Two Harddrives

  • Thread starter Thread starter nick
  • Start date Start date
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nick

I will purchase Vista Ultimate and have two drives. Using Vista is it still
considered prudent to install the operating system on one drive and the
programs on the other.Thank you.
 
Windows Vista will perform best when installed on one single drive
and all programs installed on the exact same drive partition. Installing
programs on a separate drive or partition will result in longer seek times,
thus inhibiting Vista's overall excellent performance.

Please see this Windows XP article which also applies to Vista:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/winpreinst/ntfs-preinstall.mspx

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows - Shell/User

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

:

I will purchase Vista Ultimate and have two drives. Using Vista is it still
considered prudent to install the operating system on one drive and the
programs on the other.Thank you.
 
I will purchase Vista Ultimate and have two drives. Using Vista is it still
considered prudent to install the operating system on one drive and the
programs on the other.Thank you.
Click to expand...


Still considered prudent? There wasn't much point in installing programs on
a different partition from the OS in XP. If the OS has to be reinstalled so
will the programs so separating them doesn't do much other than from some
need for organization. Some programs insist on installing to the System
drive anyway.

I would recommend in Vista to install programs and the OS to the same
partition. Use a separate partition for data.
 
Windows Vista will perform best when installed on one single drive
and all programs installed on the exact same drive partition. Installing
programs on a separate drive or partition will result in longer seek times,
thus inhibiting Vista's overall excellent performance.
Click to expand...

That's a bit wrong. Installing apps to a separate partition might
increase seek times (but not necessarily since the app might by chance be
stored in exactly the same track and sector even though they are now
defined as being in a different partition), but it will certainly allow
you to do a complete backup of just the system partition more easily.

Installing apps to a separate harddrive will decrease seek times and give
increased performance. For instance if your Vista drive is sitting there
with the r/h head sitting on a track containing the registry, it no longer
would need to move to another track when you load a program on a separate
drive. The seeking for that app will be done by the 2nd drive's r/h head.
 
Hi, Nick.

Define "prudent", please.

Do you mean "efficient"? As Carey says, a single partition can most
efficiently use a single HD. There is only a single set of read/write heads
and they move in lockstep, so you can't be reading from the first partition
and writing to a second partition - or even a different part of the same
partition - at the same time. However, if you have two physical drives,
then you have two spindles spinning platters and two sets of heads accessing
those platters. So data can be read from one HD while being simultaneously
written to the other HD. The OS on HD0 can be managing an application on
HD1. Or an application on HD0 can be manipulating data on HD1.

Or does "prudent" mean "safe"? Having two HDs means that data on HD0 can be
duplicated on HD1; then if either HD dies, the data might be safe on the
other.

Or does "prudent" mean "manageable"? Having the OS on the first partition
of HD0, with all apps and data on other partitions and/or on other HDs would
let you reformat the "boot volume" - to upgrade from WinXP to Vista, for
example, or to repair a damaged OS - without having to also erase the apps
and data.

Most of this question depends on how YOU use YOUR computer. A gamer has
much different priorities than a business managing a giant database.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Mail 7.0 in Vista Ultimate x64)
 
C: = Vista + Programs
D: = Pagefile + (maybe temp) + General Junk

set page file to fixed size, this prevents fragmentation.

When paging happens, it will not slow down access to program files and OS
files.

Also, windows prefects program files, so if you do move them to other drives
you may find that the prefect location is on your C drive.

Look in %SystemRoot%\Prefetch ( C:\windows\Prefetch )

Cheers

Steve
 
I will purchase Vista Ultimate and have two drives. Using Vista is it still
considered prudent to install the operating system on one drive and the
programs on the other.Thank you.
Click to expand...
It's never been considered prudent to do that in the first place.
 
Conor said:
It's never been considered prudent to do that in the first place.
Click to expand...


Sure it has. Separating the OS from programs and data has always been
considered good practice in the DP field. If you have to reinstall the OS,
your data are safe.

Tom Lake
 
Tom said:
Sure it has. Separating the OS from programs and data has always been
considered good practice in the DP field. If you have to reinstall the OS,
your data are safe.
Click to expand...

WHAT THE ****?

No, having THE DATA on a seperate partition is considered good practice
however that's usually by people incapable of setting up a proper
backup system.

And it's never been considered good practice in the Data Protection
field, ever. Except by the incompetent.
 
Programs aren't data in that sense..


Tom Lake said:
Sure it has. Separating the OS from programs and data has always been
considered good practice in the DP field. If you have to reinstall the
OS,
your data are safe.

Tom Lake
Click to expand...
 
Let's take a leap of faith here and suppose that the op meant user data
instead of programs. What would the groups response be then?

I, along with many others, have kept data on a separate partition/drive in
the event of having to reinstall the operating system. But with Vista being
different in that it doesn't "wipe" the drive before installing, it moves
the user files to a directory called windows old, or something like that, so
user data should be as safe as if it were on another partition.

