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| UK diy (uk.d-i-y) For the discussion of all topics related to diy (do-it-yourself) in the UK. All levels of experience and proficency are welcome to join in to ask questions or offer solutions. |
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#1
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
Well the time has come.....as it does every few years.
My HDD is virtually full. I have insufficient memory. My PC is too noisy. My son tells me my graphics card is inadequate. No more room for enhancements and upgrades. It's time for a new one. I've just ordered one of these http://tinyurl.com/kjp8p with (amongst other things) a 500G HDD which I envisage assembling this weekend. The most important decision I have to make in the coming days is whether to format the 500G as one huge partition or to have multiple partitions eg: 100G for OS and applications and 400G for My Documents/Pictures/Videos etc. What would you do? David |
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#2
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
In article ,
"Vortex" writes: What would you do? Ask the question in a computing/PC newsgroup. -- Andrew Gabriel |
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#3
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
Vortex wrote:
Well the time has come.....as it does every few years. My HDD is virtually full. I have insufficient memory. My PC is too noisy. My son tells me my graphics card is inadequate. No more room for enhancements and upgrades. It's time for a new one. I've just ordered one of these http://tinyurl.com/kjp8p with (amongst other things) a 500G HDD which I envisage assembling this weekend. The most important decision I have to make in the coming days is whether to format the 500G as one huge partition or to have multiple partitions eg: 100G for OS and applications and 400G for My Documents/Pictures/Videos etc. Well if its a Samsung HDD I wouldn't bother partitioning it at all. Formatting with Fdisk will destroy their weird low level format and only Samsung can recover it, as many users have found. john2 |
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#4
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
The message
from john2 contains these words: Well if its a Samsung HDD I wouldn't bother partitioning it at all. Formatting with Fdisk will destroy their weird low level format and only Samsung can recover it, as many users have found. Never had that trouble with my Samsung drive. -- Skipweasel Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. |
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#5
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
Vortex wrote:
Well the time has come.....as it does every few years. My HDD is virtually full. I have insufficient memory. My PC is too noisy. My son tells me my graphics card is inadequate. No more room for enhancements and upgrades. It's time for a new one. I've just ordered one of these http://tinyurl.com/kjp8p with (amongst other things) a 500G HDD which I envisage assembling this weekend. The most important decision I have to make in the coming days is whether to format the 500G as one huge partition or to have multiple partitions eg: 100G for OS and applications and 400G for My Documents/Pictures/Videos etc. What would you do? Put Linux on it, and shoot my son. David |
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#6
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
Guy King wrote:
The message from john2 contains these words: Well if its a Samsung HDD I wouldn't bother partitioning it at all. Formatting with Fdisk will destroy their weird low level format and only Samsung can recover it, as many users have found. Never had that trouble with my Samsung drive. It applies to the 160 GB one that Aldi were flogging off cheapish last year, maybe not other Samsungs. Perhaps that's why it was cheap. john2 |
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#7
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
Vortex wrote:
Well the time has come.....as it does every few years. My HDD is virtually full. I have insufficient memory. My PC is too noisy. My son tells me my graphics card is inadequate. No more room for enhancements and upgrades. It's time for a new one. I've just ordered one of these http://tinyurl.com/kjp8p with (amongst other things) a 500G HDD which I envisage assembling this weekend. The most important decision I have to make in the coming days is whether to format the 500G as one huge partition or to have multiple partitions eg: 100G for OS and applications and 400G for My Documents/Pictures/Videos etc. What would you do? David I doubt it matters much which you choose. In the event of a corrupted file system or failing hard drive partitioning should make data recovery easier, but whether it improves system performance is a matter of some debate. On the one hand having two file systems creates extra work for your CPU and disk, but it should reduce fragmentation of your operating system files. I'm under the impression, however, that on a PC running Windows it's pretty hard to move your user profiles (stuff like your Internet Explorer cache files and favourites, which are modified very frequently) onto a separate partition. Fragmentation should only become a problem when you're running out of space on the hard drive, and with a 500 GB disk that should take a while. I'm also under the impression that newer versions of Windows, using NTFS as opposed to FAT, are less susceptible to fragmentation, but it's been some time since I used Windows seriously myself. If you do decide to partition, put some serious thought into the size of the partitions - it's easy to get it wrong! Best wishes, Chris |
