Vex Star

I am trying to figure out the best configuration for my hard drives. Right now I have a 640 GB drive with one partition, and everything just sits on there. I just bought a 750 GB drive and I am considering my options on how to format it.

I am thinking:
drive one
- partition for system files and data

drive two
- partition for temp and swap files
- partition for drive 1’s backup

what do you think? Is it a waste to dedicate the majority of the second drive for backup?

vista
just use it as a data drive. do NOT fuck with how vista manages its virtual memory. trust me, you know much less than the people that wrote that component of the os. let them do their jobs.

don’t have to be a jerk about it
nothing jerk about that. I simply removed the need for you to go through the usual denial/anger/depression stages and took the shortcut. You got your answer, and we didn’t have to bicker. move on.

hahaha. well I used to do this with XP without any problems. I’ve heard it recommended various places. I know vista handles memory allocation differently, is that why I shouldn’t touch it?

I also heard that putting it on it’s own partition at the beginning of a drive helps with access speed and fragmentation problems.

You were wrong to do it with XP, as well.

The *END* of a drive technically has the best read/write performance, and the middle has the best average seek times. Neither of those is the beginning. Furthermore, you don’t really get a say on where it goes unless you create a dedicated partition for it and limit it to that partition — but that would violate rule #1, and it’d be futile and likely counter productive.

keep in mind… this is NOT *nix.
well that goes against everything I am finding on google and everything I have ever heard in the past

…any else have an opinion?
I’ve moved the swap file to a physical disk seperate from the OS on both XP and Vista and never encountered a problem. You’re simply specifying a location for the swap file. It doesn’t have a big impact on VM management.

As far as arranging your data, I like to keep any data I want to backup on a seperate partition from the OS. The OS partition only holds the OS and installed program files. That way, I can reinstall windows without the fuss of moving data I don’t want to blow away.

ah yeah, I was also thinking of doing this. However, my current setup is a system data mix and it’s going to be a pain separating it out. Ah well, I’ll probably do it anyway.

Do you use your system partition for installing applicaitons and games too?

Yes, that’s what I mean by installed program files.

Most apps default to saving user data in the "My Documents" folder, so I setup My Documents to point to a folder on another partition.

yeah that’s what I want to do.

that’s what I’d do on a 2 hdd setup.
I prefer my backups on an external though.

i agree with doom on this one and completely disagree with potter.
i have a partition for windows + installed programs and then another partition for all (don’t save anything on my C part) my data, which is backed up to an external nightly .

also, if you have enough ram, shouldn’t the swap file not be a serious concern as it won’t be used too often?
i just have the following when i’m not doing raid.

disk1
os partition
app partition
game partition

disk2
swap, cache, downloads, test app, game, demo partition
another crap partition

been doing this for almost a decade without issue. suites me fine.

i backup what i care about to my external. also burn it to dvds and put that into a safe deposit box.

i’ve created images of my os, but never really used them to rebuild.
what do you guys think about merging partitions from two separate drives into one logical partition? I think this is called an extended partition?
Using Windows? I wouldn’t do it. I’ve done it - and I wouldn’t do it again.

He wasn’t being a jerk about it.

EDIT: It would’ve been better if he’d said "trust me, they know much more than you do" instead of "trust me, you know much less than they do", but that’s Jolly for you. The glass isn’t full if it’s 1% empty.

It’s called a "spanned partition". I’m using it on a file server with 4TB of storage, but the RAID controller can only handle allocating 2TB to each "drive" that Windows sees — so I’m using Windows to join those virtual drives into a span, so all 4TB is once again available under the same drive letter. It works, but it’s also on a RAID, so I don’t have to worry about losing half my shit if one disk fails.

I wouldn’t do it with single disks.

wait, you have a 640GB drive that hasn’t been split into two partitions? As in, windows and data are all on the same drive?

he’s a fucking troll, feel free to IL him

he’s really a disgrace/annoyance to this entire subforum

yeah hilarious stuff, huh?

What’s wrong with that?
If it were me I’d get much smaller drive like a 60-80gb for the sytem drive and keep the 750 as a data drive.

well I already have the 640, and the 750 is in the mail. I suppose I could use an older 100 GB IDE drive for my system, but the other drives are SATA, and I assume it’s best to put your system on SATA over IDE

nothing really wrong with your setup

ideally,….
fastest drive for the OS and apps
swap file to a separate (least used) drive
anything else are just storage

i’d probably use the IDE for the backup

if windows ever craters and needs to be reformatted, he has just lost all his data. Any person who’s experienced will tell you to keep your data on a separate partition from your windows drive.

just partition 60-100GB for windows/program files, and the rest for data. No need to use a completely separate drive.

I’ve never seen Windows crater so badly that I couldn’t boot from a LiveCD, delete the WINDOWS folder, and reinstall. What you’re talking about is if the disk fails, and in that case, yeah, his data is toast — but then it would be toast anyway if the disk fails, regardless of whether Windows is also on the same disk or not.

just deleting windows isn’t enough though. you can delete windows and program files… that might be good enough, but there is still other remnant shit left behind.
now I am actually thinking about saying fuck it spanning my partition across both drives. Downside to this?

And I think deusexaethera has a good point. If I need to reinstall windows, I don’t necessarily need the system to be on a separate partition to do that. And if the drive fails, won’t all the partitions on it be unaccessible?

Not much. Unlike *nix, that has a billion different folders that it hides shit in, Windows puts (almost) all its shit in WINDOWS. There’s like four files that aren’t in WINDOWS, and they’re all in the root folder.

so would you recommend a separate partition for the system files? or does it matter?

It doesn’t matter. Just don’t be an idiot, and if you have something really important, make a backup copy.

k
So you’ve managed to convince someone to run RAID0 and not bother with a separate partition for system/progams.

That’s awesome.

why would you do otherwise?

Wait wait wait. I never signed off on the RAID0 part, only the single partition. RAID0 is definitely a bad idea — one disk hiccups and all the data is gone. (the disk doesn’t even have to actually fail to make this happen.)

With a third disk, he could have a RAID3 or a RAID5, with all the speed of a RAID0 and far better stability.

All systems I touch are imaged, which means when a wipe is required/wanted, I don’t spend hours installing windows again. The only catch is that you have to wipe the entire partition (or disc if you choose).
He obviously isn’t a network admin or running a server… why would he even consider imaging? He doesn’t even need a pagefile if he has enough ram… pagefile is so slow anywho. I say he should reformat if he doesn’t need anything on the current system. It always speeds up computers for people who don’t maintain them well.

And having an image of a fresh install would make this process much easier and faster..

You’re a bit out of touch if you haven’t embraced the greatness of imaging. Or are telling him not to use a pagefle. If this was the main forum, I’d have posted the smiley and be done with it.

raid0 should be avoided at all cost. the only time i use raid0 is when i stripe a filesystem across mirrored or raid5 protected devices presented from an array.

it is one thing to not have a mirror, but to purposefully lower the reliability of your data is a bad idea.

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September 8th, 2008 | Tags: depression, file server, imaging, RAID, ram, virtual memory, Windows crater | Category: general | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL