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OS on C drive, Programs on D drive, and Data on E drive?

L

LABachlr

Member
A client wants the OS, Win XP Pro, put on the C drive, all of his apps put on the D drive, and his data on the E drive. His former computer guy set his old system up like that, and he thinks that is how it is going to run optimally.

With respect to the data being on a different drive, I agree. That should definitely be done.

However, putting the programs on a drive other than C is not a good idea in my opinion. First of all, when the program is running, it is going to have to pull files from both the C drive and the D drive, which I would assume may affect performance.

But the bigger concern is that if he were to get a virus (which is highly unlikely, but I just like to cover all of my bases) and he were unable to access the C drive and had to reformat it, he would not be able to uninstall his programs, because all of the programs' system files would be wiped out. It would just screw everything up.

That's my assessment of that kind of setup.

What do you guys think?
 
But the bigger concern is that if he were to get a virus (which is highly unlikely, but I just like to cover all of my bases) and he were unable to access the C drive and had to reformat it, he would not be able to uninstall his programs, because all of the programs' system files would be wiped out. It would just screw everything up.
Click to expand...
Why does this matter? Why uninstall the applications if you had to reformat and install the OS? You couldn't uninstall the apps anyhow, as they are not "installed" with the new OS. Just format the D:/ drive, or just reinstall the applications to the same locations. problem solved. Having said that, I keep my applications on the same drive as my OS, and all data on another drive. I find there is no difference in terms of performance, I just see no reason to keep my applications seperate from my OS. If my OS gets hosed, I'd have to reinstall them anyhow, why keep them seperate?

\Dan
 
I completely agree. The only reason I mentioned uninstalling the apps is because of the very reason that you stated...that they would not be installed with the new OS, so they would need to be reinstalled. Would you be able to install over the programs that were installed in the previous OS?

And again, he thinks that it increases performance, which I don't agree with. If anything, it would diminish it. Either way, the change in performance would be very nominal, if there were any change at all.
 
Would you be able to install over the programs that were installed in the previous OS?
Click to expand...
Yes. Just reinstall to the same directory. And even if you didn't you would just have one good (working) directory and one not working directory. Which of course would be a huge waste of space. You could even just delete the old directories and start over.

If they want to believe there is a performance difference, let them I guess. Placebo effect makes a lot of people feel better. There will be no performance difference one way or the other. Some people want to believe "their way" is the fastest/best way. Sometimes it is, most times it's not.

\Dan
 
You're right. I will appease my client by setting it up the way they want, if only to make them happy.

I also failed to mention the entire setup of the system. There is actually a clone of the active hard drive in a removable rack that they will use in case the active HD fails. It's also a sense of security knowing that they have everything on their hard drive backed up. And I have decided to not only clone the active drive, but to also create an image of the C partition. So in the unlikely event that they get a virus, all they have to do is restore the C partition.

Thanks for the help.
 
However, putting the programs on a drive other than C is not a good idea in my opinion. First of all, when the program is running, it is going to have to pull files from both the C drive and the D drive, which I would assume may affect performance.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I understand why you would think this would hurt performance. If anything, it would help (assuming these are actual physical drives and not logical drives on the same physical platform).

It would help because whatever files needed from both drives could be loaded concurrently. In your "One Drive" scenario, files would need to be pulled sequentially.

Anyone and everyone should have a copy of "Erunt", a freeware utility that backsup Win2K and XP's Registry Hives as often as you want them. These backups go a long way to normalizing catastrophic situations where complete reinstalls of either the OS or all applications and drivers (even if present on the system) would otherwise be needed.

Get Erunt here: Erunt Download

Learn how to use it effectively here:

How to use Erunt
 
Originally posted by: Slikkster
I'm not sure I understand why you would think this would hurt performance. If anything, it would help (assuming these are actual physical drives and not logical drives on the same physical platform).
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And assuming that the physical drives are on different controllers (are we talking about IDE drives here). If you put 2 drives on one cable only 1 can be read from at a time. So that does hurt performance. Plus with this setup of three drives, two of theme are probably going to be sharing a channel. More info on the hardware specs would help probably. Also are these different "drives" physical or logical? That makes a big dif.

Overall with a 2 drive, IDE setup I would go with...

drive one:
C partition with OS. DO NOT SCRIMP WITH SPACE ON THIS! I hate deiling with servers with 2 gigs on the c drive... 🙁
d partition with programs.

Drive two: (on diff IDE channel)
Data
Click to expand...
 
Keeping data and programs separate from c: helps in keeping the primary OS partition as small and efficient as possible for HD cloning purposes.

Backing up a 15-20gb OS partition isn't any fun. I'd rather backup a 6gb or less partition.
 
This is what I do:


FAT32 8GB - C: is where WinXP and Programs live
NTFS 100GB - D: is where \Documents and Settings and all Data lives
FAT32 8GB - Z: is a Ghost of C when is was first installed, with service packs, and all MS software - but no 3rd party software at all. and the swap file also lives here "static size of 2047MB"
 
eh.. rule of thumb that i was always taught was to make your swap twice the size of your memory to twice plus one.
 
Couple points to think about:
Any time you add physical drives and put various items on each drive it will speed things up.
Multiple partitions on the same drive do not have the same effect.

Having programs and data separate provides no benefit if you just reload / repair the OS.
Having an OS separate from data is useful if you have to REFORMAT. (obviously)
Having programs separate from the OS if you reformat provides little benefit (see exception below) since you will lose registry settings for those programs when you reload.

Exception to the above: Some programs allow you to easily specify a data location for them. Some, however will save certain settings in their own folder structure. It's a case by case basis.


My recommendation:
If you are using separate partitions, put C: for OS programs, D: for data.
If you are using separate DRIVES then yes, C:, D: and E: would work best.
Never substitue any form of drive redundancy for real backups. Remember, RAID is designed to protect your UPTIME, not your data.
 
Originally posted by: Slikkster
Why would you need a 2 gig swap file?
Click to expand...

Originally posted by: nanaki333
eh.. rule of thumb that i was always taught was to make your swap twice the size of your memory to twice plus one.
Click to expand...

I have 512MB of RAM, and was using the dynamic 1.5x to 4x method, then heard that XP was quicker when you make it static, since I have tons of disk space I choose the high end and made it static at 2047MB.
 
Well, I'm sure the 2 gig doesn't hurt (except taking up space), but XP would probably allocate no more than 768mb for your config with 512mb ram.
 
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