A computer components & hardware forum. HardwareBanter

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Go Back   Home » HardwareBanter forum » General Hardware & Peripherals » Homebuilt PC's
Site Map Home Register Authors List Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read Web Partners

How to slice a 2TB drive?



 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Old March 12th 11, 01:46 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
metspitzer
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 555
Default How to slice a 2TB drive?

I am reading this:
http://partition.radified.com/
Here is the world according to me. Let me know if I am very far off
on this.

All I want to do is break the disk into 6 or so equal parts. The main
reason is to give each part its own drive letter and disk label. This
makes the FAT 6 times smaller so it only has to read 1/6 of the info
during access times. I also think this makes defragging easier, but
since XP doesn't always let me defrag without booting, I don't defrag
much.....well never.

XP allows 3 primary partitions and one extended (that can be sliced
many times) The only reason for a primary partition is to boot from.
I am not booting from this drive at all, but I don't see any reason
not to have 3 primary partitions, so my plain is...2,000G/6 is about
350.

I am going to have 3-350 primary and whatever is left will be the
extended partition. Because I have never dealt with logical drives, I
assume after I split the disk into 4 parts, I will have the option of
splitting the extended partition again into 3-300G parts.

Does this sound like it will fly?
  #2  
Old March 12th 11, 02:20 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Paul
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 13,364
Default How to slice a 2TB drive?

Metspitzer wrote:
I am reading this:
http://partition.radified.com/
Here is the world according to me. Let me know if I am very far off
on this.

All I want to do is break the disk into 6 or so equal parts. The main
reason is to give each part its own drive letter and disk label. This
makes the FAT 6 times smaller so it only has to read 1/6 of the info
during access times. I also think this makes defragging easier, but
since XP doesn't always let me defrag without booting, I don't defrag
much.....well never.

XP allows 3 primary partitions and one extended (that can be sliced
many times) The only reason for a primary partition is to boot from.
I am not booting from this drive at all, but I don't see any reason
not to have 3 primary partitions, so my plain is...2,000G/6 is about
350.

I am going to have 3-350 primary and whatever is left will be the
extended partition. Because I have never dealt with logical drives, I
assume after I split the disk into 4 parts, I will have the option of
splitting the extended partition again into 3-300G parts.

Does this sound like it will fly?


I have another suggestion. Ad-hoc partitioning.

Start with a primary partition. Make it big enough for a reasonable
time span of usage.

Leave the rest of the space unpartitioned and unused.

Now, when you do backups, defragging or other forms of maintenance,
you won't be waiting hours for 2TB of empty sectors to be processed,
examined or copied.

If you actually had 2TB of data available from other sources, then
you would be able to prepare a plan based on some sort of filing
system. (X space for photos, Y space for movies, Z space for documents,
and so on.)

For example, say I had 1TB of movies stored on a ton of small drives.
I'd set up a 1TB NTFS partition, then copy over the movies. That
partition will never need to be defragmented, as all the files are
big ones. You'll want to run chkdsk on it occasionally, to remove dormant
faults before they become an issue. But otherwise, there might not be much
to do there, except to make the occasional backup.

Keep your C: partition relatively small. If you make it a big partition
(such as your 350GB plan), then before you know it, it'll be filled
with 500000 small "cruft" files, and be painful and slow to maintain
or to search (if you're not using a good third party search tool).

So rather than being fixated on "slicing up an apple pie", put
some thought into the real usage. And if no plan comes to mind,
leave the unused parts blank. A plan will come together, sooner
than you think.

You can use primaries for the first three, because premature usage
of an extended, will only mean backing up and laying it out again
later. You can never get the split between an extended, and the
rest of the partitions, right.

As an example of this, I have somewhere around a 320GB disk in
my new laptop. I shrank the C: partition on it, down to 30GB
(with a plan perhaps, in the near future, to move up to 40GB, so
I can safely install SP1). The rest of the disk is currently
empty, and there are no other partitions than the wasteful partition
scheme the manufacturer of the laptop put there.

HTH,
Paul
  #3  
Old March 12th 11, 03:19 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Yousuf Khan[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,296
Default How to slice a 2TB drive?

On 11-03-11 07:46 PM, Metspitzer wrote:
I am reading this:
http://partition.radified.com/
Here is the world according to me. Let me know if I am very far off
on this.

All I want to do is break the disk into 6 or so equal parts. The main
reason is to give each part its own drive letter and disk label. This
makes the FAT 6 times smaller so it only has to read 1/6 of the info
during access times. I also think this makes defragging easier, but
since XP doesn't always let me defrag without booting, I don't defrag
much.....well never.

XP allows 3 primary partitions and one extended (that can be sliced
many times) The only reason for a primary partition is to boot from.
I am not booting from this drive at all, but I don't see any reason
not to have 3 primary partitions, so my plain is...2,000G/6 is about
350.

I am going to have 3-350 primary and whatever is left will be the
extended partition. Because I have never dealt with logical drives, I
assume after I split the disk into 4 parts, I will have the option of
splitting the extended partition again into 3-300G parts.

Does this sound like it will fly?


If you're not going to be booting from this disk, then why bother with
primary partitions at all? Just make them all part of a single extended
partition.

Yousuf Khan
  #4  
Old March 12th 11, 05:37 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Man-wai Chang
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 580
Default How to slice a 2TB drive?

I am going to have 3-350 primary and whatever is left will be the
extended partition. Because I have never dealt with logical drives, I
assume after I split the disk into 4 parts, I will have the option of
splitting the extended partition again into 3-300G parts.


I would create 3 primary & 1 extended. The extended partition can be
further sliced into more than 4 volumes.

--
@~@ Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY.
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you!
/( _ )\ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.37.3
^ ^ 12:34:01 up 22:55 0 users load average: 1.13 1.12 1.13
不借貸! 不詐騙! 不援交! 不打交! 不打劫! 不自殺! 請考慮綜援 (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_...sub_addressesa
  #5  
Old March 12th 11, 08:28 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
metspitzer
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 555
Default How to slice a 2TB drive?

On Fri, 11 Mar 2011 19:46:11 -0500, Metspitzer
wrote:

I am reading this:
http://partition.radified.com/
Here is the world according to me. Let me know if I am very far off
on this.

After listening to the suggestions, can you do this with XP?
Say I create an extended partition (no primary) that is 1/4 space on
the drive and leave 3/4 unformatted (unallocated?), and make that 4
logical drives. Say I have a very good reason for having 4 different
type files. All I expect to happen is that when I run out of space is
that I just want all 4 drives to double in space.

What happens when I want to use another 1/4 of the space and I don't
really want 8 logical drives? I want 4 drives twice as large.

This make sense to anyone?
  #6  
Old March 12th 11, 08:30 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
metspitzer
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 555
Default How to slice a 2TB drive?

On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 12:37:16 +0800, Man-wai Chang
wrote:

I am going to have 3-350 primary and whatever is left will be the
extended partition. Because I have never dealt with logical drives, I
assume after I split the disk into 4 parts, I will have the option of
splitting the extended partition again into 3-300G parts.


I would create 3 primary & 1 extended. The extended partition can be
further sliced into more than 4 volumes.


That was my original plan. I am now considering only using part of
the drive.

Thanks
  #7  
Old March 12th 11, 09:10 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
DevilsPGD[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 177
Default How to slice a 2TB drive?

In message someone claiming
to be Metspitzer typed:

I am reading this:
http://partition.radified.com/
Here is the world according to me. Let me know if I am very far off
on this.

All I want to do is break the disk into 6 or so equal parts. The main
reason is to give each part its own drive letter and disk label. This
makes the FAT 6 times smaller so it only has to read 1/6 of the info
during access times.


This isn't a factor for NTFS, NTFS' directory structures are distributed
around the disk and do not require a full scan.

I also think this makes defragging easier, but
since XP doesn't always let me defrag without booting, I don't defrag
much.....well never.


Defragmenting tends to be more efficient on partitions with higher
percentages of free space (or at least it gets extremely inefficient
with reduces amount of space), so if you end up with three partitions
that are 90% full followed by one that is empty, you'll take
significantly longer to defragment than a single partition.

Moreover, fragmentation gets worse faster when the drive is full, so
you'll potentially hurt performance before you even count defragmenting
time.

