Partition question

[JHI]

I'm about to install a new 160GB hard drive and have a few questions:

1. What's the purpose of partitioning a drive?

2. Is it necessary and recommended?

3. How many partitions?

4. Best way to organize date within each partition.

Thanks.

 

[John]

I'm about to install a new 160GB hard drive and have a few questions:

1. What's the purpose of partitioning a drive?

2. Is it necessary and recommended?

3. How many partitions?

4. Best way to organize date within each partition.

Have no idea about that. Thats up to you but obviously partitions help
in organizing data especially with the large drives you can buy
nowadays. The downside is I dont like having zillions of Drive
letters. Ive had anywhere from 3-7 hard drives and when you start
putting lots of partitions on it you have so many drive letters its
hard remembering whats is where.

I also like to get a simple picture of the physical harddrives - whats
on them so I dont partition my HDs except for the boot disk. I tend
to reinstall WIN XP a lot due to one problem or another - corruption,
virus or just wanting to have clean install after a while. It FAR
easier to have reasonably small partition for that - 20 gigs or so for
the boot up/WIN XP files and installed programs. Its easier to back up
and and its easier to reinstall and reformat that partition when you
have problems. In the past I didnt do that and Id have to back up or
move 120-200 gigs of data on the same HD to reformat.

Other than that partition its a matter of taste. Whatever you want.
Whether you want to organize everything by physical disk driver
letters and subdirectories or partitions and subdirectories is up to
you. You might want all your work programs and files on one partition
or games or downloaded stuff. Whatever. Other people may partition to
put dfferent operating systems on them like Linux and WIN XP or some
old windows etc.

 

[Mike Walsh]

I'm about to install a new 160GB hard drive and have a few questions:

1. What's the purpose of partitioning a drive?

Dividing a drive into several partitions can improve performance, e.g. by keeping your system files in a relatively small area at the beginning of the drive. Keeping your data on a partition other than system and applications can simplify backup and restore. You can have more than one OS installed.

2. Is it necessary and recommended?

It is not necessary. It is not recommended for the computer illiterate.

3. How many partitions?

Many people use two partitions, one for OS and applications and one for data. Or you could have separate partitions for boot, swap file, one for each of your several OSs, several for different types of data, etc.

 

[Geir Klemetsen]

I'm about to install a new 160GB hard drive and have a few questions:

1. What's the purpose of partitioning a drive?

Several. One is for example that if you have one partition with windows and
other partition with personal files, you'll not lose your files if you get
to the point when you have to re-format the windows partition. Especially
after a virus atack.

2. Is it necessary and recommended?

That's all up to you.

3. How many partitions?

Also up to you.

4. Best way to organize date within each partition.

My example:
HDD1_part1 (6 Gb):
Here is windows installed.
HDD1_part2 (10 Gb):
All programs that does'nt need to be installed in order to work is located
here (not games). In fact this applies to the most of programs. Once they
are installed they doesn't have to be installed over again when a fresh
install of windows is done. Typically they must be configured all over
again.
No need to install following programs here because they must be installed
all over again if you install windows on over again:
- all kind of hardware drivers and programs that use it.
- daemon tools (and programs that runs on it. btw: it is a kind of driver)
- office pack.
- quick time
- zoonealarm
If you doesn't have another fast disk in your machine (see my note HDD3)
you could install your games here. Otherwise I don't recomend it because of
posible intensive disk swapping when loading a game (have experienced that
myself).
HDD1_part3 (rest of space, lot of space) All my personal files is here. This
include a folder that contains the ghost files (snapshot) taken from the
windows partition. It's no point having swap file here because of disc
thrashing (= bad performance + more hdd noise).

HDD2 (13 Gb) On this disc I have redirected all files that is not important
for me. This is an old maxtor disk that may start malfunction tomorrow, next
week or it can last for several years. Who knows? Here I have redirected the
following folders:
- The windows temp folder. (change the environoment variables TMP and TEMP)
- Temporary Internet Files
- Recent documents (can contain several houndreds of link files)
- the log folder (original located in "C:\Documents and
Settings\-userprofile-") somewhere (cant remember exactly)
* And a lot of third party programs have often their own temporary folder
(f.ex firefox) that I also have redirected to a folder in on the old disk.
- Personally I prefer to have the pagefile located on the old disk. In some
few circumstances it'll reduce overall performance because of low
performance for the disk. But since I use ghost on my windows partition, the
size of those ghost-files can be held down on an acceptable level. And one
more benefit is that I have more free space on my windows partition.

HDD3 (faster SATA disk):
Here I install games that will have a great benefit of a faster disk. This
disk may be a better location for the swap file because of r/w speed.

