I am building a new rig. My last build (current machine) was 5-6 years ago. I am still running Windows 98SE. One of the biggest problems I have had with this machine is the need to reformat and reinstall 98SE every twelve to eighteen months. I know that 98SE has a reputation for degrading over time. In additional this has been exacerbated by my habit of installing and uninstalling lots of apps, primarily games. It seems that each uninstall results in some ghosts of the program being left behind and other needed files, often shared ones, being deleted. However it often seemed that I was required to install my apps and games to the OS boot drive in order to get them to work properly. I hope to avoid this situation with my new machine. I am wondering under XP how many of these programs can be installed to (and then deleted from) a drive other than the boot drive and if doing so will result in a cleaner install of the OS. I have noticed what appears to be a trend in people building machines with multiple drives. Is this due to people trying to accomplish the same thing as I am or is it for another reason.? I mean what are people doing with a second drive in the 200 to 300 Gig range if they aren't installing apps there?
Where should I install my apps relative to XP?
- Thread starter Mudbone
- Start date
It doesn't really matter where you install the program. c:\program files\whatever, d:\program files\whatever, or d:\whatever. That's the easy part to remove after an uninstall. The hard part is the stuff that will get dumped in your c:\windows folder and registery. That will happen regardless of where you installed the program.
It is best to install your applications in the default location. That being "C://Program Files" Many people make a separate partition just for applications saying it will provide better performance because it will get less fragmented but I doubt it will give you any bit of extra performance. Also many programs may run into problems if installed on another partition. I reccomend formatting the whole drive in NTFS. Many people make a partition as a backup, and that is helpful when reformatting so you don't lost valuable stuff, but it is not a substitute to backing up your important stuff on a DVD or something. The reason for this is hard drives fail all the time and if you backup all your files just on that separate partition they will all be gone.
So just leave one partition formatted in NTFS and install programs in their default locations.
So just leave one partition formatted in NTFS and install programs in their default locations.
pr0n, music, pr0n, warez, and pr0n Although if you do have gigs and gigs of music, movies, warez, etc., having them stored on another partition makes it a lot easier to reformat your C drive and reload Windows should it ever take a dump. That's the only time it really makes sense to me, other than on a server.
Phoenix86
Lifer
- May 21, 2003
- 14,644
- 10
- 81
True, that the *one* case where I might recommend it, however the pains of backup/restore are often less than the ones a partition divider cause. IE, where do you split the drive? How much is enough for the OS+APPS? If you guess short, do you have re-partitioning software to fix it?
IMO, it's much easier to backup/restore user data like that than deal with partitions. I haven't reloaded my main rig in about 3 years, so I would not have seen the benefits of this setup, but I would have dealt with the partitions size by now.
Also, when people do have that much data, it's usually on a seperate drive.
I do agree, and I do the same thing, but many people make a separate partition and store important information on that partition. Hard drives die all the time and you will be at a risk of losing your data. Putting your important data on a separate partition is no substitute to making good backups onto a DVD or something.
Depending on the size of your hard drive, I DO recommend partitioning it. Say your hard drive is only a 40 gigger. I would make two partitions--20 and 20. If you have lots of apps, you could increase the size. I also recommend installing all apps to their default locations and NOT on a separate partition. Once Windows, all apps are installed on the C:\ partition and it's finessed perfectly (CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN), I then use Norton's GHOST to image the partion to the second partition. Ideally, I would also ghost to a second hard drive. They are making hard drives less expensive today and therefore, cheaper...they're going bad quicker than they used to. Then, when you start seeing the hard drive degrade over time, just run the Restore from the perfect ghost image. NOTE: If you use Ghost, make sure you do an integrity check of the image after making it. Keep your data files (docs, mp3's, jpgs) on the second partition. Back up YOUR DATA using a little shareware program I like called SecondCopy (I think www.secondcopy.com). Well worth the price.
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