software installed. This allows the rendering process to run more quickly as there are less programs in resident memory (including no antivirus app as I don't go online when I boot up into this configuration).

In summary my rig is like this:

1. A hot swappable bay with the ability to change the OS that my computer boots into. The OS drive contains the programs that I run in each boot.
2. A huge drive with nothing but data - documents, pics, video, etc.
3. An external enclosure with another huge drive for backing up the huge drive as well as providing another place to offload data transfers within the same IDE controller.

As you are talking about your laptop and you have less flexibility as to additional drives, you're not really going to get any real performance benefit from segregating your data. I would, however, recommend an external USB enclosure for a second 2.5" hdd that you can back up critical data on. There are some aluminum enclosures that cost < $20 that are powered by the USB ports. They have 7200 rpm 2.5" hdd that have exceptionally fast performance.


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## JohnV (Mar 20, 2006)

I partitioned my old computer and it gave me more space. But that was a long time ago. 

How do I go about doing this? What I would like is to put my WindowsXP on its own drive, operating another drive. Then I'd like another drive that has a different operation system on it, and it doesn't really matter if it has its own drive. That is, I'm supposing that other operating systems are not as vulnerable as Microsoft's systems, or that hackers don't pay much attention to them.


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## Semper Fidelis (Mar 20, 2006)

John,

Do you have a system with an available 5.25" slot?


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## JohnV (Mar 20, 2006)

> _Originally posted by SemperFideles_
> John,
> 
> Do you have a system with an available 5.25" slot?



What's that? An Interac slot? I tried that, and all that comes out is fake bills. 

5.25 to me means the old floppies before the 3.5" ones. I don't have either. I've got some kind of slot on the side, but I have no idea what it's for. I don't have anything that fits into it, not even a peanut butter covered saltine. I've been storing stuff on a USB keychain gizmo that holds more than a boxfull floppies.


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## rmwilliamsjr (Mar 20, 2006)

mount -t ext3 /dev/hda1 /var -rw
mount -t ext3 /dev/hdb1 /home -rw


*grin*


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## Semper Fidelis (Mar 20, 2006)

John,

The bays that drives go into are two sizes:

1. 5.25" bays accommodate DVD and CD drives.
2. 3.5" bays accommodate hard drives (they're usually internal)

It's not meant to be condescending but it doesn't sound like you're comfortable tinkering with your machine and adding or removing some hardware. I was going to suggest a method where you can add a hot swappable bay in one of your open 5.25" bays in the front of your machine so you can remove one OS drive, put in a different drive and boot into another OS when you need to.


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## JohnV (Mar 20, 2006)

Rich:

I'm not that unfamiliar with the inner workings of a computer. I can pull out harddrives and CD drives, and even floppy drives, and replace them. I've even fixed a computer hardwar problem for someone once. But that was when a 486 was a new computer. 

I have a laptop now, and you're right that I'm not comfortable tinkering with it. When I last did a partition it was with a 40MG harddrive. So I went from 32 MG space to 41MG of space by doing that. ( Is that old song "I adore my 64, my Commodore 64" ringing in your ears?  ) 

I thought it would be a relatively simple operation something similar to that. If I remember, there was a DOS command for it. Isn't like that anymore? 

I don't think there's room to add hardware to my laptop unless it is exterior. And I don't want to do that, unless I can leave the hardware on my desk and connect to it via USB from time to time to add my files, like a storage unit. But that's not what I want it for. I just want to simplify my system and put it out of reach for the common problems, like spam and spyware, as well as have my computer run more smoothly. My old computer which I partitioned ran much better on its menu system after I made the partition. Plus, I had all that extra space. On a 40MG harddrive, every MG counted.


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## Semper Fidelis (Mar 20, 2006)

Roger John. I hope I didn't come across as "elitist". Sometimes there's no easy way to wonder if people know enough about their systems to work with them.

I've been tinkering with Computers since before the Commodore 64 was released. I still remember loading games on my friends Commoodore 64 with a casette tape.

I didn't know you had a laptop. I thought you had a desktop computer. There are less options to upgrade a notebook but here are my recommendations for you:

1. Windows XP is not like older versions of Windows that were still principally GUIs on top of DOS. You can use very large partitions now without sacrificing performance. I would recommend you use NTFS as opposed to FAT32. Windows has a built in utility that allows you to change your partition type to NTFS without losing data (make sure you back up critical data before running it).

2. If you have 256MB of RAM in your notebook, double it to 512MB. You can go to http://www.crucial.com to find the right RAM for your notebook. Look at your manual to figure out how to get to your RAM modules. If both slots are populated you'll need to buy two 256MB modules. They're easy to replace.