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#8
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
john2 wrote:
Well if its a Samsung HDD I wouldn't bother partitioning it at all. Formatting with Fdisk will destroy their weird low level format and only Samsung can recover it, as many users have found. john2 Any disk that does that is broken and needs returning... Cheers Tim |
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#9
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
"Vortex" wrote in message news  Well the time has come.....as it does every few years. My HDD is virtually full. I have insufficient memory. My PC is too noisy. My son tells me my graphics card is inadequate. No more room for enhancements and upgrades. It's time for a new one. I've just ordered one of these http://tinyurl.com/kjp8p with (amongst other things) a 500G HDD which I envisage assembling this weekend. The most important decision I have to make in the coming days is whether to format the 500G as one huge partition or to have multiple partitions eg: 100G for OS and applications and 400G for My Documents/Pictures/Videos etc. What would you do? David Personally always put docs etc onto a second partition..why... so that if my OS screws up I can reinstall the OS without having to worry about loosing any docs. IMO thats the only thing partitioning a disk really gives of much benefit |
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#10
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
The message
from john2 contains these words: Never had that trouble with my Samsung drive. It applies to the 160 GB one that Aldi were flogging off cheapish last year, maybe not other Samsungs. Perhaps that's why it was cheap. I had one of the Aldi WD 250GB drives. Marked on the box as "Internal Hard Disc Drive" on all faces except one - where it's maked "Infernal...." -- Skipweasel Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. |
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#11
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
Vortex wrote:
Well the time has come.....as it does every few years. My HDD is virtually full. I have insufficient memory. My PC is too noisy. My son tells me my graphics card is inadequate. No more room for enhancements and upgrades. It's time for a new one. I've just ordered one of these http://tinyurl.com/kjp8p with (amongst other things) a 500G HDD which I envisage assembling this weekend. The most important decision I have to make in the coming days is whether to format the 500G as one huge partition or to have multiple partitions eg: 100G for OS and applications and 400G for My Documents/Pictures/Videos etc. What would you do? David Hi As odd as it may seem, there is a "right" answer for this. There are many variations of "right", but basically: a) OS onto one partition (eg windows C:\ , Linux / /var /usr etc) b) User data onto a different partition a may be further subdivided (OS/applications/swap) and b may be subdivided (personal user data aka home directory versus "shared" data like films, mp3s, photos which the whole family access). Do not ever install the OS onto a whole-disk-sized partition and then lose your data in amongst the crap. If you do and have to re-install the OS, you will weep. Due to the fairly sucky way that DOS partitioning works, I would also make all partitions "primary partitions" upto the limit of 4, unless you know that the installer is using the newer MS partitioning scheme. Something else to consider - leave a second partition spare so you can install a second OS. It won;t amount to much out of 1/2 TB. Cheers Tim |
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#12
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
john2 wrote:
Well if its a Samsung HDD I wouldn't bother partitioning it at all. Formatting with Fdisk will destroy their weird low level format and only Samsung can recover it, as many users have found. References? -- Adrian C |
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#13
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
Tim S wrote:
john2 wrote: Well if its a Samsung HDD I wouldn't bother partitioning it at all. Formatting with Fdisk will destroy their weird low level format and only Samsung can recover it, as many users have found. john2 Any disk that does that is broken and needs returning... I put the drive number into Google and found a lot of people globally who had exactly the same problem. Samsung don't publish any data on heads, cylinders sectors etc for this model so it may be a much bigger drive, or one of several bigger drives, which had a lot of duff sectors that they've low level programmed within the controller to avoid. I worked fine until I tried to reformat it.... john2 |
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#14
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
Adrian C wrote:
