Hard Drive upgrade....

[USN_Squid]

Along with reading what I can find on the net I wanted to ask you guys about a new hard drive set up.

I got a screamin deal on a 250g SATA hard drive. What would you guys recommend for partitions, etc.? I've always been strictly a one drive-no partitions kind of guy.

I know it's a dumb question, so thanks for your time to respond.

[CingularDuality]

Originally Posted by USN_Squid

Along with reading what I can find on the net I wanted to ask you guys about a new hard drive set up.

I got a screamin deal on a 250g SATA hard drive. What would you guys recommend for partitions, etc.? I've always been strictly a one drive-no partitions kind of guy.

I know it's a dumb question, so thanks for your time to respond.

I see very little benefit to partitioning a home computer anymore unless you regularly reformat one of your partitions. In that case, it might be desirable to have a "data" partition to store important things that you don't want disturbed when you do your HDD housecleaning...

[Widowmaker]

Yeah I agree just use the drive as a full drive. Use your old drive as backup. Thats what I did. Took My old 40 gig out of the crapy Cpmpaq I had and used it as a backup saving drive for this pc. 2 40 gig HD's and I still need more space LOL....

[=DdogG=]

I like playing with my computer.

That being said, I came across an interesting setup if you have multiple os'es.

c:\ 100 megs dos 6.22 and ghost 2k3
d:\ 2 gigs fat32 win98se
e:\ 2 gigs ntfs NT4 sp6
f:\ 4 gigs ntfs 2k server
g:\ 4 gigs ntfs XP pro
h:\ 40 gigs fat32 all installed games
i:\ 40 gigs fat32 all other installed programs
j:\ the rest of the drive fat32 all data
k:\ hidden drive @ about 40 gigs... depending on the amount of backups done.

if you want linux, obviously that could squeeze in there somewhere as well..... but this is for the windows part of the computer... I had freebsd, Redhat and BeOS along side this setup..............

after all the OS'es are installed, drivers loaded, updates done, etc. use ghost to make backups of the base setup (save them to k:\, ghost does not recognize "hidden" partitons... and the hidden part will save your backups from virii and pebkac's)
then, go through each os and install whatever games you want... install them on EVERY OS to the same path.... h:\whatever... Then go back and install all your programs like dvd, cdburner, office, whatever to EVERY OS at the same path. once you are happy that all the programs are installed, reghost ALL PARTITIONS INCLUDING h:\ and i:\. in the event that something does get messed up, you can fix all your games to every os in under 5 minutes, or you can reinstall an os in the same time.


this would also work in other ways...... install an os to c:\ then install everything to d:\. ghost c:. install a differnt os to c:\ install all games to d: (it will only overwrite the files) ghost and repeat..... then ghost the games and programs partition. this way, the images are small, but everything is installed and easily retrieved. I know for you it wont be, but or others who might be hurting on disk space, install the os, then group together programs that are alike, and install those 1 group at a time to d:\. after you ghost d:\ format and install another group. this way, you could install every program under the sun on even a 10 gig hdd. want to play a diferent game? reghost the d:\ drive with that group. need to write an essay? reghost.... it takes five minutes and is an easy way to 1) back up your computer, 2) keep down clutter, 3) save hard drive space when it is getting low.

just my thoughts, but then I like working ON my computers as much as I like working WITH them.

[USN_Squid]

Wow Dog, thanks for the great info.....I'd have to quit my job to get all that done!

Good ideas though. I think I will do some of it. Thanks again!

[billybob]

i like to give 10gigs to just the OS (winXP) i install nothing on this drive but the operating system...

then i have a 60gig drive for all my programs
then i have a 40gig drive for my storage (movies, ect..)

[TheFeniX]

Larger drives mean longer access times. While it may be hard to notice in day to day Windows activities, it can be an issue in some games.

I run a dedicated 40 GB for System files and game installs, along with my pagefile. I then have an 80GB slaved for all my downloaded por..... files....yea.. that's it....