3. RAM and hard drive performance are the typical bottlenecks on notebooks. Doubling the RAM will improve performance significantly. If you really want to bump the performance up then buy a 7200 RPM drive like these (Not sure if NewEgg ships to Canada but they have great prices):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?N=2010150380+1035507776&Submit=ENE&SubCategory=380

4. I would also buy one of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817155704
You can put your new hard drive in that and it is powered by the USB ports of your computer so you can use the drive for external storage.

5. I, personally, would transfer the high performance 7200 rpm drive into the notebook and use the recovered notebook drive for external storage. You'll need to ghost your current drive if you want to keep everything the same. There are free utilities that hdd manufacturers allow you to download for free that let you copy over partition information. You can also just install the OS and programs on to the new high performance drive since you'll have your old drive external with all your data on it.

6. A cheaper option for even more storage (if you don't want to replace the hdd internally) is to go with a "normal" 3.5" hdd and enclosure like these (Wow! 500GB drives are only $320!):
http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/SubCategory.asp?SubCategory=14
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...=ENE&Subcategory=92&description=usb+enclosure

Make sure you match up the external enclosure type to the HDD type (SATA or IDE) The above are just examples. There are millions you can buy. The bottom line, though, is that it is way cheaper to buy the hard drive you want and external enclosure you want separately. With this solution you need to plug the external enclosure in the wall.

7. As noted earlier, the real performance benefit will come from increased RAM and HDD space. If you don't want to have the external enclosure attached all the time then save your data files on the notebook hdd. Just make sure that you regularly back up your data from the internal hdd to the external one. I've used a simple program called Filesync for years with great success: http://www.fileware.com/ I only back up data because I can always re-install the OS and the programs - the data I want to keep I always keep mirrored on two drives - if one fails the other is always available.

A lot to consider. Let me know if I've confused you anywhere.


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## JohnV (Mar 20, 2006)

Yes, I'm confused. But that's because its all new to me and I need time to sort through it. Its not like I can't figure it out. 

I've got, I think, 80 Gig harddrive now. I don't need more space. Its my own computer, and I don't play games that take up a lot of space, nor download scads of pictures or music. Its ( get ready for this ) my notebook. For writing and reading. I mean, I've got about 79 gig I'll never use.

The only thing I had in mind was to add a different OS than Microsoft, and to put the XP OS into a drive all its own. 

What you wrote just appears to be more than I was looking for. I was looking for a way to just divide up my harddrive into two or three drives. I don't want to buy any new hardware. The idea behind this notebook was that I didn't need anything more. It was more than I could afford, but I really needed it for what lies before me.

[Edited on 3-21-2006 by JohnV]


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## Semper Fidelis (Mar 20, 2006)

> _Originally posted by JohnV_
> Yes, I'm confused. But that's because its all new to me and I need time to sort through it. Its not like I can't figure it out.
> 
> I've got, I think, 80 Gig harddrive now. I don't need more space. Its my own computer, and I don't play games that take up a lot of space, nor download scads of pictures or music. Its ( get ready for this ) my notebook. For writing and reading. I mean, I've got about 79 gig I'll never use.
> ...


Roger. I hope the above was helpful to someone.

There is a way to partition a single hard drive to boot into multiple OS's. I would still recommend having some sort of way to back up all your data (an external hdd is a good idea but you can also back up to CD's).

What OS do you have in mind beside XP that you want to boot into?


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## JohnV (Mar 20, 2006)

I don't know yet. I hadn't looked into that. 

I can back things onto CD, because now I have a reader/writer drive. And all that I need to save are my own files of documents. I can download my Bible softwares again, as well as upload my E4 program from disc. I can also find the sites back easily enough that have the other programs that I use. 

What other OS's are there that will work on a computer setup for XP?


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## Semper Fidelis (Mar 20, 2006)

Linux.

I might see some utility if you wanted to dual boot into XP with both partitions being XP. One book could be pretty simple with few programs installed and the other could have a bunch of stuff installed. Your third partition could just be data.

Keep in mind that your data will be no more secure in this setup. It's just an option. I'm not certain what your goal is in breaking your hard drive into partitions. If it's just for performance then it's not worth it.


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## JohnV (Mar 22, 2006)

OK, Rich. I thank you. I now realize that this is not my old 286 computer with a 40mg harddrive, of which only 32mg were available to me. And also, if all I'm doing is using this computer for documents, for writing and sorting for my own education, then there is not much danger from infiltration, and spyware really doesn't pose a real problem either, and another system won't be of much help, but just be an interesting tool. It's really a matter of having everything and thinking I don't have enough. The truth is, I don't need a partition. Thanks.


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