<nosense>
I have named my serial ata disc "satan". That is another name of the devil
in norwegian. There is a spinning devil in my machine.
<nosense>


Hope this helps : )

 

[JHI]

Thanks

Several. One is for example that if you have one partition with windows
and
other partition with personal files, you'll not lose your files if you get
to the point when you have to re-format the windows partition. Especially
after a virus atack.



That's all up to you.


Also up to you.


My example:
HDD1_part1 (6 Gb):
Here is windows installed.
HDD1_part2 (10 Gb):
All programs that does'nt need to be installed in order to work is located
here (not games). In fact this applies to the most of programs. Once they
are installed they doesn't have to be installed over again when a fresh
install of windows is done. Typically they must be configured all over
again.
No need to install following programs here because they must be installed
all over again if you install windows on over again:
- all kind of hardware drivers and programs that use it.
- daemon tools (and programs that runs on it. btw: it is a kind of driver)
- office pack.
- quick time
- zoonealarm
If you doesn't have another fast disk in your machine (see my note HDD3)
you could install your games here. Otherwise I don't recomend it because
of
posible intensive disk swapping when loading a game (have experienced that
myself).
HDD1_part3 (rest of space, lot of space) All my personal files is here.
This
include a folder that contains the ghost files (snapshot) taken from the
windows partition. It's no point having swap file here because of disc
thrashing (= bad performance + more hdd noise).

HDD2 (13 Gb) On this disc I have redirected all files that is not
important
for me. This is an old maxtor disk that may start malfunction tomorrow,
next
week or it can last for several years. Who knows? Here I have redirected
the
following folders:
- The windows temp folder. (change the environoment variables TMP and
TEMP)
- Temporary Internet Files
- Recent documents (can contain several houndreds of link files)
- the log folder (original located in "C:\Documents and
Settings\-userprofile-") somewhere (cant remember exactly)
* And a lot of third party programs have often their own temporary folder
(f.ex firefox) that I also have redirected to a folder in on the old disk.
- Personally I prefer to have the pagefile located on the old disk. In
some
few circumstances it'll reduce overall performance because of low
performance for the disk. But since I use ghost on my windows partition,
the
size of those ghost-files can be held down on an acceptable level. And one
more benefit is that I have more free space on my windows partition.

HDD3 (faster SATA disk):
Here I install games that will have a great benefit of a faster disk. This
disk may be a better location for the swap file because of r/w speed.

<nosense>
I have named my serial ata disc "satan". That is another name of the devil
in norwegian. There is a spinning devil in my machine.
<nosense>


Hope this helps : )

 

[Kev]

Thanks

also not mentioned...
degragmenting small partitions is much better than the whole drive. One,
the system partition will be touched less frequently, so it doesnt have
to be done as much. Two, depending on the content, the storage partitions
generally need to do it as much either. Maybe hardly at all. The process
doesnt take nearly as much time as it used to. But its an added benefit

Also, the entire drive does not have to be allocated. There might not
actually be a need yet for alot of storage. Save some of it. You can
always partition the rest later as needed. Or there might be other needs
that are unforseen. In which case your options would be either get an
additional drive (not a bad thing actually) or repartition.

Optional but some people do it... make a small partition to be used only
by your swap file. Ive never done it but its supposed to increase
performance from what Ive read. Maybe some here have?

 

[Keithfarrell]

As already said, partitions aren't essential but can help organise
storage if you label each one so that you can remember what is what.
But same job can be done using folders if you organise properly.
That said, I like to have two hard drives and use one for back-ups so
that if one hard drive fails all is not lost. I know you can use
specialists to try to recover data from failed drives but at what
cost? Especially now when disk drives are so cheap.

 

[Pelysma]

I'm about to install a new 160GB hard drive and have a few questions:

Your questions have been covered pretty well, but there were a couple of
things missed, so here's my two cents:

1. What's the purpose of partitioning a drive?

A partition is a section of the disk marked off for the computer to use.
Partitioning, technically, is the first step in preparing a new drive for
use, but you may not notice it happening. You will see your computer
"initialize" or "format" the drive, but that process probably includes the
"partitioning" process. Actually, you create one or more partitions and
"format" (install a file system on) each partition afterward. Each drive
letter in Windows that represents a hard disk drive is really a partition,
not a physical drive.

We usually think of "Partitioning" a drive as creating two or more
partitions on one disk. There can be up to four, and there is a further way
of subdividing partitions "logically" as well. There are many reasons for
partitioning.