(Personally I don't care how long a defragmentation takes, within
reason, it's the sort of thing the computer does when I'm not around and
therefore don't care)

XP allows 3 primary partitions and one extended (that can be sliced
many times)


That's a BIOS limit going way back to the 80s.

The only reason for a primary partition is to boot from.
I am not booting from this drive at all, but I don't see any reason
not to have 3 primary partitions, so my plain is...2,000G/6 is about
350.


A better question is why?

I am going to have 3-350 primary and whatever is left will be the
extended partition. Because I have never dealt with logical drives, I
assume after I split the disk into 4 parts, I will have the option of
splitting the extended partition again into 3-300G parts.

Does this sound like it will fly?


You can have as many logical partitions within the one extended
partition as you want, so the total number is moot.

Strictly speaking you can only boot from a primary partition, but beyond
that, there's little need to care about the difference between primary
and logical partitions these days.

There's really very little need to worry about partitioning at all in
most cases, even with 2TB volume sizes, unless you have multiple
operating systems, have a need for different types of filesystems, or
have organizational reasons that might cause you to want to wipe one
partition entirely.

The days of having to partition as a matter of course are basically an
element of the past, at least in the Windows world.
  #8  
Old March 12th 11, 09:55 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Man-wai Chang
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 580
Default How to slice a 2TB drive?

I would create 3 primary& 1 extended. The extended partition can be
further sliced into more than 4 volumes.

That was my original plan. I am now considering only using part of
the drive.


You are the boss. Do it your way!

--
@~@ Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY.
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you!
/( _ )\ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.37.3
^ ^ 16:49:01 up 1 day 3:10 0 users load average: 1.09 1.09 1.09
不借貸! 不詐騙! 不援交! 不打交! 不打劫! 不自殺! 請考慮綜援 (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_...sub_addressesa
  #9  
Old March 12th 11, 03:54 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
(PeteCresswell)
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 317
Default How to slice a 2TB drive?

Per Paul:
As an example of this, I have somewhere around a 320GB disk in
my new laptop. I shrank the C: partition on it, down to 30GB
(with a plan perhaps, in the near future,


Assuming that you did that without having to re-install the OS,
what utility did you use?
--
PeteCresswell
  #10  
Old March 12th 11, 04:44 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Rick[_5_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 44
Default How to slice a 2TB drive?

On 3/11/2011 6:46 PM, Metspitzer wrote:
I am reading this:
http://partition.radified.com/
Here is the world according to me. Let me know if I am very far off
on this.

All I want to do is break the disk into 6 or so equal parts. The main
reason is to give each part its own drive letter and disk label. This
makes the FAT 6 times smaller so it only has to read 1/6 of the info
during access times. I also think this makes defragging easier, but
since XP doesn't always let me defrag without booting, I don't defrag
much.....well never.

XP allows 3 primary partitions and one extended (that can be sliced
many times) The only reason for a primary partition is to boot from.
I am not booting from this drive at all, but I don't see any reason
not to have 3 primary partitions, so my plain is...2,000G/6 is about
350.

I am going to have 3-350 primary and whatever is left will be the
extended partition. Because I have never dealt with logical drives, I
assume after I split the disk into 4 parts, I will have the option of
splitting the extended partition again into 3-300G parts.

Does this sound like it will fly?

Why use FAT? XP work best and I thought only in NTSF?

--

Rick Holbrook
Fargo, ND
N 4653'07"
W 09648'18"
or
46.887527N
-96.805079W


Remember the USS Liberty
http://www.ussliberty.org/

Reply to: fholbrook(at)cableone.net





 




Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Fake Western Digital WD2003FYYS 2TB RE4 drive Franc Zabkar Storage (alternative) 2 September 26th 10 10:31 PM
Lacie F800 2tb Raid drive failure Peter Kemp Storage (alternative) 7 July 17th 10 03:11 PM
how to mount an external 2TB USB HD on 32-bit XP cpliu Storage (alternative) 19 June 16th 10 03:48 AM
Install OS on new hard drive without media slice wfromoz Dell Computers 4 January 9th 08 06:20 AM
2Tb Offsite Backup? [email protected] Storage (alternative) 16 December 19th 07 07:34 AM


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 06:06 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright 2004-2024 HardwareBanter.
The comments are property of their posters.