Wanting to partition my hard drive

[archcommus]

I have one hard drive in my system, a 120 GB Seagate. I currently have everything on one partition, and I back up all of my documents to an external drive. I'd like to put my documents on a separate partition and then start ghosting an image of the OS/programs partition to my external drive, as well. So, C:\ with OS and programs, and ghost an image of it to the external. Then my documents on D:\, and back that up manually as individual files to the external.

I bought PartitionMagic and went to create a D:\ partition, and of course I couldn't make it the size I wanted (71 GB, 40 for C:\ and 71 for D:\) because of how full the C:\ partition already is. So do I just want to back up my documents, then remove them from the hard drive, and then go ahead and make the D:\ partition as big as I'd like? And will this leave my C:\ partition intact and okay with all my programs and the OS installed on it?

Also, while I'm at it, should I make a separate partition for my pagefile?

Thanks.

 

[yadda]

It has been a while but I believe there is a way to *resize* a partition on the way.

Y

 

[yadda]

Sorry that should have said on the "fly".

 

[archcommus]

But am I right that I need to first remove my documents off my PC to be able to create the 40 GB C:\ partition and the 71 GB D:\ partition?

Right now I have 51 GB used, 13 GB programs and OS, 38 GB documents.

 

[islandtechengineers]

with partition magic, you should be able to partition your drive however you want. It will leave your os intact (it should/it always has for me).... im not to sure if you'll notice a difference in performance with the "cache partition" and i suggest you spend some cash on a cheap 40 giger and make that your cache partition/drive. are you running SATA or PATA? if you're running SATA then you may want to ignore my secondary drive statement as all sata setups are fast. hey check this out and i hope it helps on your decision=

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=27&threadid=1368148

do a search on the performance of setting up different partitions.

 

[archcommus]

I'm using IDE.

Eh, it's 5:12 AM, too late to read it right now LOL.

Basically, if it's not going to offer a very noticeable performance gain, I probably won't bother making another partition for my pagefile. However I will try to check out that thread tomorrow.

Well anyway, as I said, I want a 40 for my OS and apps, and the rest, which is 71, for documents. But, since only 60 GB is currently free on C:\, I can't make the D:\ partition of 71 GB without removing stuff from C:\. So should I just back up my documents, empty out the folder on my Seagate, make D:\, and then make a new My Documents folder on D:\? Is there any more to it than that?

After that I'd like to ghost an image of C:\ to my external, and also back up all of D:\ independently.

 

[Navid]

It is always good to backup first.

What you are thinking of doing is fine.

You can also start by resizing your current single partition to say 55, since you have 50 used right now.
Then, create a second partition after it. Then, move your documents to the second partition from the first. Then, delete them from the first. Then, resize again. Resizing a partition with data will take longer than resizing one that is empty. So, this alternative will take longer than what you have suggested.

There is no gain from creating a partition for pagefile if it is going to by on the same physical drive as the operating system. Only create a dedicated partitoin for the pagefile if you have a second physical drive. Then, there will be two heads (two drives) and there will be speed gain.

 

[islandtechengineers]

hey there, on ide if you have 2 harddrives and would like a better performcance out of both...... you should have each as the primary on their own channel compared to having both on the same channel (1 as primary and the 2nd as secondary). You could use the second primary drive as your cache drive.

 

[archcommus]

Thanks for the replies.

I'm fine with having just one internal drive so I'll just keep it like that. Thanks for addressing that.

So since that method would take longer, I'll back up my documents, create a D:\ partition of size 71 GB, copy my documents over to it (the partition will only have that one folder on it), and then retarget My Documents through its properties. Then I can go ahead and delete C:\Documents and Settings\user\My Documents? Because now My Documents would be pointing to D:\My Documents. Then I can back that folder up using my sync software (awesome), and ghost an image of C:\, which will contain only installed programs and Windows.

 

[Navid]

Yes, that would work.
The things you may want to move onto a partitioin other than C are:
the "My Documents" folder, your emails, your address book, and your internet explorer favorites.
Then, whenever you restore your C drive by restoring an image, all of those documents remain intact.

I have gone one step further. All of my programs are on a different partition too. So, the size of my C drive image is managable (less than 1G).

 

[archcommus]

Yep, sounds good, that's pretty much what I back up now. I use sync software to automatically update the changes on my external drive to my favorites folder and My Documents. My emails and address book are all consolidated into my backup Outlook .pst file, and that's also in My Documents.

However, until now, on a fresh install of Windows, I would simply use the links in my favorites and the install files in My Documents and on CD to get everything up and running again quickly. But of course having this image is MUCH better if I'm ever doing a fresh install with the same hardware. Plus, if I ever format, I can just format C:\, leave D:\ alone, and all my documents will already be there on a fresh install of XP. Sounds excellent.

Should I really put my programs on a separate partition too?

Also, how do I officially change where IE stores Favorites?

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: archcommus87
Should I really put my programs on a separate partition too?

Also, how do I officially change where IE stores Favorites?

There are some programs that write dll files into the system32 folder on the C drive. You will have to re-install them anyway everytime you restore C to a time before you had installed such programs.
But, many programs place all their files in the C:\Program Files folder. If you install such programs into another partition, you will not ever have to re-install them. If you ever restore C to a time before you installed such a program, you can just create a shortcut under "Start\All Programs" to the executable of the program and you are all set. It is just a matter of preference. It is up to you.

