Partitioning a 2tb hd for Windows 7 64 bit
 

What is the best way to partition a 2tb hard drive for Windows 7 64
bit? I am thinking of a small "C" drive for Windows and programs
and a big "D" for all my data. Another possibility is a small "C"
drive for Windows. A medium sized "D" for my programs and a big "E"
for all my data.

Which do you think is better? What size do you think I should make
each logical drive? Thank you in advance for all replies.
--
When I am in the kitchen, I often kick one of my cat's balls.
After I kick it, he will sometimes play with it for a few
seconds to several minutes. His favorite are the ones that
rattle. He'll play with any ball that makes noise.

Partitioning a 2tb hd for Windows 7 64 bit
 

On 5/25/2012 10:50 AM, Daniel Prince wrote:
What is the best way to partition a 2tb hard drive for Windows 7 64
bit? I am thinking of a small "C" drive for Windows and programs
and a big "D" for all my data. Another possibility is a small "C"
drive for Windows. A medium sized "D" for my programs and a big "E"
for all my data.

Which do you think is better? What size do you think I should make
each logical drive? Thank you in advance for all replies.

Why partition ?

One drive = one partition in my book.

Lynn

Partitioning a 2tb hd for Windows 7 64 bit
 

On Fri, 25 May 2012 08:50:35 -0700, Daniel Prince
wrote:

What is the best way to partition a 2tb hard drive for Windows 7 64
bit? I am thinking of a small "C" drive for Windows and programs
and a big "D" for all my data. Another possibility is a small "C"
drive for Windows. A medium sized "D" for my programs and a big "E"
for all my data.

Which do you think is better? What size do you think I should make
each logical drive? Thank you in advance for all replies.



You might want to read this article I've written: "Understanding Disk
Partitioning" at
http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=326

It can give you some guidance on what to do.

Partitioning a 2tb hd for Windows 7 64 bit
 

On 5/25/2012 6:25 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
On 5/25/2012 10:50 AM, Daniel Prince wrote:
What is the best way to partition a 2tb hard drive for Windows 7 64
bit? I am thinking of a small "C" drive for Windows and programs
and a big "D" for all my data. Another possibility is a small "C"
drive for Windows. A medium sized "D" for my programs and a big "E"
for all my data.

Which do you think is better? What size do you think I should make
each logical drive? Thank you in advance for all replies.

Why partition ?

One drive = one partition in my book.

Lynn


I agree, at least for Windows. For Linux, it's a different story.

--
Alias

Partitioning a 2tb hd for Windows 7 64 bit
 

Daniel Prince wrote:
What is the best way to partition a 2tb hard drive for Windows 7 64
bit? I am thinking of a small "C" drive for Windows and programs
and a big "D" for all my data. Another possibility is a small "C"
drive for Windows. A medium sized "D" for my programs and a big "E"
for all my data.

Which do you think is better? What size do you think I should make
each logical drive? Thank you in advance for all replies.

Depending on what backup strategies you've got, you might let
that affect how you partition. If it wasn't for that, you could do
a single big partition.

I keep my C: relatively small (40GB right now), and it doesn't
really affect my backup method. I continue to use the "System Image"
capability built into Windows 7, which effectively only backs up
the "used" space on the partition. So if I made C: 2TB in size say,
the System Image function would still only be doing a roughly
26GB copy (the amount of space actually used currently).

But, if I ever needed to copy C: verbatim for some reason, it's a
40GB copy operation.

I'm not encouraging 40GB as the "right size". To make that possible,
I turned off System Restore. The "right size" would be a partition
larger than that. For most people, they'd find the space restrictions
annoying with that size choice. But that size does allow sector by
sector backups to be done more quickly (if, say, the NTFS file system
was damaged, and I needed to transport the partition somewhere).

My "data" partition doesn't have too much on it right now, but that
would be another 250GB+ or so. And because the contents are mostly
garbage, I don't even back that up. It's basically a "scratch" partition.

If you have indexing enabled, it might mean less stuff to index
as well. You could have C: indexed, and leave the data partition
un-indexed to save computing time. My experience here is, if you
restore the computer from a backup image, it resets indexing as
well, and then I have to put up with well over three hours
total compute time just to index.

If I had Windows 7 on my main computer, then a couple things would
change. I tend to preserve primary partitions on the main computer,
as it is set up for multi-booting. I'd probably make a single
partition for Windows 7 (no System Reserved), and give Windows 7
no more than the one partition. I don't like creating Extended/Logical
partitions, because they're just a nuisance to manage. (I tried
that in the past, and didn't like it.)

And no matter what you do, a 2TB drive is going to be both an
asset (never run out of space) and a nuisance (partition management
operations, copy operations, backup operations, could take forever).

I tend to buy drives in pairs, as a means of encouraging backups.
So when you have the 2TB drive, you should also buy space to store
its backup copy.

Paul

Partitioning a 2tb hd for Windows 7 64 bit
 

Alias wrote:
On 5/25/2012 6:25 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
On 5/25/2012 10:50 AM, Daniel Prince wrote:
What is the best way to partition a 2tb hard drive for Windows 7 64
bit? I am thinking of a small "C" drive for Windows and programs
and a big "D" for all my data. Another possibility is a small "C"
drive for Windows. A medium sized "D" for my programs and a big "E"
for all my data.

Which do you think is better? What size do you think I should make
each logical drive? Thank you in advance for all replies.

Why partition ?

One drive = one partition in my book.

Lynn


I agree, at least for Windows. For Linux, it's a different story.

I always partition a drive with a few dozen Gig for the system drive,
and the rest for data. It makes life a lot less risky when Windows
suffers a brainfart and dies. Your data is still safe. If you don't
partition the drive, when Windows barfs, your data, which is on the same
drive, will normally be deleted when you restore windows unless you're
very careful. I also keep all the install programs and licence
information in a directory on the data drive to make it quicker to
restore the system.

If you can, it's also worth having a small, very fast drive reserved for
the swapfile. And *always* have a backup somewhere else, with an image
of the working OS as installed on it.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

Partitioning a 2tb hd for Windows 7 64 bit
 

On 5/25/2012 7:06 PM, John Williamson wrote:
Alias wrote:
On 5/25/2012 6:25 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
On 5/25/2012 10:50 AM, Daniel Prince wrote:
What is the best way to partition a 2tb hard drive for Windows 7 64
bit? I am thinking of a small "C" drive for Windows and programs
and a big "D" for all my data. Another possibility is a small "C"
drive for Windows. A medium sized "D" for my programs and a big "E"
for all my data.

Which do you think is better? What size do you think I should make
each logical drive? Thank you in advance for all replies.

Why partition ?

One drive = one partition in my book.

Lynn


I agree, at least for Windows. For Linux, it's a different story.

I always partition a drive with a few dozen Gig for the system drive,
and the rest for data. It makes life a lot less risky when Windows
suffers a brainfart and dies. Your data is still safe. If you don't
partition the drive, when Windows barfs, your data, which is on the same
drive, will normally be deleted when you restore windows unless you're
very careful. I also keep all the install programs and licence
information in a directory on the data drive to make it quicker to
restore the system.

If you can, it's also worth having a small, very fast drive reserved for
the swapfile. And *always* have a backup somewhere else, with an image
of the working OS as installed on it.


I don't keep large amounts of data on my Windows machines. I use Linux
for that.

--
Alias

Partitioning a 2tb hd for Windows 7 64 bit
 

On 25/05/2012 11:50 AM, Daniel Prince wrote:
What is the best way to partition a 2tb hard drive for Windows 7 64
bit? I am thinking of a small "C" drive for Windows and programs
and a big "D" for all my data. Another possibility is a small "C"
drive for Windows. A medium sized "D" for my programs and a big "E"
for all my data.

