Hello Twayne,
Thank you very much for the info.
Mingo
"Twayne" <
[email protected]> ¼¶¼g©ó¶l¥ó·s»D:
[email protected]...
|> Just bought a new external HD.
| > What would be the best partition amount?
| >
| > 500gb x 2?
| > 250gb x 4 ? or keep it 1 TB?
| >
| > TIA.
|
| As others have indicated, there isn't really any rule of thumb for it
| since it mostly depends on what you want to use it for. I can give you
| a few of my opinions, but that's all they are is my own opinions and
| nothing more.
|
| With judicious use of folder naming, so you don't have too long a list
| of folders, you only need one partition. The biggest danger of a drive
| that large is poor housekeeping and in a few months not being able to
| find anything in that huge, long list of folders. e.g. WHERE did I put
| those letters to widget.com for my rebates? Where did I put the pics of
| my gram? I wonder if I ever saved blah-blah, and so on. Using Search
| on that large a drive can be a pretty lengthy process, so you need to
| develop a meaningful set of folder names.
| On the other hand, multiple partitions can be handy for keeping
| certain kinds of data completely separated. Since it's an external
| drive, I'd assume you want to keep your backups on it. In that case I
| might either:
| -- Create a Folder called BACKUPS or whatever name is good for me.
| -- Or I might create a partition just for backups, say it turns out to
| be drive F:\, and I'd set all my backup software to write to that drive.
| Nice; no folders to remember, no paths; just F:\.
|
| Now maybe I want to be sure all my digital photographs are all in one
| place. So, I can either:
| -- Create a Folder called PICTURES, or
| -- Create a partition, name it the G:\ drive, and have all the grouping
| for my pictures under that one main folder.
|
| If you do it all with Folders, does the list of folders get too long to
| be conveniently manageable? Personally I shoot for one screen's length
| as the maximum size for my top level folders. If it turns out I have a
| lot more than that, making it harder to manage/see what's there, then I
| might consider making a separate partition, each of which has as its
| root folder, everything visible on one screen without scrolling. So, I
| might end up with:
| -- BACKUPS Nothing but backups; Drives, Address Book, email
| addresses, Favorites, etc. etc. etc.., including other stuff on THIS
| drive so I cana put a full backup on DVDs.
| -- IMAGES, and within that I have Pictures, with Mom & Dad, Brother,
| Sis, vacation, internet, etc. as folders under the IMAGES folder (or in
| the parititon's drive letter).
| -- FINANCIALS, anything to do with money. This one is encruypted, and
| I DID make sure I exported my security codes when I encrypted that
| folder (or Partition).
| -- DOWNLOADS, for anything/everything I've ever downloaded from the
| internet; applications, utilities, spyware, etc., all in one handy place
| in a folder (or partition's folders).
| -- And so one.
| Somewhere, somehow, there is a method that will work for you. Grab a
| sheet of paper and visualize the Folders you'll want to create. Is it
| worth it to separate them by drive letters? Or can it all be done with
| folders? Remember, whatever you do should be such that it's somethign
| you can REMEMBER 6 months down the road, and that will make sense to
| you.
|
| Some perceived advantages of partitions:
| -- Faster searches since there is less to search
| -- faster defrags since it can be done on a drive by drive basis & not
| all drives may need fragmenting very often.
| -- Drives hold less; less to peruse at your leisure when just "checking
| what you've got".
| -- Have to remember to give drive letters meaningful names after
| creating them, in addition to the drive letter.
|
|
| Some perceived advantages of folders only:
| -- More than 2 partitions requires 3rd party software.
| -- Can make any changes to them without either losing any data, and no
| 3rd party app to keep updated & handy.
| -- No worry about creating/deleting/modifying partitions as required.
| -- Easier to create/delete/modify structures.
| -- One defrag does everything, although it takes a little longer.
| -- Folder names are easier to remember than drive letter contents.
|
| I'm sure you can add to that list if you wished. See Wikipedia for some
| better info & ideas:
|
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup
|
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folders
|
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:File_system_management
|
| There are lots more info sites available with a few searches.
|
| HTH
|
| Twayne
|
|
|
|
|
