SHould I partition my new 80Gb hard drive on 4600?

Does defragging and general maintenance of the drive speed up with smaller
partitions? Any drawbacks to partitioning? Suggestions on programs to use?

I would say yes... Create a 20 Gig C: Partition and a 60 D: Gig Partition.
Install your OS and all your apps on C: but keep all your data on D:. When
and if you feel you ever need to re-format c:, you won't have to worry about
losing everything on d:, just reformat c:, install your OS and your apps.
Your data is still alive on d:.

Scott

"Nathan Jr." wrote in message
...
Does defragging and general maintenance of the drive speed up with smaller
partitions? Any drawbacks to partitioning? Suggestions on programs to
use?

"Nathan Jr." wrote in message
...
Does defragging and general maintenance of the drive speed up with smaller
partitions? Any drawbacks to partitioning? Suggestions on programs to
use?



Hello Nathan,

My personel opinion is no. With NTFS, the cluster sizes don't get huge so
there isn't a lot of slack (wasted space) on having a large drive in a
single partition. I prefer to organize using folders rather than drives.
So, my 4550 has a 120 gig and a 160 gig drive, each are one physical and
logical drive. I don't run out of space on one logical partition while the
other has lots of room.

The disadvantage of "my" method is that the C drive has both programs and
data, while the F (160 gig) has data only. Some folks put data on one
logical drive, programs on another and just back up the data drive
periodically.

Just my 2 cents...probably worth what I charged.

Mike

Having a smaller c: makes it a lot easier (ie, faster) to backup such
a large drive via an imaging program, thus allowing for quicker
restores should that be necessary. My 200GB is divided 60 c:, 140 d:
but c: could probably be smaller - I just wanted to make sure I had a
lot of spare room for defrag's and the large amount of programs/games
I use or test. I use Drive Image 7 to image c: to a USB2 drive, then
use SynchroMagic Pro to backup/sync d:, and 2 other 200GB drives to
both 1394 and USB2 drives, plus use Diskeeper to automatically keep
all 600GB's defragged in the background (it works great). Partion
Magic is one tool that can repartition, but no matter what tool you
use make sure you have a good backup first.

"Nathan Jr." wrote in message

Does defragging and general maintenance of the drive speed up with
smaller partitions? Any drawbacks to partitioning? Suggestions on
programs to use?

"Nathan Jr." wrote:

Does defragging and general maintenance of the drive speed up with smaller
partitions? Any drawbacks to partitioning? Suggestions on programs to use?

Ultimately it depends on how you are going to use your computer. I
have found that for me, having a primary partition of ~10GB for a C:
drive with only the OS [WinXPPro], and such common portions that
various apps insist on putting on the same drive as the OS, and then
an extended partition with several logical drives, D: - J: works best
for me. D: will have major apps [MS Office, Corel WP Office,
Lotus/IBM Office, Canvas8, etc. on it, E: has small apps [newsreader &
email clients, Adobe reader, etc.] and utilities [Norton, my firewall
prog, etc.], F:, G:, and H: for various client data files, I: for my
personal data files, and J: for the MS virtual memory page file, my
browser cache, a directory containing all the neat programs I've
downloaded, a default directory for general downloads that will then
be moved elsewhere, etc.

Main advantage is that the OS and program drives, C:, D:, and E:,
rarely have to be defragged, since they don't change often. The
defragging requirements of the client data drives, F:, G:, and H:
depends on the activity with the clients. I: and J: are the ones that
tend to require defragging more often than the others, and defragging
a 10 gig logical drive takes a lot less time than defragging an 80GB
C: drive that I have put everything on.

But what works for me, and what I am comfortable with in organizing my
needs, will not necessarily work for you. As I said at the start, it
depends on how you are going to use *your* computer; what *you* are
comfortable with. I've just tried to show you one way of doing things
that works for me.
--
OJ III
[Email sent to Yahoo addy is burned before reading.
Lower and crunch the sig and you'll net me at comcast]

As Ogden has already pointed out, different people will have their own
personal methods.

Also as he has pointed out, de-fragging a small drives takes less time than
de-fragging the whole drive at once.

Many years ago in the early days of PC's it was common practice to split the
drive into several partitions because of cluster sizes. The bigger the
partition the bigger the cluster size, and the more space that would be
wasted with each small file. Smaller partitions kept the cluster size down,
resulting in a more efficient use of the capacity of the partition.

With todays cost per gig of HD space, to most people, keeping the cluster
size down is no longer a great concern, so making multiple partitions for
the sake of cluster size is not much of an issue.

Many people prefer to create a seperate partition that will hold just the OS
and it's necessary files and perhaps the application files. One reason for
doing this, is in case the OS gets FUBAR'd , you can re-install the OS
without disturbing the files on the next partition.

A second partition will quite often contain your data files. This partition
would then be the one you would back up the most often. just backing up the
data partition cuts down on the amount of space you will need to back up,
thus cutting down on the time it takes to perform the backup, as well as cut
down on whatever media (tape, CD, DVD) it takes for each backup.

Many people will choose the simple route these days, and just have a single
large partition on their PC that uses only one drive letter.

The one downside to creating many partitions as Ogden does, is remembering
who's on what partition.

Not usually an issue at home, on networks where you have many network shares
with each share having it's own mapped drive letter, using many drive
letters for each of several partitions on the local PC can cause either
conflicts, or you may outright run out of drive letters altogether.