john2 wrote: Well if its a Samsung HDD I wouldn't bother partitioning it at all. Formatting with Fdisk will destroy their weird low level format and only Samsung can recover it, as many users have found. References? I can't find the HDD at the moment to check its type No., but here's a couple of folk with what look similar problems trying to partition a different Samsung drive: http://forums.whatpc.co.uk/thread.js...message=282559 "vnunet.com forums - Unable to partition new samsung HDD I recently bought a brand new 8oGb Samsung HDD. I formatted it and installed XP ok. When i tried to partition it using Partition Magic 8 i was directed to ... forums.whatpc.co.uk/thread.jsp?forum=7&thread=47435&message=282559 - Similar pages" Samsung have a downloadable HDD formatting utility at http://www.samsung.com/Products/Hard...ies/shdiag.htm which I was messing about with at one stage but it didn't seem to solve my problems then I forgot about it (and finally lost the HDD somewhere). john2 |
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#15
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
In uk.d-i-y, Tim S wrote:
Vortex wrote: Well the time has come.....as it does every few years. My HDD is virtually full. I have insufficient memory. My PC is too noisy. My son tells me my graphics card is inadequate. No more room for enhancements and upgrades. It's time for a new one. I've just ordered one of these http://tinyurl.com/kjp8p with (amongst other things) a 500G HDD which I envisage assembling this weekend. The most important decision I have to make in the coming days is whether to format the 500G as one huge partition or to have multiple partitions eg: 100G for OS and applications and 400G for My Documents/Pictures/Videos etc. What would you do? David Hi As odd as it may seem, there is a "right" answer for this. There are many variations of "right", but basically: a) OS onto one partition (eg windows C:\ , Linux / /var /usr etc) b) User data onto a different partition a may be further subdivided (OS/applications/swap) and b may be subdivided (personal user data aka home directory versus "shared" data like films, mp3s, photos which the whole family access). I second all of that. On this PC, group (a) is subdivided into three partitions: Windows/apps (C: 17Gb), paging (P: 2Gb), and temp (T: 4Gb). Group (b) is divided into two partitions: documents and other files that need to be backed up frequently (D: 5Gb), and files that rarely or never need to be backed up (copy of the old PC's hard disk, copy of Windows CD, copies of audio CDs, etc) (N: 230Gb). Partition Magic is good for settings things up and adjusting afterwards. Do not ever install the OS onto a whole-disk-sized partition and then lose your data in amongst the crap. If you do and have to re-install the OS, you will weep. Agreed. I like to segregate my data principally according to the backup requirements. That way, I can put the backup strategy to the back of my mind, and never be in any doubt about what's being backed up when. Good backup solutions can be quite cheap. I back up C: and D: to a 40Gb DAT tape. Drives and controllers are plentiful on eBay (I paid about £25). Software (NTBACKUP) is free with Windows. -- Mike Barnes |
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#16
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HDD formatting "good practice"
Tim S wrote:
Vortex wrote: Well the time has come.....as it does every few years. My HDD is virtually full. I have insufficient memory. My PC is too noisy. My son tells me my graphics card is inadequate. No more room for enhancements and upgrades. It's time for a new one. I've just ordered one of these http://tinyurl.com/kjp8p with (amongst other things) a 500G HDD which I envisage assembling this weekend. The most important decision I have to make in the coming days is whether to format the 500G as one huge partition or to have multiple partitions eg: 100G for OS and applications and 400G for My Documents/Pictures/Videos etc. What would you do? David Hi As odd as it may seem, there is a "right" answer for this. There are many variations of "right", but basically: a) OS onto one partition (eg windows C:\ , Linux / /var /usr etc) b) User data onto a different partition a may be further subdivided (OS/applications/swap) and b may be subdivided (personal user data aka home directory versus "shared" data like films, mp3s, photos which the whole family access). Do not ever install the OS onto a whole-disk-sized partition and then lose your data in amongst the crap. If you do and have to re-install the OS, you will weep. Due to the fairly sucky way that DOS partitioning works, I would also make all partitions "primary partitions" upto the limit of 4, unless you know that the installer is using the newer MS partitioning scheme. Something else to consider - leave a second partition spare so you can install a second OS. It won;t amount to much out of 1/2 TB. Cheers Tim I would say about the oposite to that. I dont split discs and dont lose document files when installing or reinstalling an OS. Using a sensible backup routine gives backui[p protection. So far I've lost a total of one object as a result of storing it in an odd place and forgetting to include it in any backup, then a hdd failed. But partitioning wouldnt have helped that in any way. Remeber the days of 500M and 1G drives? Remeber why partitioning was such abad idea then? 500G seems like a vast amount of storage now, but it will ni time become a 'small disc', and however you partition it now its guaranteed to be split alll wrong.once space starts getting low. I remember when a 70M hdd was gargantuan, and none of us could figure out how we could ever fill it. The one remaining question: how the heck do you backup a half terabyte disc? Only 100 dvds I spose, or less after compression. NT |
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#17
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message ... Vortex wrote: Well the time has come.....as it does every few years. My HDD is virtually full. I have insufficient memory. My PC is too noisy. My son tells me my graphics card is inadequate. No more room for enhancements and upgrades. It's time for a new one. I've just ordered one of these http://tinyurl.com/kjp8p with (amongst other things) a 500G HDD which I envisage assembling this weekend. The most important decision I have to make in the coming days is whether to format the 500G as one huge partition or to have multiple partitions eg: 100G for OS and applications and 400G for My Documents/Pictures/Videos etc. What would you do? Put Linux on it, and shoot my son. FYI I have an elephants graveyard of old PC's and he HAS put Linux on them, as well as on his IPOD (for what purpose I do not know). There's a version called Kubuntu which I reckon is pretty cool. Problem is that I do not have a beard and my son is too young to grow one. Sticking with Bill Gates for now. Actively considering purging Rupert Murdoch from my life though. D |
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#18
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HDD formatting "good practice"
The one remaining question: how the heck do you backup a half terabyte disc? Only 100 dvds I spose, or less after compression. NT I've been investigating backups and I reckon that Network Attached Storage is the solution. Something like this: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=245156 Actually I am thinking that if "My Pictures" and "My Music" were on a disk like this then they could be viewed/listened to from another PC easily david |
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#19
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
Vortex wrote:
The most important decision I have to make in the coming days is whether to format the 500G as one huge partition or to have multiple partitions eg: 100G for OS and applications and 400G for My Documents/Pictures/Videos etc. What would you do? Definitely partition. even multiple partitions. One for Windows (don't underestimate the amount of space this may require. One for Music/Photos and other "valuable" data One for something else. Having had to re-install Windows on my single partition PC supplied with no WinXP disk but the installation S/Ware on a partion, the only way I could resolve it was with a format which being one partition screwed the whole lot. Now I have to copy the whole lot back again (including GB's of pictures and backup data. Seperate partitions would have saved all this (Win XP MCE Home edition) HTH -- http://gymratz.co.uk - Best Gym Equipment & Bodybuilding Supplements UK. http://trade-price-supplements.co.uk - TRADE PRICED SUPPLEMENTS for ALL! http://fitness-equipment-uk.com - UK's No.1 Fitness Equipment Suppliers. http://Water-Rower.co.uk - Worlds best prices on the Worlds best Rower. |
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#20
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HDD formatting "good practice"
"Christopher Tidy" wrote in message ... vortex2 wrote: The one remaining question: how the heck do you backup a half terabyte disc? Only 100 dvds I spose, or less after compression. NT I've been investigating backups and I reckon that Network Attached Storage is the solution. Something like this: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=245156 Actually I am thinking that if "My Pictures" and "My Music" were on a disk like this then they could be viewed/listened to from another PC easily Now you really want Linux or UNIX. Windows networking sucks :-)). Chris That's curious, it works for me...... I formed the reverse impression trying to get my son's Linux PC to see my Windows shared printer. David |
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#22
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
john2 wrote:
forums.whatpc.co.uk/thread.jsp?forum=7&thread=47435&message=282559 Looks more like a Partition Magic bug to me. Cheers Tim |
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#23
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
john2 wrote:
Tim S wrote: john2 wrote: Well if its a Samsung HDD I wouldn't bother partitioning it at all. Formatting with Fdisk will destroy their weird low level format and only Samsung can recover it, as many users have found. john2 Any disk that does that is broken and needs returning... I put the drive number into Google and found a lot of people globally who had exactly the same problem. Samsung don't publish any data on heads, cylinders sectors etc for this model so it may be a much bigger drive, or one of several bigger drives, which had a lot of duff sectors that they've low level programmed within the controller to avoid. I worked fine until I tried to reformat it.... Do you mean "low level reformat" or "make a filesystem/format"? Partitioning and making filesystems are high level operations. The computer will ask the drive "how many blocks do you have" and it will expect them all to work (assuming LBA mode). Fdisk does nothing more than write to the first logical sector (512 bytes) on the drive a copy of the MS DOS format partition table and, occasionally, depending on invocation/version of fdisk, a copy of the MBR. If the drive goes pear shaped having the first sector written to, then it is broken. No debate. It does not work as expected, and if it were mine, it would be returned forthwith. Presumable Samsung screwed up badly? Some people don't even use partitions, I have on occasion given the whole disk (raw) over to a filesystem or a higher level volume manager like EVMS. This (generally, not you John) is starting to remind me of my discussions with SanDisk this weekend past, over a failed CF card. Me: mails SanDisk, requesting an RMA under the 5 year guarantee due to 67xx bad blocks on the device appearing... Them: Please can you use Windows XP to delete/recreate partition and reformat the filesystem. Me: No I don't have any MS product available on a system with a CF card reader. I use linux. I have performed the equivalent operations with fdisk and mkfs.vfat Oddly enough it doesn't work any better. BTW, were you hoping the mkfs operation would take note of the bad blocks and hide them at the FS layer, because that is not acceptable. Either the device hides them at the hardware layer or you give me a new device. Them: Repeat 1st line support bull**** about Win XP... Me: Gets on the phone, gives them a short lecture and is immediately given the contact numbers of 3 UK distributors who can handle RMAs. 3 days later I have a new device. Why they had to make a simple thing hard I don't know, but they probably regretted doing it to me whilst I am giving up smoking because I don't currently have a lot of patience in the face of stupidity... Cheers Tim |
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#24
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HDD formatting "good practice"
vortex2 wrote:
The one remaining question: how the heck do you backup a half terabyte disc? Only 100 dvds I spose, or less after compression. NT I've been investigating backups and I reckon that Network Attached Storage is the solution. Something like this: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=245156 Actually I am thinking that if "My Pictures" and "My Music" were on a disk like this then they could be viewed/listened to from another PC easily Now you really want Linux or UNIX. Windows networking sucks :-)). Chris |
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#25
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HDD formatting "good practice"
wrote:
I would say about the oposite to that. I dont split discs and dont lose I am with Tim on this. document files when installing or reinstalling an OS. Using a sensible backup routine gives backui[p protection. So far I've lost a total of one object as a result of storing it in an odd place and forgetting to include it in any backup, then a hdd failed. But partitioning wouldnt have helped that in any way. Remeber the days of 500M and 1G drives? Remeber why partitioning was such abad idea then? Not at all. In fact with smaller drives (and older file systems) partitioning was almost vital if you wanted to avoid throwing large proportions of your disk space away with monsterous cluster sizes. A 200MB drive split into two 100M partitions had significantly more useable space than if left as one. 500G seems like a vast amount of storage now, but it will ni time become a 'small disc', and however you partition it now its guaranteed to be split alll wrong.once space starts getting low. Careful planing, and tools like partition magic sort that. Also remember that with NTFS you can graft a new partition onto a branch of an exiting directory tree. Thus making a partiton "bigger" without repartitioning it. The one remaining question: how the heck do you backup a half terabyte disc? Only 100 dvds I spose, or less after compression. Here is one big reason why partitioning is still a good idea. A system/boot partition that can be restored from one or two DVDs is far more useful that a whole system backup that takes 10s or 100s. Also it makes doing emergency recovery backups simpler since you don't need to worry so much about being able to select individual files to avoid overwriting user files with older backups. If you have more than one physical disk in the computer then there are performance gains to be had to make sure that windows and the main page file are on separate physical disks. Most people find that if they keep photos and video out of their documents/data then the whole data partition can be DVD sized or less and hence very easy to backup. -- Cheers, John. /================================================== ===============\ | Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk | |-----------------------------------------------------------------| | John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk | \================================================= ================/ |
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#26
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
