question about restore settings

  • Thread starter Thread starter Debbie Graham
  • Start date Start date
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Debbie Graham

I have my hard drive partitioned into 4 drives, I was wondering do I set the
% of system restore for each the same amount or just adjust the C drive?
Thanks

Debbie
 
I have my hard drive partitioned into 4 drives, I was wondering do I set the
% of system restore for each the same amount or just adjust the C drive?
Click to expand...


You can turn off System Restore for all drives but C. System Restore
only backs up the system anyway, so won't do anything for you on the
other drives.

Why do you have four partitions? What do you put on each? Unless you
are dual-booting or have other special needs, that's overkill for
almost everyone, and those with so many partitions usually have a
misconception of how things work, and what the value of those
partitions is.
 
Debbie Graham added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...
I have my hard drive partitioned into 4 drives, I was
wondering do I set the % of system restore for each the same
amount or just adjust the C drive? Thanks
Click to expand...
Debbie, unless you have parts of your O/S and/or your apps and
utilities on the extended partition, there isn't much point in
using System Restore on them. The reason is that RPs only capture
system files, not user data files. Although Windows by default will
automatically turn on RPs on all the partitions it finds, including
those on external devices, you're best off by turning it off as it
won't help you and just wastes disk space.

As far as the percent of your C:\ to use for RPs, pick an amount
that gives you about 2 weeks worth of RPs. An RP much older than
that is likely to cause more damage than it fixes if you attempt to
use it.
 
Ken Blake, MVP added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...
You can turn off System Restore for all drives but C. System
Restore only backs up the system anyway, so won't do anything
for you on the other drives.

Why do you have four partitions? What do you put on each?
Unless you are dual-booting or have other special needs,
that's overkill for almost everyone, and those with so many
partitions usually have a misconception of how things work,
and what the value of those partitions is.
Click to expand...
Ken, I have 2 extended partitions on my PC and one on my wife's PC.
I create far more data than she does so I created one partition for
all my non-graphics data and one for my graphics. The idea is to
cut down on the number of folders which makes it easier for me to
organize my data and locate what I want and also reduces disk
fragmentation due to constantly writing and rewriting data. I might
agree that a 3rd partition is unnecessary but since the OP didn't
say why she has them, I can't comment intelligently.
 
I didn't want to have to backup a 250Gb hard drive all at once. I have just
games on one drive, heavy graphic programs on another, my pagefile on
another.

Debbie
 
Okay I turned off the restore to my D, E, and F drives. Now I went and
removed the system information (I think that's what it's called) that is the
folder for the restore files, was that okay to remove?

Debbie
 
Debbie Graham added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...
I didn't want to have to backup a 250Gb hard drive all at
once. I have just games on one drive, heavy graphic programs
on another, my pagefile on another.
Click to expand...

Debbie, I understand keeping your apps, such as games, on a
separate partition IF your intent is to cut down on disk
fragmentation and hopefully allow faster access to the executable
and data portions of the games. I don't understand, though, why
you want pagefile.sys on another drive. On my 280GB Maxtor,
pagefile.sys is only 3GB out of a partition size of 48GB. I run a
relatively light system and only 16GB of the 48GB total is being
used. Now, my D:\ and E:\ partitions for my data are about 90%
full to the point where I have to copy lesser used data to
redundant optical for safety.

Ken may come back with a better opinion, but if your system is
stable, meaning you're not constantly adding or deleting apps,
utilities, games, etc. you should be able to get your primary
partition well optimized with little fragmentation and not suffer
any noticeable speed degradation. I would say something
completely different if you had, say, a couple of terabytes of
executables and data, perhaps in a RAID set-up and/or using SCSI
instead of IDE or SATA.

As to backing up the entire system, one of the several imaging
apps mentioned, including Ghost, True Image, and the new one for
me, Casper, will compress the image from a little to quite a bit.
e.g., for my 16GB used on my C:\, True Image generally runs in
the 6GB range. However, it cannot further compress files that are
already in a compressed format, e.g., MPEG movies or music or
JPEG pictures.

If there's more that you would like clarification or advice on,
please provide some more details on your system and what you hope
to accomplish. And, have a great day (what's left of it)!

 
Debbie Graham added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...
Okay I turned off the restore to my D, E, and F drives. Now I
went and removed the system information (I think that's what
it's called) that is the folder for the restore files, was
that okay to remove?
Click to expand...

Eeek! If you mean that you deleted the System Volume Information
folder on your D:\, E:\, and F:\ drives, then, yes, that is OK. I
assume that you gave yourself security approval for that as the
default is "none". But, if you try to move or even manually
delete sub-folders from the System Volume Information folder on
your C:\ drive you've most likely destroyed your ability to roll
your system back to an earlier RP. The reason is that the RP
scheme is really a link list and only the changed info is copied
to each successive RP, e.g., a System Checkpoint.
 
I heard to have the pagefile on a different drive other than your system
files because I guess it's supposed to access it faster. I have a lot of
programs and I install and uninstall a lot too.
Debbie
 
Yeah system volume is what I meant. Well the folders didn't delete but I
assume it's an empty folder because it's says 0 bytes

Debbie
 
Debbie Graham added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...
Yeah system volume is what I meant. Well the folders didn't
delete but I assume it's an empty folder because it's says 0
bytes
Click to expand...

You're OK, Debbie. Depending on what anti-malware utility(s) you
are running, Windows will refuse to let you delete the System
Volume Information folder even if it is zero bytes. e.g., I run
Norton System Works 2006 and even though I've long ago turned off
the Norton Recycle Bin and most everything except NAV, it still
insists on putting files into it!
 
Debbie Graham added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...
I heard to have the pagefile on a different drive other than
your system files because I guess it's supposed to access it
faster. I have a lot of programs and I install and uninstall
a lot too. Debbie
Click to expand...

Could well be, Debbie, I'm not enough of a techie to say one way
or another, but I am skeptical of any noticeable improvement.
But, I CAN say that the HDD fragmentation that results from
installing/uninstalling/reinstalling apps WILL slow down your
system. Whether it is noticeable or not is the real issue.

I may have commented on this in another of my messages, but when
I get ready to do a full system backup as I am right this minute,
I start with as rigorous a malware scan as I know how to do with
NAV 2006, Spy Bot Search & Destroy and eTrust Pest Patrol since
it makes no sense to back up an infected system. Then, I kill all
the temp files with Disk Cleanup, and defrag my C:\. I've never
been impressed with XP's defragger and System Works won't, but
through all of this, I cannot detect any noticeable speedup in
system operation.

Perhaps if you want to put your mind at ease with all of this
stuff, try some simple stop watch benchmarks of your fav graphics
apps or games to see if you notice any slowdowns. There's tons of
utilities to benchmark your system, many of which are free, but
there's nothing quite like a seat-of-the-pants real-world timing!

Good luck!
 
Debbie Graham said:
I heard to have the pagefile on a different drive other than your system files
because I guess it's supposed to access it faster. I have a lot of programs
and I install and uninstall a lot too.
Debbie
Click to expand...

<snipped>

Either you were given bad advice or you misunderstood it. Having the pagefile on
a separate partition on the same physical drive is counterproductive. With your
configuration, anytime Windows needs to access the pagefile, it has to look in
an area of the hard drive that is farther away than if the pagefile was left on
C. The amount of additional seek time is small but can still add up particularly
if you don't have a lot of physical memory.

If you're looking to relocate the pagefile to improve performance, it should be
moved to a second hard drive. Take a look at the "Should the file be left on
Drive C:?" section of this article by MS-MVP Alex Nichol.

Virtual Memory in Windows XP
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php

Good luck

Nepatsfan
 
I didn't want to have to backup a 250Gb hard drive all at once.
Click to expand...


You wouldn't have to even if you had only one partition. It depends on
what backup software you use, but generally you have the choice of
what folders you want to back up.

If all you backup is data, it can sometimes be facilitated by having a
separate drive for just data.

I have just
games on one drive, heavy graphic programs on another,
Click to expand...


I don't at all understand separating two kinds on programs, each on
its own partition. In general programs are programs, regardless of
what type they are, and they are almost always best kept together.

Do you back up the programs? In general, backing up programs is
useless unless you do it as part of an image or clone of the entire
drive. That's because the programs have entries in the Windows
registry and other supporting files within Windows. So backups of the
programs are useless without a copy of the Windows they were installed
under. For that reason, it hardly ever makes sense to separate
programs and Windows on different partitions. All programs should be
installed on the same partition Windows is on.


my pagefile on
another.
Click to expand...


That's a *bad* thing to do, and *hurts* your performance. The
main performance issue with the page file is the time it takes to move
the drive's read/write heads to and from it. The way to minimize that
head movement time is to put the page file on the most used-partition
of the least-used physical drive. For almost everyone with a single
drive, that's the drive Windows is installed on, C:.

For most people who are not dual-booting, either one or two partitions
(depending on your backup strategy) is best.

You might be interested in reading this article I recently wrote about
planning your partition structure:

http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=326




 
I'll read that article you wrote. I just moved my pagefile to my C Drive
too.

I use Acronis true Image, I backup the whole drive, I never had any luck
just backing up certain files, it also took longer to restore for some
reason. I just stick with what works good for me and have had no problems
when restoring.
Debbie
Ken Blake said:
I didn't want to have to backup a 250Gb hard drive all at once.
Click to expand...


You wouldn't have to even if you had only one partition. It depends on
what backup software you use, but generally you have the choice of
what folders you want to back up.

If all you backup is data, it can sometimes be facilitated by having a
separate drive for just data.

I have just
games on one drive, heavy graphic programs on another,
Click to expand...


I don't at all understand separating two kinds on programs, each on
its own partition. In general programs are programs, regardless of
what type they are, and they are almost always best kept together.

Do you back up the programs? In general, backing up programs is
useless unless you do it as part of an image or clone of the entire
drive. That's because the programs have entries in the Windows
registry and other supporting files within Windows. So backups of the
programs are useless without a copy of the Windows they were installed
under. For that reason, it hardly ever makes sense to separate
programs and Windows on different partitions. All programs should be
installed on the same partition Windows is on.


my pagefile on
another.
Click to expand...


That's a *bad* thing to do, and *hurts* your performance. The
main performance issue with the page file is the time it takes to move
the drive's read/write heads to and from it. The way to minimize that
head movement time is to put the page file on the most used-partition
of the least-used physical drive. For almost everyone with a single
drive, that's the drive Windows is installed on, C:.

For most people who are not dual-booting, either one or two partitions
(depending on your backup strategy) is best.

You might be interested in reading this article I recently wrote about
planning your partition structure:

http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=326
Click to expand...
 
I'll read that article you wrote. I just moved my pagefile to my C Drive
too.
Click to expand...


Good. Whether you will actually see a measurable improvement by doing
so depends on how much RAM you have, and how much you use the page
file, but it can't hurt, and should help some.

I use Acronis true Image,
Click to expand...


An excellent choice.

I backup the whole drive, I never had any luck
just backing up certain files, it also took longer to restore for some
reason. I just stick with what works good for me and have had no problems
when restoring.
Click to expand...


Different people have different backup philosophies, but I too prefer
backing up ("imaging") the drive to an external hard drive.

 
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