Partitioning a drive

[Taem]

Hail Lurkers,

My main drive is a 20 gig hard drive (17 gig actual space). Once it began filling up, I bought a 250 gig hard drive (233 gig actual space) to free up some space on my main drive. My computer had no trouble partitioning the LARGE drive as some thought it might be difficult, but I've been told that a drive that size should be partitioned into smaller drives for maximum efficiency. What do you guys think is the best size drives I should partition? I have been burning a lot of movies lately so bigger would be better, but 250 gig is definitely is too big. Also, would it be better to “partition” the drive into smaller sections or to use Alcohol 120% to set it up into virtual drives? I have no experience with this and I'm not even sure how to partition my drive again, lol.

Thanks for any replies ahead of time.

NOTE: I don't have access to a spell-checker at the moment so bear with me please .
EDIT: I just got home and ran this threw the spell-checker :) . Clarified a few things.

[kandrathe]

Hail Lurkers,

My main drive is a 20 gig hard drive (17 gig actual space).  Once it began filling up, I bought a 250 gig hard drive (233 gig actual space) to free up some space on my main drive. My computer had no trouble partitioning the LARGE drive as some thought it might be difficult, but I've been told that a drive that size should be partitioned into smaller drives for maximum efficiency. What do you guys think is the best size drives I should partition? I have been burning a lot of movies lately so bigger would be better, but 250 gig is definitely is too big.  Also, would it be better to “partition” the drive into smaller sections or to use Alcohol 120% to set it up into virtual drives?  I have no experience with this and I'm not even sure how to partition my drive again, lol.

Thanks for any replies ahead of time.

NOTE: I don't have access to a spell-checker at the moment so bear with me please  .
EDIT: I just got home and ran this threw the spell-checker :) .  Clarified a few things.
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Usually I partition for a purpose, like a boot partition which I can use to run Ghost to reimage the OS, or a Linux boot partition. If you are just chunking it into manageable sized chunks, then that is up to you. I got tired of partitions and having 15GB free on my E: drive and running out of space on my F: drive, etc. So now I create partitions for special purposes. Like, if you want to store a bunch of CD images, or music that might be a good use. Otherwise, if you are not going to be backing up the drive to tape, then you should forecast in your mind the day when the drive fails and you just lost 233GB of stuff you've collected for the past four years.

Then you might want to save up for a DVD burner.

[Taem]

Usually I partition for a purpose, like a boot partition which I can use to run Ghost to reimage the OS, or a Linux boot partition.  If you are just chunking it into manageable sized chunks, then that is up to you.  I got tired of partitions and having 15GB free on my E: drive and running out of space on my F: drive, etc.  So now I create partitions for special purposes.  Like, if you want to store a bunch of CD images, or music that might be a good use.  Otherwise, if you are not going to be backing up the drive to tape, then you should forecast in your mind the day when the drive fails and you just lost 233GB of stuff you've collected for the past four years. 

Then you might want to save up for a DVD burner.
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One thing I wanted to do was move "My Documents" to my 'H' drive since it was getting too full! I find the My Documents folder (and sub-folders such as My DVD, My Pictures, etc.) to be extremely useful in an organizational sort of way, so I was very disappointed to find out Windows would not let me move this folder. Instead, I created My Music, My Movies, My Games, and My Images on the 'H' drive. I think I would like to give my most used "My" folders a section of the 233 gig hard drive in partition form; I'm still not convinced partitioning is the best way to do it.

As for the data-backup, I have a CD/DVD burner and burn CD's of my important information (like family pictures I uploaded into the computer, and important documents) anytime something major or important to me changes. I keep and date all the CD's so I have a timeline in case I ever need to undo something.

[Wyrm]

EDIT: I just got home and ran this threw the spell-checker :) .  Clarified a few things.
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You might want to fire that spell-checker.

Anyways, when partitioning drives nowadays, it really doesn't matter. All drives formatted with NTFS that are over 1GB (I think, it may be 4GB), have a cluster size of 4. So, really, there is no space-practical reason to split it up unless you're running an older version of Windows that doesn't use ntfs (in which case, you don't have any choice since fat32 can't read drives over 60(?) GB).

The only reasons to split up drives nowadays are if you're going to be giving other people access to it via a network and don't want them to be able to access the drive the OS is on, or if you just want to do it for organizing (ie C for OS, D for games, E for whatever, etc.), which, really, isn't neccessary since you can do basically the same thing with folders and subfolders.

Oh yeah, multiple OS's would require multiple partitions as well I suppose... I find it too much of a hassle to have more than one OS installed though.

Really, I would just image the 20 onto the 250 and do whatever with it, keeping the 20 stored in mothballs just in case something goes wrong with the 250.

[loonygloss]

One thing I wanted to do was move "My Documents" to my 'H' drive since it was getting too full!  I find the My Documents folder (and sub-folders such as My DVD, My Pictures, etc.) to be extremely useful in an organizational sort of way, so I was very disappointed to find out Windows would not let me move this folder.  Instead, I created My Music, My Movies, My Games, and My Images on the 'H' drive.  I think I would like to give my most used "My" folders a section of the 233 gig hard drive in partition form; I'm still not convinced partitioning is the best way to do it.
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Right-click on the "My Documents" icon. Choose "Properties" Edit the folder in the "Target" tab. Bingo. I have 3 partitions, OS/Apps, Games, and Docs/Installfiles. More if I need Linux. The best reason to have at least two partitions is for painless re-formatting.

[Roland]

Hail Lurkers,

My main drive is a 20 gig hard drive (17 gig actual space).  Once it began filling up, I bought a 250 gig hard drive (233 gig actual space) to free up some space on my main drive. My computer had no trouble partitioning the LARGE drive as some thought it might be difficult, but I've been told that a drive that size should be partitioned into smaller drives for maximum efficiency. What do you guys think is the best size drives I should partition? I have been burning a lot of movies lately so bigger would be better, but 250 gig is definitely is too big.  Also, would it be better to “partition” the drive into smaller sections or to use Alcohol 120% to set it up into virtual drives?  I have no experience with this and I'm not even sure how to partition my drive again, lol.

Thanks for any replies ahead of time.

NOTE: I don't have access to a spell-checker at the moment so bear with me please  .
EDIT: I just got home and ran this threw the spell-checker :) .  Clarified a few things.
[right][snapback]58649[/snapback][/right]

My advice, as a computer techie, is not to bother partitioning. The best advice has already been given - if you have a set purpose for which you want to dedicate a portion of the drive to be segregated from the rest of the drive (i.e. a "data" partition on your main drive, where you save all your files that you want to keep, to keep them seperate from the OS in case of a reinstall). Since you don't seem to have any want for doing that, there's no point in partitioning.

The only advice I can give is this: if you want to use the 250 gig drive as your MAIN drive, make a partition of around 40 - 50 gigs, and put your OS and all your programs on that. Then use the rest of the space to store all your "data". Otherwise, just use your current drive as the "main" one and use this as a secondary slave drive to store all your data. You could, alternatively, make a 40 - 50 gig partition on the 250 gig drive dedicated solely for game installations, to keep your main drive from getting too cluttered with games (and thus more dedicated towards actually RUNNING your computer), but that's just a possible option.

To partition, I use FDisk on a bootable diskette. Sometimes the best tools are the simplest. ;) If you're not going to partition, though, just format the drive right in Windows, or alternately you could use FDisk.

Take care and enjoy your drive.

[Jim]

Hi,

Here is a Good guide for: PARTITIONING IN GENERAL