(A) Some operating systems, early Windows 95 for example, could only
recognize a certain limited size of disk. Partitioning allows you to use a
larger disk, since Windows sees each partition as if it were a disk to
itself. This probably applies to you, because many systems built in the
last five years have a limit of 128 GB per partition.
(B) If you wish to install two (or more) different operating systems as
dual-boot, you install each OS on a different partition.
(C) There are several types of file systems available, such as FAT16, FAT32,
NTFS, EFS, EXT2, EXT3, and others. You may have a reason to put one file
system on one part of the disk and another on another, as if you are using
Windows XP and want file security on only part of the disk. Note that
partitions are cross-platform; a Mac, Linux, or Windows computer sees
exactly the same partitions; but the format and file system are specific to
the operating system you are using.
(D) You may have multiple users, and want to assign each a certain limited
portion of the disk. Give each a partition and let them manage it as they
please.
(E) Linux likes having separate partitions for different parts of the
system.
(F) Compaq and HP computers, and probably some others, put system
restoration data and the BIOS SETUP program on a partition by itself.
(G) Disks become "fragmented" as pieces of files become scattered on the
disk. A separate partition can be used for a particular project such as a
DVD movie edit, and will be immune to the fragmentation that happens on the
main disk.

2. Is it necessary and recommended?

Yes and no. Actually, EVERY drive in use has at least one "Partition," even
if it fills the entire drive. By default most operating systems create the
one, full-sized partition at install time if there isn't one already there.
But when most people speak of "partitioning," they mean making two or more.
You might or might not have a use for this, as listed above. Most home
users of Windows have little use for separate partitions. It _will_ be
necessary if you have a 128 GB system limit per partition and a new 160 GB
drive, unless you can upgrade your motherboard's BIOS to accept the big
drive as one unit.

3. How many partitions?

As many as you need. Windows XP works well with one, Linux is designed to
run on about five. However, if you run into that limit of 128 GB, you will
need at least two. I'd make one about 100 GB and the other the rest of the
disk. If you have a DVD-RW drive, you might consider making a third, 5 GB
partition to be used solely as the cache area for DVD burning.

Your "160 GB" disk will actually measure out less than that. Disk
manufacturers consider a billion bites to be a gigabyte, but the computer
uses a binary number, 2^30, which is about 1.074 billion bites. So the disk
will be seven and a half percent smaller than the package leads you to
expect, say about 150. (You will also find that the process expects you to
leave about 8 MB unpartitioned, which is nothing on a disk this size.)

4. Best way to organize data within each partition.

With Windows, work primarily in one partition or drive, and move data to the
other one in an organized manner as you need the space. Think of the extra
drive as a filing cabinet, and create folders with names and patterns that
mean something to you.

With Linux, the important operating system files will be on one partition
(called ROOT or "/"), the programs and configuration will be on another
(called USR), and various users' data will be placed on another (called
HOME) -- by default, anyway.

Thanks.

This is long-winded... I hope it's helpful.

 

[Pelysma]

@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net:

Optional but some people do it... make a small partition to be used only
by your swap file. Ive never done it but its supposed to increase
performance from what Ive read. Maybe some here have?

Not the swap file, exactly, but when I built my son's computer last month I
created an 8 GB partition exclusively for the DVD burner's cache. Because it
always contains at most one project, which is erased after use, it never
gets fragmented at all, and fragmentation is a terrible thing for burning
reliability. Additional considerations: if he ever wanted to install
Linux, he could remove the 8GB FAT32 partition and format that space for the
Linux installation, without disturbing the NTFS system partition.

 

[kony]

I'm about to install a new 160GB hard drive and have a few questions:

1. What's the purpose of partitioning a drive?

Logical divisions.
There are several potential reasons for logical divisions.
If you can't think of any reasons for more than one, don't
create more than one parititon.

2. Is it necessary and recommended?

No
and yes

3. How many partitions?

At least 2, unless you have 2 or more drives in a system,
then possibly still at least 2 on the first drive.

4. Best way to organize date within each partition.

Depends on how you want your data organized.
It often helps to make a partition at the start of the drive
for the OS files, as that keeps them all on the faster
portion of the drive AND reduces seek to different files
often used in succession.

It may be most effective use of partitions to delegate the
slowest portion of the drive(s) to data not needed much
performance, for example compressed video, pictures, MP3,
archives, etc. This can also depend on how many drives you
have.

If you find a certain set of data (or the OS) is useful to
backup on a regular interval with partition imaging programs
like Ghost or DriveImage, this might be another reason to
limit the data on the partition being backed up to only that
needing backed up. That would reduce the backup size, and
if you have at least two partitions then you're not always
forced to backup directly to much slower removable media (or
lan). I like to incrementally backup to a HDD AND to
removable media (and the lan too, but for the sake of
simplicity I'll keep it in context). With a backup on a
secondary or later partition you can completely restore an
OS to a prior state in a matter of minutes, and that speeds
up the backups as well. However, this is within the context
of putting user data (favorites, email, documents, etc) on a
different partition so there is no concern for data loss if
a partition backup needs be restored.