[CingularDuality]

Originally Posted by TheFeniX

Larger drives mean longer access times. While it may be hard to notice in day to day Windows activities, it can be an issue in some games.

Yeah, but in order to increase seek/transfer time, you have to have seperate physical drives. Partitioning one physical drive into several logical drives won't affect that...

[Overlag]

ddogg, win98 NEEDS to be on C drive...so ive heard

for a drive so large id defo have at least 2 partitions

maybe something like 33%, 33% 33%?

or maybe a 10gig OS partition and 2x100gb partitions?

[=DdogG=]

[quote=Overlag]ddogg, win98 NEEDS to be on C drive...so ive heard[quote]

I thought so too forever, but when I was trying to get dos AND win 98 to cooperate in a multiboot format, I fould a few cheats to get around that issue. basically, the c\ drive in my setup is for holding partition the 512 byte boot sector for each os and the host files for the computer to boot into whatever bootloader you want to use. I also use it to hold dos for the simple fact that the whole os can fit inside that 100 meg partition and still have room for ghost 2k3 and even mortal kombat 3. I set up the autoexec.bat to auto find my mouse, cdrom, then start ghost. saves time since ghosting is really all I want to use it for anyway..... I found a whole bunch of generic bootsect.*** files on the internet that are awesome..... basically, I have a bootsect.lnx that will see linux regardless of what partition you put it on. then there is bootsect.wme for millenium bootsect.w98, bootsect.dos, bootsect.w2k... you get the idea..... basically, I got bootmagic to recognize the bootsectors on the c drive then I edited the bootsectors to point to the correct partition. I also used the winnt bootmanager for the ntfs based oses, lilo for the linux/unix based oses, and a third hack to multiboot the dos based oses..... so any os I go into, it is at least a two step process, but I did it to teach myself how... not for any practical use.....but I can see how drivers and games do on different oses...............

[Overlag]

ah! good stuff :-)

[TheFeniX]

Originally Posted by CingularDuality

Yeah, but in order to increase seek/transfer time, you have to have seperate physical drives. Partitioning one physical drive into several logical drives won't affect that...

Actually, it will. There's less platter to search when you've got only 40GBs worth to search, rather than 250GB. When you partition the 250GB into smaller drives, your HDD knows only to search that portion of the platter when looking for files for that logical drive.

[CingularDuality]

Originally Posted by TheFeniX

Actually, it will. There's less platter to search when you've got only 40GBs worth to search, rather than 250GB. When you partition the 250GB into smaller drives, your HDD knows only to search that portion of the platter when looking for files for that logical drive.

Hmmm, I don't think so... You would think that would be the case, but I believe modern operating systems actually index files already anyway, so regardless of whether you limit your file to a 10G area or a 200G area, the OS tells the HDD exactly where to find it. At least this is the way I understand it... Thought it was the main reason why Win2K/WinXP were so much faster than Win98/WinME.

[TheFeniX]

http://partition.radified.com/partitioning_2.htm

Libraries make the best analogy for memory. Books are cataloged and have indexes for them, but the bigger your library is, the farther you have to walk to find the book. Plus, fragmentation can lead to haveing to access different portions of the HDD just to find one complete file.

[=Sarc=]

Would this drive be formatted as NTFS? I think it's necessary in order to handle large partitions. NTFS has a lot of benefits from what I've heard such as less of a performance hit from fragmentation, better security, and better indexing. I've also heard from other places that's it's best to keep it all in one partition because multiple partitions doesn't really benefit you much. I would personally keep a partition of about 40 Gb for the OS and programs/games then another partition for data. If you ever reformat you'll have to reinstall programs anyway to get the correct registry entries back so a separate patition for it doesn't make much sense. Keep the drive defragged regularly for good measure. I defrag mine every day and it only takes about five minutes. It's not hard either with scheduling, which can be done with Windows' own scheduling feature or third-party defragging software.