Author Topic: Partitioning  (Read 6542 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

I find using the primary drive for only programs and general use, and having a backup drive for all my installers/setup files and saved files the most effective way to save space. It also reduces the risk of losing all your files should you run into problems and have to format to use your computer again.

 
For me

Drive C:\ 48 GB System files and applications
Drive D:\ 48 GB CD/DVD Images, setup/install files
Drive E:\ 48 GB Video editing library
Drive F:\ 48 GB Games
Drive G:\ 37 GB Games

With backups, or archives of the really important stuff on DVDs
Consider, friend, as you pass by, as you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, you too shall be. Prepare, therefore, to follow me.

-- Scottish tombstone epitaph

 
That's a sweet setup, especially if each drive volume is actually a separate hard drive .
If they're separate partitions on one hard drive it's a little different but still pretty cool I should say.

 
Whats the point in partitioning your hard drive? All that happens is you lose performance and some applications have issues when they dont run on C:\

 
I can't see anything having lost performance, and have never had issues with a program not being on C:\ (outside of this installer, though I think the problem came about because of the HotU version, not the install directory).

They're all partitions of a 250 gb hard drive. With partitions, it's much easier to defrag the ones you need (you'll frequently defrag your system partition, but not so much others) that way you don't have to defrag the whole drive when one part needs done. It's also for organization sake, as I'm a neat freak. Instead of having a download folder, I have a default download drive (D:\). As well, if one partition fails (which I've had happen in the past) you don't lose everything, though it's still good practice to keep backups. Since it's C:\ that usually will get the most problems, I like to keep things like all y install files seperate from it.

FAT32 removed the NEED to partition your hard drive, so now it's just a vestigal feature. Kinda like goosebumps.
Consider, friend, as you pass by, as you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, you too shall be. Prepare, therefore, to follow me.

-- Scottish tombstone epitaph

 
Partioning your hard disk can put more strain on it I am told, which can explain why every hard disk I have ever owned that i partitioned died after at most 2 years.

 
Hm, might be something worth looking into then. Good thing my hard drive has a 3 year warranty :)

However, I had a 20 gb partitioned drive last me 4 years, and it's relpacement has lasted me two so far, and still going.
Consider, friend, as you pass by, as you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, you too shall be. Prepare, therefore, to follow me.

-- Scottish tombstone epitaph

 
i have a 60 gig maxtor that has lasted me like 6 years and still going strong, and its never been partitioned or anything, and i use it a lot.

 

Offline karajorma

  • King Louie - Jungle VIP
  • Administrator
  • 214
    • Karajorma's Freespace FAQ
Whats the point in partitioning your hard drive? All that happens is you lose performance and some applications have issues when they dont run on C:\

That's absolutely dreadful advice :p

Partitioning does cause any measurable performance problems and is an absolute blessing if you have serious OS problems.

As for applications that don't like not being on C: They're are a bunch of applications that refuse to use other CD drives beyond the first one. That doesn't mean you should rip out all your other drives :p
Karajorma's Freespace FAQ. It's almost like asking me yourself.

[ Diaspora ] - [ Seeds Of Rebellion ] - [ Mind Games ]

 
who the hell says you need to remove your other drives?

 

Offline karajorma

  • King Louie - Jungle VIP
  • Administrator
  • 214
    • Karajorma's Freespace FAQ
Who the hell says you need to remove your other partitions?

Oh yes. You. :p
Karajorma's Freespace FAQ. It's almost like asking me yourself.

[ Diaspora ] - [ Seeds Of Rebellion ] - [ Mind Games ]

 
i never said you have to, i just said its stupid to have them.

 

Offline neoterran

  • 210
definately bad advice. Partitioning a system partition and running windows on it, and installing all apps, moving my documents to another (or several other) partitions is awesome. Major system problems ? Blow windows away and fresh install it, and you still have all your stuff.

Peformance problems ? Myth. Partitioning is the way to go.
Official Taylor Fan Club Member.
Chief Grognard.
"How much code could a coder code if a coder could code code?"

 

Offline karajorma

  • King Louie - Jungle VIP
  • Administrator
  • 214
    • Karajorma's Freespace FAQ
Thanks to whoever took the time to split this BTW :)
Karajorma's Freespace FAQ. It's almost like asking me yourself.