A lot of people are going to be wondering just what is the best way to set
up their system with this new and improved OS, they/we are relying on
experts, such as those that frequent these newsgroups, to come up with the
"right' answers.

So come on guys, quit fighting for a while, get your act together and
develop an action plan for a typical home user to follow, bearing in mind
that they'll probably stick with Vista Backup because they won't be able to
afford anything else after paying for this OS :-)
 
It would be better to have the OS and programs on one drive and your personal data on another. This is because if you have to re-install Vista (the same with XP also) you will have to re-install your programs anyway.

I will purchase Vista Ultimate and have two drives. Using Vista is it still
considered prudent to install the operating system on one drive and the
programs on the other.Thank you.
 
A big thank you everyone for your comments. I am glad I ask the
question.There is always something else to be aware of and learn.
 
nick said:
I will purchase Vista Ultimate and have two drives. Using Vista is it
still considered prudent to install the operating system on one drive
and the programs on the other.Thank you.
Click to expand...


"Still"?

It was never good advice and it still isn't.

Most people who do this do it because they think their programs will remain
intact if they ever have to reinstall Windows. Since all programs (except
for tiny ones, and rarely) have components and pointers to them within
Windows (in the registry and elsewhere), if Windows gets reinstalled, all
programs cease to work, and the programs have to be reinstalled too.
 
Tom said:
Sure it has. Separating the OS from programs and data has always been
considered good practice in the DP field. If you have to reinstall
the OS, your data are safe.
Click to expand...


That's true of data, but false of programs.

Moreover, even with data, although there can be good reasons to separate
data from the operating system on a separate drive or partition, I don't
think that the safety of the data is one of those good reasons. Your data is
safe if it's backed up to external media, and it's not safe if it isn't.
Anything else, like separating it a different drive, is just kidding
yourself. That's because even there it's subject to simultaneous loss of the
original and backup to many of the most common dangers: severe power
glitches, nearby lightning strikes, virus attacks, even theft of the
computer.

To me, the main value of separating data from programs is that it
facilitates data backup if your backup scheme is a data-only one.
 
It would also make an image of the OS drive useless too?

| nick wrote:
|
| > I will purchase Vista Ultimate and have two drives. Using Vista is it
| > still considered prudent to install the operating system on one drive
| > and the programs on the other.Thank you.
|
|
| "Still"?
|
| It was never good advice and it still isn't.
|
| Most people who do this do it because they think their programs will remain
| intact if they ever have to reinstall Windows. Since all programs (except
| for tiny ones, and rarely) have components and pointers to them within
| Windows (in the registry and elsewhere), if Windows gets reinstalled, all
| programs cease to work, and the programs have to be reinstalled too.
|
| --
| Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
| Please reply to the newsgroup
|
|
 
dirty said:
It would also make an image of the OS drive useless too?
Click to expand...


No, since the image contains both the programs and Windows, all of those
references and associated files within Windows remain together.
 
I mean if you have the OS and programs installed on separate drives
and you image only the OS drive, would it still be usable?

| dirty old man wrote:
|
| > It would also make an image of the OS drive useless too?
|
|
| No, since the image contains both the programs and Windows, all of those
| references and associated files within Windows remain together.
|
| --
| Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
| Please reply to the newsgroup
|
|
| > | >> nick wrote:
| >>
| >>> I will purchase Vista Ultimate and have two drives. Using Vista is
| >>> it still considered prudent to install the operating system on one
| >>> drive and the programs on the other.Thank you.
| >>
| >>
| >> "Still"?
| >>
| >> It was never good advice and it still isn't.
| >>
| >> Most people who do this do it because they think their programs will
| >> remain intact if they ever have to reinstall Windows. Since all
| >> programs (except for tiny ones, and rarely) have components and
| >> pointers to them within Windows (in the registry and elsewhere), if
| >> Windows gets reinstalled, all programs cease to work, and the
| >> programs have to be reinstalled too.
| >>
| >> --
| >> Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
| >> Please reply to the newsgroup
|
|
 
dirty said:
I mean if you have the OS and programs installed on separate drives
and you image only the OS drive, would it still be usable?
Click to expand...


Sorry, I misunderstood.

If you kept the program drive and restored a recent-enough OS image to the
OS drive, everything should still work. The only potential problems would
have to do with your OS image being out of synch with the programs drive,
and that's mostly related to how old the image is.

If the program drive were gone and you had just the OS drive (either
original or restored) you'd obviously have all sorts of registry entries
pointing to places that didn't exist. The programs certainly wouldn't work,
but whether there would be other problems, I'm not sure. But note what
whever problems you ran into would be as a result of having the OS drive and
not the program drive. Restoration of an image isn't really the issue.
 
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