vortex2 wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message ... Vortex wrote: Well the time has come.....as it does every few years. My HDD is virtually full. I have insufficient memory. My PC is too noisy. My son tells me my graphics card is inadequate. No more room for enhancements and upgrades. It's time for a new one. I've just ordered one of these http://tinyurl.com/kjp8p with (amongst other things) a 500G HDD which I envisage assembling this weekend. The most important decision I have to make in the coming days is whether to format the 500G as one huge partition or to have multiple partitions eg: 100G for OS and applications and 400G for My Documents/Pictures/Videos etc. What would you do? Put Linux on it, and shoot my son. FYI I have an elephants graveyard of old PC's and he HAS put Linux on them, as well as on his IPOD (for what purpose I do not know). There's a version called Kubuntu which I reckon is pretty cool. Problem is that I do not have a beard and my son is too young to grow one. Sticking with Bill Gates for now. Actively considering purging Rupert Murdoch from my life though. If only.... D |
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#27
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HDD formatting "good practice"
vortex2 wrote:
"Christopher Tidy" wrote in message ... vortex2 wrote: The one remaining question: how the heck do you backup a half terabyte disc? Only 100 dvds I spose, or less after compression. NT I've been investigating backups and I reckon that Network Attached Storage is the solution. Something like this: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=245156 Actually I am thinking that if "My Pictures" and "My Music" were on a disk like this then they could be viewed/listened to from another PC easily Now you really want Linux or UNIX. Windows networking sucks :-)). Chris That's curious, it works for me...... I formed the reverse impression trying to get my son's Linux PC to see my Windows shared printer. David Well, I said it with a grin, but it has been my experience. I've found that when it comes to networking, what works for one variant of UNIX generally works for another, and that setting up UNIX-based networks is pretty trouble free. Conversely I've found that setting up Windows networks operates quite differently from version to version, and frequently not at all. I remember with Windows 95 I couldn't get the connection to work at all unless I turned Windows file sharing on, which I didn't want to do. With later versions I've found that the firewalls necessary to catch the multitude of Windows trojans and viruses interfere with legitimate network traffic, often without telling you clearly what they're doing. My experience has been that while UNIX/Linux is harder to learn in the first place, it's a hell of a lot more robust. I used to use Windows, but I wouldn't go back. If you go another newsgroup (I can't think of an appropriate one right now) I'm sure someone can help with your printer problem, but I don't do Windows anymore. Chris |
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#28
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HDD formatting "good practice"
The message
from Tim S contains these words: Yes. I remember when 20MB was the dogs  Doesn't change anything though.Remember the commodore 9060? 5MB and proud of it! -- Skipweasel Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. |
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#29
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
The message
from Tim S contains these words: Why they had to make a simple thing hard I don't know, Because in many cases it will get the customer to **** off and not bother them again. This makes it cheaper for them. -- Skipweasel Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. |
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#30
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
"john2" wrote in message ... Adrian C wrote: john2 wrote: Well if its a Samsung HDD I wouldn't bother partitioning it at all. Formatting with Fdisk will destroy their weird low level format and only Samsung can recover it, as many users have found. References? I can't find the HDD at the moment to check its type No., but here's a couple of folk with what look similar problems trying to partition a different Samsung drive: http://forums.whatpc.co.uk/thread.js...message=282559 "vnunet.com forums - Unable to partition new samsung HDD I recently bought a brand new 8oGb Samsung HDD. I formatted it and installed XP ok. When i tried to partition it using Partition Magic 8 i was directed to ... forums.whatpc.co.uk/thread.jsp?forum=7&thread=47435&message=282559 - Similar pages" Nothing wrong with the disks then. Just useless software and inexperienced (I am usually polite) users. |
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#31
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
Guy King wrote:
The message from Tim S contains these words: Why they had to make a simple thing hard I don't know, Because in many cases it will get the customer to **** off and not bother them again. This makes it cheaper for them. It wouldn't surprise me, Guy. My logic would be, well, if I go away, they've saved themselves 20 quid or whatever. In the meantime I'm looking to buy 2 off 1GB devices, so being now ****ed of I'm considering Lexar or even Corsair. And all the bad will from me telling everyone about it. |
