is it bad to have one big 200gb partition?

[neil]

within the next couple of days i am going to be installing a WD 200gb Hard drive in my puter.
The drives main purpose is to store/play all my music files. So i wanted to use the drive as one big partition.

I bought a Western Digital WD2000JB that came with the Promise PCI IDE controller that i will be using so that my PC will reconize a drive bigger then 137gbs.

I was reading the manual that came with the HD and it said that there might be problems using some utilities such as, Scan Disk and Defrag and recommends partitioning the drive into 137gb partitions or less.


I was just wondering if anyone runs HDs bigger then 137gb as one big partition? Are there any problems in doing this?


thanks
-neil

[edit] i just wanted to mention that i picked up this drive from frys/outpost.com for around 280 with a 120$ rebate. There was two rebates avalble. A 20 dollar and 100 dollar one. I think today is the last day for the 20$ rebate but the 100$ one ends later this month.......so for anyone looking for a 200gb drive for around 170 bucks, check it out at frys/outpost.
I know that this info is mostlikely in the "Hotdeals" Forum but i figured that i would add it into the end of my post since it seemed like a pretty killer deal.[edit]

 

[techfuzz]

If you are running a newer operating system like Windows 2000 or XP and you format the drive as NTFS you will not have any problems.

techfuzz

 

[neil]

thanks techfuzz for the quick reply.

Yes, i am runing Window2000 SP3. and the disk format will be NTFS.

cool, thanks
-neil

 

[NTB]

Only real problem with a single partition that size is that it'll take for ever to defrag. I've got an 80GB that takes quite a while; I'd hate to see how long a drive 2.5x that size would take.

Nate

 

[techfuzz]

Originally posted by: NTB
Only real problem with a single partition that size is that it'll take for ever to defrag. I've got an 80GB that takes quite a while; I'd hate to see how long a drive 2.5x that size would take.

Nate

Using it to store music files (MP3's presumably) it won't be nearly that bad. NTFS does perform some type of defrag on its own at write time. If it were a lot of 5K files, defragging it might take hours. I setup all my drives to be defraged on Monday morning at like 2AM. By the time I get to work on Monday or home from work it's been long finished.

techfuzz

 

[spanky]

damn... how long would it take to defrag that thing?

 

[aircooled]

If your OS resides on a seperate drive, and the new 200gb will be for storage, mp3's, data, etc... then yes. Just format it as one big 200gb drive.

 

[Hikari]

A quick note...

As long as you install XP SP-1, it will not have any problems with the disk. The built-in XP install only seems to see 137gb or so, but once you install SP1, all the space shows up. Once that is done, you wont have to worry about scandisk and the such. I just installed a 180gb and ended up expanding a partition since the base XP install didn't see all the space.

Still, maybe good to break into two pieces. Put the OS on one partition, and all you data on another. Then if you just reinstall the OS, you won't be touching the other stuff at all (and can do a clean format on the old OS partition, etc.)

 

[JZilla]

Have you even read his post ?

 

[Sid59]

as a boot drive, parition it ..
to store data, i'd keep it at 200GB

i think defragging is overrated.

 

[zCypher]

Originally posted by: NTB
Only real problem with a single partition that size is that it'll take for ever to defrag. I've got an 80GB that takes quite a while; I'd hate to see how long a drive 2.5x that size would take.

Nate

Not really. I remember when I bought my 2GB Seagate drive way back when, and I thought... OMG, it already takes long enough to format/defrag/scandisk my 427MB hd, it's going to take FOREVER for 2GB!! Then I bought a 20GB... and so yea, drives get bigger, but they're getting faster too, so that's not really an issue.

Also, I know this doesn't help out with defragging or scandisk-ing, but you can use norton ghost personal edition on a bootable CD to do a format/partition in literally two seconds, rather than wait for fdisk and format.com both which take ridiculously long to accomplish the same thing.

Good luck with that 200.

 

[zCypher]

Originally posted by: zCypher

Originally posted by: NTB
Only real problem with a single partition that size is that it'll take for ever to defrag. I've got an 80GB that takes quite a while; I'd hate to see how long a drive 2.5x that size would take.

Nate

Not really. I remember when I bought my 2GB Seagate drive way back when, and I thought... OMG, it already takes long enough to format/defrag/scandisk my 427MB hd, it's going to take FOREVER for 2GB!! Then I bought a 20GB... and so yea, drives get bigger, but they're getting faster too, so that's not really an issue.

Also, I know this doesn't help out with defragging or scandisk-ing, but you can use norton ghost personal edition on a bootable CD to do a format/partition in literally two seconds, rather than wait for fdisk and format.com both which take ridiculously long to accomplish the same thing.

Good luck with that 200.

Furthermore, if you're really interested in that, but don't know how to get it/use it - I can make an image of the CD I use for that, send it to you, and you can burn it to your own CD and use it as you like. Handy thing, that bootformat CD from work.

 

[SUOrangeman]

A few thoughts on partitioning

-SUO

 

[rbV5]

I use a single 200GB partition. Defrag at night.

 

[BFG10K]

I'd go with a single 200 partition GB. I like to have one large partition that's bigger than the other partitions combined and I don't bother with disk utilities.

 

[Innoka]

Are you going to organise those files into folders? And if you are going to organise them into folders, why not partition the drive, since it's like having folders but has more advantages and flexibility. Defragmentation is a problem on the proposed drive, also recursive backups are not possible. Changing drive structure later will mean hours moving files around. A few logical partitions is not going to hurt you.

 

[CrazyCompGeek]

Originally posted by: Innoka
Are you going to organise those files into folders? And if you are going to organise them into folders, why not partition the drive, since it's like having folders but has more advantages and flexibility. Defragmentation is a problem on the proposed drive, also recursive backups are not possible. Changing drive structure later will mean hours moving files around. A few logical partitions is not going to hurt you.

You have a good point Innoka. However what will happen when you have one sort of music to store to a drive that is full while another drive is less than half of its capacity?

 

[OdiN]

I see absolutely no use for partitioning for home use really....

Now...corporate networks are a different story, esp. with servers.

 

[CTho9305]

Since it is just a data drive, I'd say 1 partition is fine. The only time I partition is when I am installing the OS/apps/data on one drive... OS+apps in one partition, data in the other for fast, easy, safe formatting / reinstalling of the OS part without loss of data.

 

[DOOPYLOOPY]

similar question answered here

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=27&threadid=1028223

yah it takes forever to format and it's fine if it's just a data drive but if it's going to have OS as well it's nice to be able to have 2 partitions in case the OS needs reinstalling.

 

[Siddhartha]

Originally posted by: techfuzz
If you are running a newer operating system like Windows 2000 or XP and you format the drive as NTFS you will not have any problems.

techfuzz

Can anyone explain to me why I should partition my 100 gig hard drive? I am running Windows XP.

 

[Sid59]

Originally posted by: Dr Smooth

Originally posted by: techfuzz
If you are running a newer operating system like Windows 2000 or XP and you format the drive as NTFS you will not have any problems.

techfuzz

Can anyone explain to me why I should partition my 100 gig hard drive? I am running Windows XP.

lol .. did you not read the thread?

if it's a boot drive, people partition into 2, 1 for OS just in case you have to reformat fubar. the 2nd partition stores data and drivers and other important stuff.

 

[Pilsnerpete]

Have you even read his post ?

I read it. Why?

 

[0roo0roo]

os partition should be kept small so u can ghost it. image basically. if u f*ck windows, u can restore to previous state easily and quickly. and without hosing all your other 1XXGB. if u have one partition with os, thats dangerous.

 

[RobCur]

1000 bytes = 1k, 1000K = 1meg, 1gig = 1000meg being labeled on the box, this is why your 200gb is going to be 186gb in binary. That's 14GB that has been lost to marketing. Just a good way to inflate the HD bigger then it seem to be. You're paying for 200GB, not 186GB. Thats something that most aren't aware and it won't change anytime soon unless we raise some voices? so when it get to 1000GB, you would only see 930GB, hmm 70GB lost again