It also speeds up virus scanning- the vast majority of viri
will be on the OS partition. It's not that I suggest not
scanning the rest of the data but the most likely places
first and most frequently.

You'll also have to decide what you're comfortable with.
At first it could be a bit disorienting to have multiple
partition "drive" letters, but once you're used to it then
it seems second-nature.

Since you broght up the issue I suggest having at least 2
partitions (or drives), as it's easier to have two and deal
with that than to have one and then later want more- which
parititon magic can do but IMO, better to just start out
with two, it's not hard to get used to even if it's the
first time you'll be doing it. More than 4 partitions can
require remembering what's where, I leave that up to you to
decide.

 

[Pelysma]

On Tue, 03 May 2005 03:26:52 GMT, "JHI"
I like to incrementally backup to a HDD AND to
removable media (and the lan too, but for the sake of
simplicity I'll keep it in context). With a backup on a
secondary or later partition you can completely restore an
OS to a prior state in a matter of minutes, and that speeds
up the backups as well.

Kony brings up an issue here I hadn't thought of. Note there are two kinds
of "backups" being described here.

To quickly restore your operating files if they get fouled up (and they do),
put a backup on a separate partition.

To restore your data if the hard drive fails, put backups on removable
media, on a remote computer, or on a separate physical hard drive.

 

[Pelysma]

As my hardware instructor, Gary Hecht, would say, "I lied a little." My
previous post was already a bit long-winded and I didn't want to explain
these things. What follows is trivially more accurate than what I wrote
before, but probably not important to you.

Each drive letter in Windows that represents a hard disk drive is really a partition,
not a physical drive.

Each drive letter in Windows represents something called a "volume", which
is a more generic term than "Partition." A formatted partition is a volume,
but so is a thumb drive, a flash card, a data track on a CD, a mapped
network folder, and any of a number of other structures that store data.
Curiously, Windows seems to handle a multi-track CD as one volume, while Mac
puts each track on the desktop independently.

As many as you need.

You can have up to four "primary" partitions on a disk. After that the
"primary" partitions can be subdivided into "logical" partitions. Probably
best to fill your disk space with no more than the four.

With Linux, the important operating system files will be on one partition
(called ROOT or "/"), the programs and configuration will be on another
(called USR),

Actually, Boot, Root( / ), usr, home, var, etc., are "mount points." A
mount point is a shortcut, mapping, or alias for a volume such that it shows
up in the directory structure as a folder or directory. Linux actually
names the physical disk drives HDA, HDB, HDC, etc., and the partitions would
then be HDA1, HDA2, HDB1, HDB2, HDB3, etc. If you mount HDA2 as "home,"
you will forever after think of it as a folder called "home." Because these
partitions may be distributed among two or three hard drives and Linux
really, really doesn't care, it seems to handle multiple drives more
seamlessly than does Windows.

 

[Pelysma]

I'm about to install a new 160GB hard drive and have a few questions:

[snip]
However, if you run into that limit of 128 GB, you will need at least
two. I'd make one about 100 GB and the other the rest of the [snip]

What follows is also posted in another thread. On further reading I learned
that partitioning may not get you your full 160 GB:

Most computers made before about 2003 cannot exceed 137, 438,953,472 bytes
(131,000 MB or 128 GB) on one physical drive. The numbers are odd because
a binary thousand is 1024. (The "160 GB" stated capacity of a new drive
will be about 160 billion bytes, more like 150 real gigabytes.)

This limit is in the motherboard's wiring. A recent BIOS upgrade will
report the full size of the drive but the board can't use it all. According
to Thompson & Thompson, PC Hardware In A Nutshell, page 441:

"A BIOS update cannot eliminate the 128 GB ATA/ATAPI-5 limit because older
ATA interface hardware supports only 28-bit LBA. If you require 48-bit LBA
to support drives larger than 128 GB, install a PCI interface card from
Promise, SIIG, or another manufacturer, or replace the motherboard."

You may or may not encounter this problem, but if you do, now you know how
to handle it.

 

[VWWall]

I'm about to install a new 160GB hard drive and have a few questions:

[snip]
However, if you run into that limit of 128 GB, you will need at least
two. I'd make one about 100 GB and the other the rest of the [snip]

What follows is also posted in another thread. On further reading I learned
that partitioning may not get you your full 160 GB:

The BIOS needs to be able to access all of the drive's sectors,
regardless of how many partitions it's divided into. 2^28 sectors,
times 512 bytes/sector gives ~137 GB decimal, or exactly 128 GB binary.
In addition the OS must handle the larger drive. This can lead to data
corruption on a drive that seems to be working OK.