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#32
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
"Vortex" wrote in message news Well the time has come.....as it does every few years. My HDD is virtually full. I have insufficient memory. My PC is too noisy. My son tells me my graphics card is inadequate. No more room for enhancements and upgrades. It's time for a new one. I've just ordered one of these http://tinyurl.com/kjp8p with (amongst other things) a 500G HDD which I envisage assembling this weekend. The most important decision I have to make in the coming days is whether to format the 500G as one huge partition or to have multiple partitions eg: 100G for OS and applications and 400G for My Documents/Pictures/Videos etc. What would you do? David Gents, Having read your various responses and comments, plus this http://tinyurl.com/fwdlg interesting thread I have resolved to initially format the HDD with one partition, and implement a robust backup strategy, along with an equally robust "keep the children from installing crap off the web my new PC" policy Before making the post I was well aware that views would be polarised. Somehow I was hoping there would be a "third way".....and I think there is one....to use Partition Magic at a later date should my single partition strategy turn out to be ill judged. Thanks again, David |
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#33
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
Vortex wrote:
Well the time has come.....as it does every few years. My HDD is virtually full. I have insufficient memory. My PC is too noisy. My son tells me my graphics card is inadequate. No more room for enhancements and upgrades. It's time for a new one. I've just ordered one of these http://tinyurl.com/kjp8p with (amongst other things) a 500G HDD which I envisage assembling this weekend. The most important decision I have to make in the coming days is whether to format the 500G as one huge partition or to have multiple partitions eg: 100G for OS and applications and 400G for My Documents/Pictures/Videos etc. What would you do? I agree with Rob Convery - 100 & 400 is safer. Keeps your data separate so you can image and reinstall the OS without any worries. |
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#34
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
The message
from Tim S contains these words: My logic would be, well, if I go away, they've saved themselves 20 quid or whatever. In the meantime I'm looking to buy 2 off 1GB devices, so being now ****ed of I'm considering Lexar or even Corsair. And all the bad will from me telling everyone about it. Yes, but beancounters don't think like that. -- Skipweasel Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. |
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#35
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
The message
from "Steve Walker" contains these words: I agree with Rob Convery - 100 & 400 is safer. Keeps your data separate so you can image and reinstall the OS without any worries. If you've got two physical drives having the swapfile on the second drive can speed things up as it can read from one channel while writing on the other. For this I've a 1GB partion on my second HD just for the swapfile. -- Skipweasel Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. |
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#36
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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HDD formatting "good practice"
In message , vortex2
writes I've been investigating backups and I reckon that Network Attached Storage is the solution. If you have an old PC with a reasonably large hard disk then have a go at making your own NAS using this. http://www.freenas.org/index.php?opt...tpage&Itemid=1 That said, USB connected storage is getting cheaper all the time - back up all your digital photos, MP3s and documents onto the device and then take it into work, leave it at your Mums or whatever so if the day your house burns down or the PC gets nicked then you have an 'off site backup'. -- Andrew Sinclair http://www.smellycat.org |
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#37
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
Rob Convery wrote:
"Vortex" wrote in message news
Well the time has come.....as it does every few years. My HDD is virtually full. I have insufficient memory. My PC is too noisy. My son tells me my graphics card is inadequate. No more room for enhancements and upgrades. It's time for a new one. I've just ordered one of these http://tinyurl.com/kjp8p with (amongst other things) a 500G HDD which I envisage assembling this weekend. The most important decision I have to make in the coming days is whether to format the 500G as one huge partition or to have multiple partitions eg: 100G for OS and applications and 400G for My Documents/Pictures/Videos etc. What would you do? David Personally always put docs etc onto a second partition..why... so that if my OS screws up I can reinstall the OS without having to worry about loosing any docs. IMO thats the only thing partitioning a disk really gives of much benefit I was reading down the threads to see if anyone else agreed with this. I was taught computers by a blind man and he always told me to partition a drive and put the operating system on the first partition (C and putall applications and data on the second partition (D I agree with what you say all the way. It has worked very well for me for well over 15 years. By the way, if the second partition gets buggered, you can usually get it back by using FDISK. Remove all partitions and re-partition the drive with the same parameters that you used the last time. Second partition will still be there. Dave |
