Hard drive ?

[JBunn]

I would like some professional information about installing a new hard drive.
Will be installing a new 20.4 drive and would like to know if it is better to make partitions( and what size)or leave it as one BIG drive.
Also, it will be replacing a 2GB drive so should I leave this as the master, with the operating system on it, and use the big one as the slave?

Thanks in advance for your replies....

[Mntsnow]

You will undoubtably get many answers on weither to partition are not to partition. but as for which you should have as Master in you system I would bet your 20.4 gig drive will be the faster of the two. (better rpm speed, access speed ect)

Now for my 2cents worth. I would suggest creating fat32 partitions. and this is what I would do.
create a 4 gig "C" drive partition (this is where you install your OS and such)
create another 4 to 6 gig parition (this is your "working" directory)
and then lastly create a parition that has the rest of avaliable space and use it to archive and hold "backup images"

Mntsnow

[DavidX]

I tend to agree with Mntsnow though I would personally make the second "working directory" partition a little bigger. Applications and games are demanding more and more space these days.

It also depends on your O/S. I presume you're using Windows 98?

[drdeath]

i personally like to have one HUGE drive. its all up to personal preference...

i do agree tho that the 20 gig drive should be master as it is most likely faster.

[JBunn]

Mntsnow, Davidx:
Thanks for the replys.....
By making these partitions does this make the access time better than having one big drive. And I wold guess that it would take less time to run scan disk etc. on the partition that needs it. I will be usig aa Epox MVP3g2 board and a Quatum drive so do you think I will have any problem with using DMA66?

Thanks

[Mntsnow]

It will REALLY help having partitions when it comes time to do defrags and scandisks! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

As for access speed it will help but with the speed of todays drives it would not be to big a difference in the accessing of info.

The Epox board is a good board! You should get alot of good use out of it!

Mntsnow

[EVGTech]

Partitioning drives one of my favorite concepts.
understand the physical makeup of a hard drive. hard drives dont spin at a constant rate. they are zoned. what this means is that the drives fastest section is at the very begining and the slowest will be at the end of the drive. You can see this if you run a decent drive performance tester. my favorite is HDtach. Sometimes the difference can be huge as in the end of the drive is half the speed of the beginning.

Ok. this alone should make it fairly clear that partioning the drive can be used to your advantage.

here's my concept of win 9x drive arrangement.

I make the first partition to be a system partition. the only files i put here are the files required for this systems operation.
these will be very fast. Making this partition too big is unproductive as you dont want to waste the space or clutter the concept. a 1.5 or 2 gig partition works fine for this.

the second partion is the data partition and can be of any size that still allows enough space for the third parition.

The third partion is the desktop. I make this partition about 1/5 the size of the drives total size.
here i put a temp folder containing all of the windows temp directories or windows system directories that change often.

I use TweakUI to change the location of the system directories. in win98 you cant have two system directories point to the root of the drive so the data drive will have a program files directory. the desktop drive is the desktop.

After i have this all set up i'll export a chunk of the registry so that if i need to reinstall windows i can put all the directories back the way i want them very easily.

What this does is that if windows becomes fried and i want to completely reinstall i can reformat the c drive reinstall windows insert my registry chunk and have my system up an running again in almost no time. you may be surprised at how convient it is to have your desktop back to your original setup immidiatly after installing windows.

My c drive basically never needs to be defragmented and my d drive only needs to have the space compacted if i have to remove programs or apps, a defrag is not needed. the E drive becomes incredibly fragmented but it doesnt matter.



[This message has been edited by EVGTech (edited 12-17-1999).]

[scotter]

EVGTech could you please explain that a little better and mabe tell exactly what steps you take to do that http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif
I understand what your saying I'm just lost in the exacution of it http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif
as in how to export a ( chunck )of the registry and what constatutes a chunck http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

also moving the temp folders, system directories etc,etc.
and what are you talking about with the desk top drive ?

thanks, Scotter http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[EVGTech]

sorry typing and spell checking are not my first loves. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

if you run regedit you can export pieces or chunks of the registry.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders

this piece contains the system directories. double clicking the exported chunk will reinsert it into the registry.

Msbatch will do similar things.

thats a little in depth though.

the win 98 resource kit sampler has tweakUI in the power tools section. for win95 you could download this from Tucows or a number of other places. TweakUI will allow to change most of the locations of the windows system directories and such.

the simplest part would be just changing the desktop directory to point to the desktop drive. the desktop drive in the example i laid out before would be the E partition. so if you copied somthing in dos like "copy a:. c:" you would copy all of the files on the A drive to your desktop.

i like this as it allows easy access to the desktop from dos and other places

steps...
1 patition the drive.
My 9.1 gig WD expert is divided as follows.
c: (systems)=1.22
d: (Apps)=5.84
e: (Desktop)=1.39

2 setup directories
change the desktop directory to e:
change the program file directory to d:\program files
make a directory on e: to contain windows system directories. I make a temp directory and then put a system directory in it.
I move the following directories here.
start menu
send to
programs
explorer/netscape cache.
favorites
outlook messages
my documents (which can be a very usefull direcoty as well)
startup

export registry chunk


[This message has been edited by EVGTech (edited 12-19-1999).]

[This message has been edited by EVGTech (edited 12-19-1999).]

[scotter]

thanks think I got it that time http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif