Hard drive query

Computer Forum Storage Devices
1

Hello, I have a small question about my hard drive upgrade.

I currently have two physical drives, a 6GB and a 4GB. I would like to purchase an 80GB. Now, here are my questions:

  1. Would there be much advantage to keeping the two I have now? Should I ditch one or both of them, or keep both of them and have three hard drives?

  2. Should I split the 80GB drive into multiple partitions, or is there little advantage to this?

  3. Is there any advantage to having the OS installed on a different partition or physical drive than all of my programs?

  4. I currently have two hard drives and a CD-ROM. I’m not sure what controllers and such everything is on as I’m not the one who put it together. So, how should everything be set up as far as controllers go after the upgrade? I guess the other questions, like which drives I’ll keep, will have to be answered before this one can be.

I also have a few questions about the exact order of steps when partitioning and formatting, but I’ll wait to ask those questions until I can answer all of the ones above first.

Thanks!

2

Unless you need every last gig available, the 80 should be fine by itself. Keep them around for emergencies (never know when they might come in handy).

On my main box, I split the drives up into several partitions, but my LAN box and any others besides my file server, generally get left with whatever happens to be the size of the hard drive.

I put my OS and ‘non-fun’ apps on one partition, a swap file on it’s own partition (I’d recommend the very first one on the drive), another for gaming, another for my KaZaA downloads to go to, another for miscallaneous stuff (e-mail storage), and just use the extra as needed for whatever.
The advantage here is you don’t have to restore every file when Windows needs a reinstall. Also, if you’d like to play around with different OS’s, this is a handy alternative to swapping disks. You still will need to reinstall stuff when Windows bites the dust, but the data that’s on other partitions won’t be shot—unless the drive happens to be going. At that point, I’d be hoping that I’d back up (I am really bad about this one)

3

Well, when you reinstall Windows, it just formats that one partition, not the whole drive, correct?

If that is correct, then yes, having multiple partitions would be good for backups. However, I can’t avoid reinstalling things completely because of registry entries, right?

So, instead of having a ton of partitions, I think I’d just rather have, say, a 75GB partition, and then a 5GB for backups. Is it okay to have one partition that large, or should they be smaller?

Or, would it be preferable to keep just one of my old drives, say the 6, and use that for backups, and not partition the 80 at all?

So many choices.

4

I’d split it up 4 ways, 2-10 gig Partitions with 1 each for the OS and Pagefile and then 2-30 gig partitions for data with one for programs files you don’t change often and other for internet downloads, etc.

By seperating the programs you never change and frequently changing programs you’ll cut down on the amount of fragmentation that happens on that partition.

5

I’d evaluate how I’m gonna set up my data first.

If you use Windows 2000 or XP, you can setup partitions from within the OS itself.
Backups should be done to something other than a hard drive. I have mine go to my file server and I back them up on CD-RW. That way, in the event that all my machines are shot (It’s almost happened once----damn IBM!). If the hard drive craps out, it won’t matter what partition it’s on—please understand that. Some games that can be copied and run from the hard drive I will do that with them. Everything will have to be reinstalled, but any files that are on a different partition will still be there. It’s not as good as a complete mirror of the hard drive, but it does save you having to recopy alot of data over.

On my main box, the average size of the partitions is 5GB. Sizes range from 1.5GB to 13GB between my two drives. Some of the games that take a while to load (namely Unreal Tournament) are on a game partition on my 7200RPM hard drive. I have most of the stuff I’ve downloaded go strait to a partiton on my 5400RPM hard drive since it’s got a total of 40GB.

I use partitions as something of a grouping. Keep similar things together so that you have less work to do when you have to reinstall Windows.

If you are running Windows 95/98/ME, I do believe there is a limitation on how large the disks can be, so you’d need to have at least 2 or 3 partitions (no larger that 40GB). I’m not sure what OS you’re using, but there are some differences between Win9x and WinNT (NT/2k/XP).

For the extra drives you have, I’d just have 'em as spares. However, if you want to hook them up, I personally like having each IDE drive on it’s own channel, since IDE devices can only be accessed one at a time.

Don’t rely on a hard drive for backup. These are mechanical devices, which have moving parts that will break down eventually, some sooner than others cough IBM cough. If you want to back up, do yourself a favor and buy a CD burner. Doesn’t have to be blazing fast (although that’s not a bad thing), but don’t depend on a hard drive—you will get burned.

edit: Dang, Syngod beat me to the punch.

6

I’m using Windows 98 SE, but plan on getting XP sometime early next year.

And no, I would not depend on the hard drive for my permanent back up. When I said back up, I just meant like beforehand when I KNOW I’m going to reinstall my OS. Beforehand, I’d just copy over to the other parititon.