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#38
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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[OT-ish] HDD formatting "good practice"
Vortex wrote:
Having read your various responses and comments, plus this http://tinyurl.com/fwdlg interesting thread I have resolved to initially format the HDD with one partition, and implement a robust backup strategy, along with an equally robust "keep the children from installing crap off the web my new PC" policy Before making the post I was well aware that views would be polarised. Somehow I was hoping there would be a "third way".....and I think there is one....to use Partition Magic at a later date should my single partition strategy turn out to be ill judged. If you want a third way, have you thought about virtualisation?: http://www.vmware.com/virtualization/ (basic product is free for download now) You can give the kids a PC to do what they like with, knowing full well you can return it to pristine "newness" any time you like with no effort. -- Cheers, John. /================================================== ===============\ | Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk | |-----------------------------------------------------------------| | John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk | \================================================= ================/ |
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#39
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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HDD formatting "good practice"
"Andrew Sinclair" wrote in message ... In message , vortex2 writes I've been investigating backups and I reckon that Network Attached Storage is the solution. If you have an old PC with a reasonably large hard disk then have a go at making your own NAS using this. http://www.freenas.org/index.php?opt...tpage&Itemid=1 Its not free. Nearly everyone will use some old PC they have lying about to run the free software. The problem being that they tend to be power hungry. Typically they will take 50w to 100+w more than something like a Buffalo Linkstation. That is about 10p a day more to run. It soon makes it cheaper to buy the dedicated device than to run the (free) software. That said you can use it for other functions, or you could buy an ultra low power PC for the job. That said, USB connected storage is getting cheaper all the time - back up all your digital photos, MP3s and documents onto the device and then take it into work, leave it at your Mums or whatever so if the day your house burns down or the PC gets nicked then you have an 'off site backup'. Two of them would be even better. Murphy says that the software will crash during the backup and that both the original and the backup will be lost if you only have one. |
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#40
Posted to uk.d-i-y
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HDD formatting "good practice"
In uk.d-i-y, dennis@home wrote:
"Andrew Sinclair" wrote in message ... In message , vortex2 writes I've been investigating backups and I reckon that Network Attached Storage is the solution. If you have an old PC with a reasonably large hard disk then have a go at making your own NAS using this. http://www.freenas.org/index.php?opt...tpage&Itemid=1 Its not free. Nearly everyone will use some old PC they have lying about to run the free software. The problem being that they tend to be power hungry. Typically they will take 50w to 100+w more than something like a Buffalo Linkstation. That is about 10p a day more to run. It soon makes it cheaper to buy the dedicated device than to run the (free) software. That said you can use it for other functions, or you could buy an ultra low power PC for the job. Agreed. Laptops are convenient and low-power, and available cheap from eBay (probably with dodgy batteries, but that doesn't matter). That said, USB connected storage is getting cheaper all the time - back up all your digital photos, MP3s and documents onto the device and then take it into work, leave it at your Mums or whatever so if the day your house burns down or the PC gets nicked then you have an 'off site backup'. Two of them would be even better. Murphy says that the software will crash during the backup and that both the original and the backup will be lost if you only have one. I have two backups, but not for that reason. Realistically a crash will not damage the original *and* the backup, so a second backup isn't necessary for that reason. But if your only backup is at your Mum's it's inconvenient to make frequent backups. Therefore I have one local backup, updated frequently, and one off-site backup, updated less often. -- Mike Barnes |
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