Which do you think is better? What size do you think I should make
each logical drive? Thank you in advance for all replies.

I would say leave it at 2 partitions rather than 3. At one time, for
simplicity's sake I used to say 1 partition even. However, I do now
backup my data, especially the boot drive, so in order to quickly backup
a boot drive, you should keep as small as possible. But you can't make
it ludicrously small, there has to be some room for applications to be
installed and for them to keep some of their data in there too. So I
keep a 200GB boot partition, and the remainder for other data.

Also I would suggest that you give the larger partition 32K clusters
rather than the default, as you're likely going to have much larger
files in the larger partition.

Yousuf Khan

Partitioning a 2tb hd for Windows 7 64 bit
 

On 5/25/2012 11:32 AM, Alias wrote:
On 5/25/2012 7:06 PM, John Williamson wrote:
Alias wrote:
On 5/25/2012 6:25 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
On 5/25/2012 10:50 AM, Daniel Prince wrote:
What is the best way to partition a 2tb hard drive for Windows 7 64
bit? I am thinking of a small "C" drive for Windows and programs
and a big "D" for all my data. Another possibility is a small "C"
drive for Windows. A medium sized "D" for my programs and a big "E"
for all my data.

Which do you think is better? What size do you think I should make
each logical drive? Thank you in advance for all replies.

Why partition ?

One drive = one partition in my book.

Lynn


I agree, at least for Windows. For Linux, it's a different story.

I always partition a drive with a few dozen Gig for the system drive,
and the rest for data. It makes life a lot less risky when Windows
suffers a brainfart and dies. Your data is still safe. If you don't
partition the drive, when Windows barfs, your data, which is on the same
drive, will normally be deleted when you restore windows unless you're
very careful. I also keep all the install programs and licence
information in a directory on the data drive to make it quicker to
restore the system.

If you can, it's also worth having a small, very fast drive reserved for
the swapfile. And *always* have a backup somewhere else, with an image
of the working OS as installed on it.


I don't keep large amounts of data on my Windows machines. I use Linux
for that.

Are you using ext4? You could lose data then.
Data loss occurs due to memory errors, data chip errors, cable drop
outs, and hard drive data drops. Unless you have ECC memory and other
hardware that detects these errors and corrects them, then you won't
have any guarantees.

Partitioning a 2tb hd for Windows 7 64 bit
 

Alias wrote:
On 5/25/2012 7:06 PM, John Williamson wrote:
Alias wrote:
On 5/25/2012 6:25 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
On 5/25/2012 10:50 AM, Daniel Prince wrote:
What is the best way to partition a 2tb hard drive for Windows 7 64
bit? I am thinking of a small "C" drive for Windows and programs
and a big "D" for all my data. Another possibility is a small "C"
drive for Windows. A medium sized "D" for my programs and a big "E"
for all my data.

Which do you think is better? What size do you think I should make
each logical drive? Thank you in advance for all replies.

Why partition ?

One drive = one partition in my book.

Lynn


I agree, at least for Windows. For Linux, it's a different story.

I always partition a drive with a few dozen Gig for the system drive,
and the rest for data. It makes life a lot less risky when Windows
suffers a brainfart and dies. Your data is still safe. If you don't
partition the drive, when Windows barfs, your data, which is on the same
drive, will normally be deleted when you restore windows unless you're
very careful. I also keep all the install programs and licence
information in a directory on the data drive to make it quicker to
restore the system.

If you can, it's also worth having a small, very fast drive reserved for
the swapfile. And *always* have a backup somewhere else, with an image
of the working OS as installed on it.


I don't keep large amounts of data on my Windows machines. I use Linux
for that.

As the OP was asking about partitioning for Windows 7, is it really
relevant to talk about Linux and partitioning for it?

--
Tciao for Now!

John.