[ Diaspora ] - [ Seeds Of Rebellion ] - [ Mind Games ]

 

Offline Turey

  • Installer dude
  • 211
  • The diminutive form of Turambar.
    • FreeSpace Open Installer Homepage
Thanks to whoever took the time to split this BTW :)

I asked Goober5000 if he would split it, and he was very helpful.  :)
Creator of the FreeSpace Open Installer.
"Calm. The ****. Down." -Taristin
why would an SCP error be considered as news? :wtf: *smacks Cobra*It's a feature.

 
its not a myth dude, I have read it in many places and I speak from experience, PARTITIONING IS A BAD IDEA, PERIOD.

 

Offline Polpolion

  • The sizzle, it thinks!
  • 211
    • Minecraft
30gb: OS, Apps, and downloads (not including DLs > 500mb)
50gb: Games
100gb: CD images and large downloads.

@Hunter: ??? In the first post you said it was a good idea? Were you being sarcastic once, or did you just flip-flop?

 

Offline Nix

  • 28
  • In the morning!
    • Minecraft
I would like to see one of these places you've mentioned that partitioning is a bad idea.  Also, what brands of hard drives have you used?  After taking three Novell classes and two Windows Server classes, which both heartily encourage partitioning hard drives, I'm fairly confident to say that partitioning is a GOOD IDEA, and has it's benefits over having one large partition. 

Here's the drives I've had, which all still work, BTW.

  • IBM Deskstar 8gb, partitioned into 2GB partitions, MS-DOS limitation.  In use since '98 - in my old dosbox.
  • Maxtor 60GB DiamondMax, split into 30 GB partitions.  In use since '01 in my machine right now.
  • 2 IBM 60GB Deskstars, both split in half, in use since '02 In here too..
  • Seagate 160GB Barracuda, SATA, Split four ways, housing OS, Swap, Games, and Archives.  In use since '03, in use now.
All purchased brand new, OEM style.  I've never bought a retail drive in my life... yet.

Partitioning your drives not only physically separates your data, but allows you to change cluster sizes per partition, enabling you to tweak the drive to your liking.  If you have a lot of small files, you'll want smaller clusters, to avoid the amount of slack space taken up by data sitting in a cluster, but not fully filling it up.  If you desire larger clusters, you can tweak it to have larger clusters.  no problem there, it's just that you have the ability to change it to whatever you want.  So yes, it's possible to have a drive with your host partition at 4Kb clusters, and a storage partition with 16Kb clusters.  This is more important for serving, or data storage, and the typical computer user really doesn't have to worry about it, unless they're extremely picky.  I'm not that picky, and use 4kb clusters for all my partitions.

About the "making the drive work harder" bit.  It's true if you're say, defragging all of the partitions at the same time.  That's going to cause significant thrashing and you'll be doing more harm than good.  If you're copying one large file from say, your C to D partition which reside on the same disk, it's like copying and pasting the data to the same place, just further down the drive.  The same exact thing a defragmenter would do.  If you have activity on two partitions, say your OS, and a game, you won't see any performance drop, or increase, even on old ATA drives.  I've tested this before and found minimal to NO difference performancewise whatsoever. 

Partitioning is not a bad idea at all, it's just another way to split your disk up into sections.  If partitioning was such a horrible idea, why do so many people run Linux?  IIRC, when you install any distro of linux, it's reccomended to have two to three partitions, a system partition, swap, and data partition. Why? because it keeps the data permanently seperated.  I even go so far to suggest this for Windows, putting your swapfile onto a seperate partition, to avoid swapfile fragmentation.  Beleive me, when your swapfile gets fragmented, you'll see a drop in performance.  It's not totally huge, but it's noticable.  You'll want to keep a small, say 100mb swap file on the boot partition for crashdumps, but having it seperate ensures that it will never be touched by anything, except Windows itself.  That's the same exact reason it's done in Linux.  Any Linux users out there who might think I'm totally off base here, feel free to correct me, because I don't use it every day. 

So, as far as your drives failing, that's more of how you handle your machine, what you do with your machine, and what kind of hard drives you own.  Stick with high-quality well known drives, such as Seagate or Hitachi (IBM) drives.  Make sure you partition your drives correctly.  It's not stupid to have them, in fact, you might be able to eke out a little more space out of your hard drive if you partition and set cluster sizes accordingly, so it has it's benefits. 

 
30gb: OS, Apps, and downloads (not including DLs > 500mb)
50gb: Games
100gb: CD images and large downloads.

@Hunter: ??? In the first post you said it was a good idea? Were you being sarcastic once, or did you just flip-flop?

Multiple drives and Multiple partitions are two totally different things

 
I don't really partition because I had really bad luck partitioning with my old dos machine, I know partitioning has, on the whole improved, but I am still a superstitious villager, torches and pitchforks at the ready

right now I have 5 HDD's, 4 SATA, one external IDE, I'm happy with my 780gb setup