I’m not sure if I really see a point in having so many partitions. I’ve never defragmented either of my two hard drives (I know, I’m bad), and I’ve had them for about three years and they’re still only 6% fragmented. I don’t see fragmentation as much of a problem. As far as organization goes, would not folders perform the same function as multiple partitions?

Yeah, I’ll have to check to see if Win 98 SE can support an 80GB partition. However I think it can, because as long as its FAT32, I think the partition can be up to a whopping 2TB.

So is there any real advantage to having so many partitions? It doesn’t seem like it, unless you guys can shoot down one of my reasons above. Is there any DISadvantage to having large partitions? I know cluster size is a factor, but I think a very minimal one.

Assuming I’m going to have everything on one HDD, would for back ups (and you know what I mean by backups) would you recommend keeping the 6GB, or making a small, 5GB partition on the 80GB? I guess it doesn’t really make a difference, huh?

7

Actually you might want to keep the 4GB drive in your system and use that for the swap/pagefile.
Here’s an article that should help explain the reasoning behind it especially if you make the move to XP.

If you do that I’d suggest changing your partitions to 20GB for the OS, and 2-40GB partitions for data. I know Win 95 had a 32GB limitation which I’m not sure if it carried over into 98 or not so to be on the safe side I’d limit them to 40. NTFS on XP won’t have this problem but like I said it might still exist in 98 and 98SE.

8

So that DOES apply to XP as well?

But even so, does that justify keeping the 4GB? I mean, if my swap file was a whopping 1GB, it still could fit on the 80 okay.

And, I could be wrong, but I THKINK Win98 SE using FAT32 supports partitions (and thus hard drives, as well) up to 2048GB (2TB).

9

Okay, let me summarize what I think I’m going to do, and then after that I’ll ask a few installation questions. Tell me if you see any problems with this setup.

I will not install my programs on another partition since after a reinstallation of Windows I’d have to reinstall my programs anyway. I do want to have another partition or physical drive just to back stuff up to anytime before I reinstall Windows (which, honestly, shouldn’t be too often anyway, hopefully). So I will get an 80GB and have that as my master. I also don’t see any advantage to a ton of partitions for all my different “types” fo files. So the only decision I still have to make is to either: 1) Keep my 6GB, and use that as the backup drive, or 2) Have only the 80GB, and split off like a small, 5GB or so partition. I don’t think it really matters either way, though.

Thanks guys for the help.

Before I ask my installation questions, does anyone see any problems with the above setup?

10

Basically, as long as you have a separate partition to store stuff that you don’t want to have to restore after every install, go for it. Just give ample room for stuff if you’re keeping video files on the drive or a big chunk of space…like if you use a p2p app like KaZaA or WinMX and get a lot of stuff downloaded.

11

Okay, sounds good.

New questions: installing.

Right now I have a 6GB and a 4GB. I’m pretty sure the 6GB is the master of one of my IDE channels, but I’m not sure if the 4GB is either a slave of that same channel or the master of my second channel. I know I want to get rid of the 4, but I’m not sure about the 6. Either way, my OS is currenlty on 6, and I want the 80 to be a master and have the OS on it. So, say I install the 80 as a master on one of the channels, and either keep or not keep the 6. Now, I want to format the 6, partition and format the 80, and get my OS on the 80. A lot of stuff. In which order should I do all this?

12

order…

format the 80GB, insatall the OS, logon, copy any important files you have from the 6GB to the new HD, and format, it doesnt really matter in the end if you don’t want anything which is on that 6GB HD?

13

Okay, but, my OS is currently on the 6GB. I can’t install the OS on the 80GB while it’s still on the 6, can I? Right now I have Win98 SE and I plan on installing WinXP.

14

You can install as many OS’s as you want (theoretically), and you’d simply be setting up a dual-boot system if you went a head and put XP on the 80GB disk. It’d be fairly pointless to have 98 on both drives however. If you have some 98 specific apps that you want/need to still work, having a dual-boot system might not be a bad idea.

15

Well, say I put in the 80, make it master, make the 6 slave partition and format the 80, and boot. Everything, including Win98, would still be on the 6. Would everything still boot up okay even though the 6 (the drive with the OS) is the slave?

16

Should do it. You may want to have the boot sequence start with the 2nd hard drive until you get XP setup—if it doesn’t fly with the current config

17

Is that how you’d recommend doing it?

Say I ditch the 6 too, so I only have the 80. That means I’d have a drive with nothing. What would happen when I try to boot then?

18

You’d get a message telling you there’s no boot record when it got to the point of booting off the hard drive—which it should, since there’s nothing on it at that point in time.

19

So I’d need a boot disk? Then what would it boot me to?

20

just format the 80GB, then use the Win XP CD to boot…you can convert to NTFS on the way if you want…

so you don’t really need a boot disk.