which partitions for me?

I am close to ordering a Dell laptop which includes Vista Premium and a 160 GB HD.

As a beginning user I know nothing about partitions but I understand that they are worthwhile to establish on a new machine. The particular machine that I am considering can be shipped already partitioned. Here are the choices

Custom Hard Drive Partition, 40GB Primary, Remainder Secondary

Custom Hard Drive Partition, 60GB Primary, Remainder Secondary

Custom Factory Partition, 50 percentage Primary / 50 percentage Secondary

Custom Factory Partition, 90 percentage Primary / 10 percentage Secondary

Are any of these setups worth selecting? Thanks for your advice.

 

21Rouge,

For partitioning advantages see...

http://partition.radified.com/

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/notes.htm#13

I don't have Vista so someone else will need to advise on partition size.

There are free partitioning apps available if you would like to test first.

 

I've not really seen the need to partition a single hard drive unless planning on dual booting.

Some folks like to separate their data from their programs, but it really makes more sense (to me anyway) to do that on physically separate drives rather than via partitions.

There are ways to reduce the risk of failures by implementing RAID technologies; however, on a single physical device those RAID technologies would actually tend to increase the risk of failures.

One other reason to partition is to provide a limiting factor, or quotas, on the available space.

Multiple users are using the machine could be one other reason to partition.

Of course you may simply prefer to logically organize your data by partitions rather than by simply directories/folders.

 

AKAJohnDoe,

The links I posted explain why two (or more) partitions on a single HD computer is advantageous.

The OS is the on outer aspect of the HD for better performance. Faster angular velocity.

Separating the OS from data so the OS image will be smaller.

You can image the OS partition to the data partition and restore the OS partition from the image on the data partition. Quick and easy. Of course at least one OS image should be stored elsewhere in case of HD failure. And your data backup will be stored elsewhere.

 

I partition my HD for the following reasons:

The unit an image understands is a partition.

To separate the OS and Apps from the data. OS/App image is smaller therefore faster backups and you can blow away the partiton at anytime for any reason without being concerned about data files.

I create a partition which large games like Flight Simulator are installed in. The contents of this partition rarely if ever changes unless some new game installed. No need to keep imaging it such as if it were part of C. Also, you still have the CD as the final backup.

The rest of the disk can be for data with any desired sub-divisions done by folders.

Now if a second drive is installed in the machine it can be used to backup the partitions on the main drive thus giving a very fast and convenient backup. Yes, a copy should also be stored off-line.

 

Makes no sense on Windows because Windows is an architecturally antiquated model that imbeds program, metadata, and data.

 

That's very interesting but could you specifically state why this means partitioning is not a good idea when using an imaging program? I'd like to find out where I am going wrong with my approach.

 

I do not believe that I stated that your approach was wrong. It may work quite well for you. All I stated was that it is not possible to separate the OS from the data with the Windows OS since the metadata (i.e.: .ini files; registry, ...) is imbedded in the OS and the standard data locations (e.g.: Program Files; Program Data; Users; ...) are also intrinsically co-mingled and effectively fixed locations. I will concede that external data (e.g.: Word docs; Spreadsheets; Raw, JPG, etc. images; ...) can be effective isolated.

 

True but if you consider the C partition to be an entity of the Windows OS proper and the installed applications then virtually all of the problem goes away. You restore C and you have the OS, the apps, the user profiles, ... . Some people have partitioned the OS and the applications separately but I consider this to be a mistake since they are indeed coupled. My putting large games into a separate partition does violate this rule but in my case the stuff hasn't changed in many months and the rest of the system will run even if that partition doesn't exist.

A fly in the ointment is storing data files in My Documents and possibly email which are on the C drive by default. They can be put in a different partition or drive and many have done so. My method of working is to store all important personal data files on a separate PC with my own folder structure; I only use My Documents as a scratch area. I leave email copies on the server as an automatic backup.

 

If I where you, I would go with the 40gb primary (c:drive), remainder secondary.

In my case I always go 20gb primary (c: drive) and everything else secondary.
The reason is I like to keep my c: drive small so it can backup and recover quickly. In my case I can backup in less than 10 minutes and recover in about 15 minutes.

Just remember to load all your large programs (games etc) into you your secondary partition, instead of the default c:\program files. Only load your important programs into your c: drive.(programs you use in a daily basis).

You do it this way, you won't be waiting hours to backup and recover.

 

I feel I should qualify my prior responses with the information that my primary PC is a notebook, and I am the only user, so total loss or total failure of the hard drive are the primary risks to be managed. With that in mind, I have a single partition, encompassing the entire hard drive, and I back that entire drive/partition up to an external USB hard drive.

 

It's funny that even though a notebook and a desktop PC are not really all that different in terms of what they run, the mindset dealing with notebooks is not the same as desktops. Perhaps, there is more "mission critical" business information on notebooks than desktops which results in less fooling around with them.

 

For me, it is the number of drives. I typically configure a desktop PC with at least 3 physical drives, and often 5 physical drives.

Since my primary PC is a notebook, with a single physical drive, I have several USB external drives for external data and for backups.

I just picked up a new USB 2.0 7200RPM 500GB external drive yesterday for digital image storage.