Partitioning for better management of computer

I'm using 64.9 GB of my hard drive (160gb internal)
most of that is music,installers and pictures.
i image my hard drive one image at a time to my 100gb external drive.
then i have to delete the current image to put a new one on it.
so during the process i got no image backup.
should i purchase a bigger external harddrive so i can store more than one image at a time?
which is more safe than only having one image.
more to add later.
lodore

 

What about tape backup systems, how do people rate those compared to external HDD for cost and performance ?

I have a lot of media files: movies, music and photos, (approaching 100gig) they live on my server (so I can watch them on my laptop and/or TV via Xbox), I currently back them up to DVD occasionally (and I keep the old DVD's).

My data files are backup to my server which in turn gets backed to my external hdd, partly so that I can transport files between work and home easily.

 

IMHO you would be safer to:

1. have multiple backup images
2. use differentials weekly based on a proven image
3. doesn't seem like you need more external
4. partition your pc into 2, (1) OS+programs and (2) data

 

while they have made some advances recently, they dont predate the widespread adoption of 3.5" as an external and likely represent a needed advancement to maintain profitability against a rising tide of RMA's

and there is no bending the laws of physics when it comes to platter sizes
its another example of the inverse square law

My criticisms arent against anyone's R&D department, but rather how the drives have been promoted as a truly transportable cure all. They have been quite a marketing success but the user education that goes with them is lacking. Classic Engineers vs Spin Doctors struggle. The "precautions" if too prominent hurts sales you know

while the clueless compare them to much more robust microdrives and solid state memory, equating a 3.5" to say an ipod

 

I dont want to have to repartistion so i will stay with what ive got with that intill I get a new pc.
multiple images will be useful thou and i would need eiether a bigger external or an extra internal drive.
i dont get the differential images.
when i create a full image then create the first differential i get stuck.
do i create the second differential from the full image or the first differential?
lodore

 

Just a "Thank you" to all who commented on our question earlier.

 

If you have a good partition management tool and unallocated space you should not fear repartitioning in and of itself.

The way differentials are handled depends on the imaging software you use to back up your drives/partitions, so you would need to read up on your product and practice on dummy partitions first.

Backup everything before you start.

 

I use Partition Magic all the time without any issues
but I also moderated a data storage forum for 5 years with all sorts Partition Magic sob stories.

do one thing at a time and reboot
(resize reboot, move reboot, ect)
don't merge partitions
never restart because you think its hung
make the rescue disks
maintain current backups always

I use Windows diskmgmt to create delete format pretty much anything other than resize and move
Ive also used diskpart.exe to expand a partition into adjacent unallocated space
(see link for restrictions no pagfefile on the partition for instance)
but its ripe for misadventure to anyone that isnt comfortable with a commandline and anything but crystal clear on their partition topography
worth learning to use, on drives that contain no data you can loose, at least the first few tries.

 

Thanks Czar, good advice. The only improvement I could make to your "rules"
follows:

maintain current backups always
make the rescue disks
never restart because you think its hung
don't merge partitions
do one thing at a time and reboot
(resize reboot, move reboot, etc)

Don't use Paragon Partition Manager 8.x Personal Edition.
It has crashed my PC twice simply trying to reallocate space from 1 partition to another on an external 120GB Maxtor drive.

I did use their drive backup rebootable cd to come back from the dead but G..d what a nightmare.

 

aHA
so your my evil twin doppelganger
or is it Im the evil one?

 

I also have Partition Magic. However, this is supposed to be just as good but free: GParted.

 

For partitioning software, I would trust oNLY software that has been widely used.

Partition Magic is oft available free, e.g., as part of a Symantec bundle. I believe that http://www.compusa.com/ and/orhttp://www.outpost.com/ has such a deal available this week.

Such a deal seems to available at least once per month at such resellers.

Heck, I've got 3 PM licenses.

 

Hello,
I have used both PM and GParted without any issues.
Mrk

 

thanks bpm3k Gparted (Gnome Partition Editor) looks like a great opensource alternative
with the added advantage of being OS\filesystem independent for a LiveUSB & LiveCD

while proprietary software might be more mature
you get to see all the bugs with opensource
something you never see with proprietary software, well unless you read every entry in a support forum.
Which Gparted also has.

I'll be testing this extensively over the next couple of months

 

I now retract this statement. It did what I said it did, BUT I have now learned many tricks on partition management and have to say it works when you have good support from the vendor which I have been getting. Except for weekends I get 1 day or even same day answers to questions. Their backup archives have saved me several times in 1 month. Did all of my testing on an old Pentium II which had no valuable data or programs to lose.

Just to be clear I AM NOT ADVOCATING PARAGON just correcting a premature comment and wanted to correct the record.

Regards to all:

PS Now I have to avoid archiving the archives! Ideas welcome

 

the thing I seem to recall from the depths of my memory was that Paragon had a way to revert Dynamic Disks back to Basic and keep the data?

In W2K (since fixed in XP) the diskmgmt new disk Initialzation wizard made it very easy to inadvertently "upgrade"
to Dynamic Disks if you didnt pay close attention, many a soul never noticed till it was too late and the disks loaded with data they had no room to transfer elsewhere

 

"the thing I seem to recall from the depths of my memory was that Paragon had a way to revert Dynamic Disks back to Basic and keep the data?"

yes, Paragon has FATxx>>NTFS>>FATxx, with many options for sizing.
one of the "learnings" was to engage/click the don't convert without warning boxes. I didn't know that and a couple of FATxx's (which i didn't use) got converted. These are now gone! Suspect they were old IBM utility partitions but since they are gone will never know.

Moral: Back every thing you need/might need before starting to mess with
these partitioning tools.

 

the thing I seem to recall from the depths of my memory was that Paragon had a way to revert Dynamic Disks back to Basic and keep the data?

I haven't in paragon on the terms dynamic and basic, so I'm not quite sure on your question they have dynamic / on the fly backups in advanced 24X 7 operations but I'm not using that version.

 

Dynamic Disks dont use Master File Tables (MFT) or File Allocation Tables (FAT) but rather a Logical Disk Manager (LDM) and there are all sorts of special rules for Dynamic Disks making recovery a pain in the butt (like an unintelligible dialect of a language you sort of speak) you use Dynamic Disks to do software RAID w\ NTFS or volumes spanning multiple HDDs
actually it offers little to a single user you cant do better another way

point is natively in Windows reverting from Dynamic Disks to Basic Disks means 100% data loss

 

nickr -

Tape backup hardware is relatively not too expensive but the cost of the blank tapes is outrageous.

 

Cheers Q

FYI I've set both my machines with 4 partitions for Linux.

200mb boot ext3
6gig / xfs
2gig swap
remaining 1 big partition
(additional drives on my server as single huge partitions)

 

Sounds like a good solution!