The "Favorites" folder is in C:\Documents and Settings\User where "User" is the user name. The folder looks like a star. If you cut it and paste it to another location, the operating system tracks it. It is a very special folder, and XP always tracks where you put it. I cut it and paste it in my "My Documents" folder, which is in my D partition.

Edit:
Another advantage of placing the programs in another partition than C is that if you multi-boot, you can share the program partition and save disk space. I sometimes, boot into a copy of my C drive on my second primary partition when I want to do something very crazy and do not want to risk screwing up my main C drive. If anything goes wrong, I don't care. My Anti-virus program is on my drive D regardless of which primary parttion I boot. When I boot a primary partition, I make the other one hidden. So, my primary partition is always C. But, when I update my anti-virus while on one of the primary partitions, it is going to be updated on all the other primary partition too.

 

[archcommus]

A very special folder lol.....

I cut and paste it into My Documents, and IE didn't find it. Then I did it again and it worked. Cool. Now that I started putting all my save game files here, as well, I like having EVERY document on my PC in My Documents.

I have to copy over all my save game files manualy though from the game's directory. Is there any way to automate this besides making a batch file or something? Any way to FORCE the game to put my saves where I want them?

I don't think I'll make a separate partition for my programs, only because with a fresh OS installed I think I'd want them all reinstalled anyway (unless I was restoring a Ghost image, then they'd be in there already anyway). Don't quite understand what you meant with the multi-boot thing. You boot into a COPY of your C:\ partition?

 

[Navid]

Forcing a game place saved games where you want depends on the game program.
Again, that is another advantage of having the programs on a different partition. Then, the game folders will be on a partition other than the C drive. So, when you restore the C drive the saved game folders are not overwritten.

I have more than one primary partition on my main hard drive. I use drive image for creating images of my C drive. I also use drive image to make only one of the primary partitions visible. All the other primary partitions are hidden.
Then, I restore the image on the visible partition and boot it.
Then, let's say for some reason I want to boot into another partition, I just hide the partition and unhide another and restore the image into the new visible partition and boot to it. As long as only one primary partition is visible, it is partition C because it is the first visible partition.

I use my second partition only for logging to my office when I want to work from home. The operating system on my second partition is my safest partition. I never instal anythoing beta on it. I never surf unknown websites when I am using it. This is because I do not want to compromise my employer's business because of my curiosity in the computers!

 

[archcommus]

Sounds like an interesting setup.

So, I backed up my documents, deleted them from my Seagate, made a 71 GB D:\ partition, copied them all back over, and moved my favorites into there, as well. Then I used DriveMapper to change everything that used to reference D:\ to E:\ for my DVD burner. However, I was afraid that might mess with some things that were already referencing the NEW D:\ (the new partition), so I remapped everything E:\ back to D:\. The only thing that should mess with is using CDs for games, right? It'll just say it can't find it and I'll need to type E:\ and hit Okay or something.

After remapping those letters twice, IE was no longer finding my favorites folder, and I had to change stuff in the registry to get it to.

After that, I tried to ghost an image once, but it stopped going at the very beginning after loading PC DOS. So I rebooted, tried again, this time it got about half way through and then stopped transferring, so I had to hit reset. So I guess I need to try a PCI USB card to fix that issue.

Then, I was trying to send a file to someone over Trillian, and it kept freezing Explorer. After much deducing I found it was just two files in particular that were doing it, so I had to get rid of them.

And finally, after a restart, a bunch of characters were being inadvertently replaced with blocks, and the address bar, no matter what folder I was in, was appearing blank. A restart fixed that however.

So hopefully all is good now, except for my USB external drive issue.

Sheesh, sometimes I get the feeling computers hate me even though I love them. Ever get the feeling you can't even do ONE thing without running into a problem with it? And that everyone else seems to have better luck with their computers than you?

Been building them for almost two years, you'd think that feeling wouldn't come around anymore. :/

 

[Navid]

We never talked about drive mapping!
I don't know why you did that.
All you had to do was to re-install the games that required accessing the DVD burner while playing the game.
Drive mapping to change the referenced drive letters altogether is not a good thing for the reason you mentioned. Some of them are referenceing the right letter.

I have my optical drive set to use the M letter. That leaves quite a few unused letters before. So when I add or remove a few parttions, the optical drive letter does not change.

I don't know why you had problems with Ghost. I have never used it. I use "Drive Image 2002" from PowerQuest.

 

[archcommus]

Well I put everything that was set to E:\ back to D:\, so all should be good, right? Except for the few games that reference that.

The problem isn't with Ghost, it's with errors while transferring large files to my external HDD. Check out my thread on the Delayed Write Error.

 

[archcommus]

Also, ViceVersa Pro is really quite awesome software. Using the Replication (Mirror) sync method, you can easily replicate any source folder in any target folder. So, I can plug in my external drive, use VV to create copies of my Doom 3 and Far Cry save game folders in My Documents, and then use it to back up My Documents to the exteranl drive. And it only does the differences, so not everything has to be copied. It just looks at how the target differs from the source and then makes it match the source.