"Ogden Johnson III" wrote in message
...
"Nathan Jr." wrote:

Does defragging and general maintenance of the drive speed up with
smaller
partitions? Any drawbacks to partitioning? Suggestions on programs to
use?

Ultimately it depends on how you are going to use your computer. I
have found that for me, having a primary partition of ~10GB for a C:
drive with only the OS [WinXPPro], and such common portions that
various apps insist on putting on the same drive as the OS, and then
an extended partition with several logical drives, D: - J: works best
for me. D: will have major apps [MS Office, Corel WP Office,
Lotus/IBM Office, Canvas8, etc. on it, E: has small apps [newsreader &
email clients, Adobe reader, etc.] and utilities [Norton, my firewall
prog, etc.], F:, G:, and H: for various client data files, I: for my
personal data files, and J: for the MS virtual memory page file, my
browser cache, a directory containing all the neat programs I've
downloaded, a default directory for general downloads that will then
be moved elsewhere, etc.

Main advantage is that the OS and program drives, C:, D:, and E:,
rarely have to be defragged, since they don't change often. The
defragging requirements of the client data drives, F:, G:, and H:
depends on the activity with the clients. I: and J: are the ones that
tend to require defragging more often than the others, and defragging
a 10 gig logical drive takes a lot less time than defragging an 80GB
C: drive that I have put everything on.

But what works for me, and what I am comfortable with in organizing my
needs, will not necessarily work for you. As I said at the start, it
depends on how you are going to use *your* computer; what *you* are
comfortable with. I've just tried to show you one way of doing things
that works for me.
--
OJ III
[Email sent to Yahoo addy is burned before reading.
Lower and crunch the sig and you'll net me at comcast]

Thanks for all the input. I've used Partition Magic in the past, but used a
freeware program on a recent partitioning of a laptop drive -- can't seem to
remember the name.

I think I'll go ahead and make the partitions for data vs. programs sake.


"Nathan Jr." wrote in message
...
Does defragging and general maintenance of the drive speed up with smaller
partitions? Any drawbacks to partitioning? Suggestions on programs to
use?

That's a nice logical explanation, Tim
"Timothy Drouillard" wrote in message
...
As Ogden has already pointed out, different people will have their own
personal methods.

Also as he has pointed out, de-fragging a small drives takes less time
than
de-fragging the whole drive at once.

Many years ago in the early days of PC's it was common practice to split
the
drive into several partitions because of cluster sizes. The bigger the
partition the bigger the cluster size, and the more space that would be
wasted with each small file. Smaller partitions kept the cluster size
down,
resulting in a more efficient use of the capacity of the partition.

With todays cost per gig of HD space, to most people, keeping the cluster
size down is no longer a great concern, so making multiple partitions for
the sake of cluster size is not much of an issue.

Many people prefer to create a seperate partition that will hold just the
OS
and it's necessary files and perhaps the application files. One reason for
doing this, is in case the OS gets FUBAR'd , you can re-install the OS
without disturbing the files on the next partition.

A second partition will quite often contain your data files. This
partition
would then be the one you would back up the most often. just backing up
the
data partition cuts down on the amount of space you will need to back up,
thus cutting down on the time it takes to perform the backup, as well as
cut
down on whatever media (tape, CD, DVD) it takes for each backup.

Many people will choose the simple route these days, and just have a
single
large partition on their PC that uses only one drive letter.

The one downside to creating many partitions as Ogden does, is remembering
who's on what partition.

Not usually an issue at home, on networks where you have many network
shares
with each share having it's own mapped drive letter, using many drive
letters for each of several partitions on the local PC can cause either
conflicts, or you may outright run out of drive letters altogether.


"Ogden Johnson III" wrote in message
...
"Nathan Jr." wrote:

Does defragging and general maintenance of the drive speed up with
smaller
partitions? Any drawbacks to partitioning? Suggestions on programs to
use?

Ultimately it depends on how you are going to use your computer. I
have found that for me, having a primary partition of ~10GB for a C:
drive with only the OS [WinXPPro], and such common portions that
various apps insist on putting on the same drive as the OS, and then
an extended partition with several logical drives, D: - J: works best
for me. D: will have major apps [MS Office, Corel WP Office,
Lotus/IBM Office, Canvas8, etc. on it, E: has small apps [newsreader &
email clients, Adobe reader, etc.] and utilities [Norton, my firewall
prog, etc.], F:, G:, and H: for various client data files, I: for my
personal data files, and J: for the MS virtual memory page file, my
browser cache, a directory containing all the neat programs I've
downloaded, a default directory for general downloads that will then
be moved elsewhere, etc.

Main advantage is that the OS and program drives, C:, D:, and E:,
rarely have to be defragged, since they don't change often. The
defragging requirements of the client data drives, F:, G:, and H:
depends on the activity with the clients. I: and J: are the ones that
tend to require defragging more often than the others, and defragging
a 10 gig logical drive takes a lot less time than defragging an 80GB
C: drive that I have put everything on.

But what works for me, and what I am comfortable with in organizing my
needs, will not necessarily work for you. As I said at the start, it
depends on how you are going to use *your* computer; what *you* are
comfortable with. I've just tried to show you one way of doing things
that works for me.
--
OJ III
[Email sent to Yahoo addy is burned before reading.
Lower and crunch the sig and you'll net me at comcast]

http://partition.radified.com/





"Nathan Jr." wrote in message
...
Does defragging and general maintenance of the drive speed up with smaller
partitions? Any drawbacks to partitioning? Suggestions on programs to
use?