Is partitioning your harddrive bad?

[Perris Calderon]

Perris, I never understood your term of "virtual partitions". They are just folders, aren't they?

yup

 

[Lonman]

I like partitions a LOT. The main thing I like about them is using the several disk utilities on them. I have a 120 gig hard drive and to be honest, if it wasn't partitioned I don't think I'd take as much care as I do to make sure everything is healthy. On my virtual partitions in my extended partition I can run chkdsk /r without having it be a boot-time operation. Running any of these operations, chkdsk, defrag, wiping slack space, etc. would take soooo much longer on the full monty then on the several chunks I have. But like perris points out, it's a personal preference more then anything else. I like the idea that I can scratch (reformat) my system partition w/o affecting my storage partition and then having to re-copy everything back to the drive afterwards. Just more convenient for me this way.

 

[Maveric169]

Ok, let me add some info, and see what you think of it with it. Currently:
HDD-1 has: 10GB partition for the OS
40GB partition for all my Programs (other than Office)
2- 12GB partitions for personal data, files, media, ect.

HDD -2 has: 32GB Partition for Business stuff
25GB partition for System Backup (yea I increased it)

Now the system backup is from the backup utility and holds everything on HDD-1. It also has a folder that contains the majority of my program installers along with a backup of the system registry.

Now in the event that say a total system crash occures, I can format the C: (OS) "drive", reinstall windows, once installed, and all the 50+ updates are installedl I can simply run PM8 drive mapper which should restore the program paths to the OS. (if I am understanding correctly the way it works), and I should be done. If that didn't work I could always run the backup recovery and restore the system from the backup on HDD-2.

Is this overkill? Or is there something I am missing or not understanding correctly? Or could my setup just be done better?

Maveric, that's not a very good thing to do (which others will probably back me up on as well). If you want to create another partition separate from your OS for programs JUST so that you don't have to re-install them if you have to re-install windows, you're in for quite a shock. Just about every program you will ever install on your computer adds a tidbit of information to the registry that could either change the way something looks (not very important), or... it could allow the program to actually be run on your computer. Some programs, when installed, will actually put a file in it's installation folder to patch the registry with the information needed, but not that many.

 

[ElementalDragon]

hmm... i've never actually used drivemapper. but doesn't that just change entries in the registry to point to the application once it's moved, and not create new registry entries for already installed ones?

 

[j79zlr]

If the OS has to be reinstalled, then your programs do to, because the registry entries need to be recreated. You should use an imaging program for a backup. I have 2 saved images, one right after the installation of XP, updated and Office XP, updated and they are activated, then one I take maybe once every couple weeks. I keep all of my OS and Programs on the same partition, but I have a seperate partition that has all of my saved install files, music, movies, service packs, etc, so if the OS needs to be reinstalled, no "data" I have is lost.

 

[dreamliner77]

I must admit, I use partitions. The biggest reason being so I don't have to back up when I decide it's time to reinstall windows. I just load a new Drive Image image onto my C partition and am off and running again.

 

[Maveric169]

Ok, so basically my "recovery" plan is faulty. So taking that into consideration, what would be the best way then, merging my Programs partition with my OS partition and using a drive image like dreamliner77, or just using the backup feature with XP for recovery.

Basically what I am trying to get to is a recovery method that I don't have to re-install all my programs if the OS went to crap. It took me about 30hrs to re-install XP, Office all the updates and all my programs. And for a recovery option I just can't be down for 30 hrs, nor risk loosing sensitive or non-replaceable data. (and I know someone is going to say RAID setup, but that would require a expensive upgrade to my system that I can't afford right now.)

 

[j79zlr]

If you reinstall the OS, you have to reinstall programs, that is why I recommended using a disk imaging program like Norton Ghost or DriveImage.

 

[Bytes Back]

Well, the best and affordable advice I can give is to have all the programs on one drive, and the date on another. Then use a USB hard drive and a copy of Norton Ghost or Drive image.

Simply make an image of each drive to the removable drive as often as you wish then shove it on a shelf in case of emergencies.

Average time to restore image ( and remember this includes programs, settings, updates etc ) isd about 10 mins to 30 mins.

Accidentaly lose some data, if you do it often enough it'll be on the USB hard drive. Both programs come with an image explorer so you can extract some files from it as opposed to restoring the entire image.

 

[NetRyder]

I must admit, I use partitions. The biggest reason being so I don't have to back up when I decide it's time to reinstall windows. I just load a new Drive Image image onto my C partition and am off and running again.

That's exactly what I do. My physical drive is divided into just 2 partitions (that's 2 for Windows, in addition to 2 for Linux). So if anything major ever goes wrong with my installation, I can just restore my DriveImage backup to C:, leaving all my documents, music etc. untouched on D:
Of course, the contents of D are also backed up regularly to prevent any loss because of a physical drive failure, but other than that, they just stay there even after formats to C: etc.

I've tried the single partition approach before since MS recommends it for optimization purposes, but I've never noticed the difference in performance because of that.

 

[toretto]

Well to throw in my two cents.

I have two drives in this computer both of them being 80gb's. C: is of course the OS and programs, games... etc. on the d: it is all my music, image files of various programs, such as entire images of games. and i also have my "my documents" folder on it and pointed xp to that folder, thereby whenever i redo the os, i just repoint my documents back to d: and i dont have to redo that. my one main thing against partitioning, isnt it really doesnt protect anything, seeing how if the drive fails and you have 3 partitions, you loose all three anyways. Programs access, i can see that hindering that. i am with perris on this one, why partition if you can organize via folders.

 

[Petros]

I used to partition a lot, and I thought about one of the things that really annoyed me about it: the amount of space I ended up wasting. When you have a hard drive that is almost full, you have to leave some extra space at the end for copying files, downloading stuff, adding new programs, pagefile size increases. Generally, you'll have a tendency to want to leave a certain amount free on each drive so you won't be bothered constantly by "Disk Space Too Low" messages. Each partition you make means that you have to leave a little "buffer room" on each drive.

 

[Geffy]

Ok, not really sure how this fits with Windows Partitioning, but I do hope perris might take a look into this
FreeBSD uses a system of "slices" on a disk, one for the root, one for SWAP, one for /var, one for /tmp and one for /usr, you can specify more, but thats the default set, these are all located on the same physical disk (usually) and I have devices of
ad0s1, which I think is how the full partition of the disk is referenced, and this partition (which occupies the whole disk) has slices of a, b, c, d, e and f
ad0s1a is where the root directory is mounted
ad0s1d is where /var is mounted
ad0s1e is where /tmp is mounted
ad0s1f is where /usr is mounted
I think ad0s1b is where SWAP is "mounted"

how does this sort of system workout with your knowledge and understanding of how partitions work and affect performance.