Page 1 of 2: FAQ: How to partition your hard disk drive

ajax · Credits: 1122 My Scrapbook My Reading List 10 Books

This thread is the explanatory version for the first point in my list here

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I realise that this topic itself would invite many opinions, so a new thread

Well, unfortunately if you are running windows XP, there are not many options for you to partition the derive after it has been installed. Now a days, Hard disks with huge capacities come preinstalled in systems, so it is a shame to see only one partition carrying all the risk of a crash.

Few tips:

1. Partition your hard disk in reasonable chunks before installing or using the computer. You would need your XP disk for this.

2. Individual partitions of 30-50 Gb size are usually enough for anything. I now have 20 partitions in my two internal hard disks and after connecting the external disks, I usually run out of drive letters in my computer

3. It is possible to partition a live disk with data on it without losing the data with some specialist software. Unfortunately there are no free or open-source softwares available for this purpose. Still if you want to look or try the demo versions, try googling for partitionmagic, partitionexpert or acronis disk director. I use acronis tp partition my drives. It is not a fool proof software as it did make my PC unbootable on two occasions, but I understood the problem with the software (it is incapable of assigning correct disk letters, so don't even try doing that with it) and now I avoid that area.

Smaller partitions would also make your disk run faster as there would be less data to search for in disk header tables. In my PC there has been a big performance boost after I partitioned both of my 250GB+ internal drives.

5. Use a separate partition for windows and if possible for program files as well. That way you do not lose your programs if windows crashes for any reason. Just format the partition windows is in, reinstall it in 45 minutes and use registry backup to link up the programs again.

Well I devised this strange approach after I spend innumerable hours in fixing my PCs after crashes. I could not help it as I never liked the antivirus programs which are out there (for the performance hit they cause in my machine) and I use outlook express to manage my email as well. So it frequently goes boom and CRASSSSH...

This approach also had its fair share of problems for me, but I more or less perfected it over time. Here are a few potential problems you might face.

1. If you want to quarantine windows in one partition like hospitals did with TB patients in olden days, then you would have to rescue all the document folders from that compartment. By default your my documents folder belongs to windows root. It is easy to fix that though. First I created a brand new partition called M Drive. Then I opened the start menu, right clicked the my documents folder, looked into the location box and changed the location to reflect the new location of M Drive. Now by default all your documents would be saved in the new drive. Nothing great, but it saves a valuable few microseconds every time I save something. I guess I am lazy enough to spend some time in looking for the new partition to save each time - who else can realize the importance of time than a lazy person!

2. My documents folder fixed, but what about my music and my videos folders? Microsoft gave that facility of changing the location of my documents easily, but not to my music and my videos. Technically they are still non shell folders, so you can not do anything. Well you can in fact. Just open the panel wherein these two folders would be visible. Click on the folder first, then on left side menu saying "move folder" and move it to wherever you can, preferably farthest to the windows installation (in my case everything is on second drive). Reboot and you are done. Now when you save any music file, it would default to the new location. Few more milliseconds to laze around...

3. I said install programs in a different partition. But they (programs) are rendered useless if you reinstall windows and lose your registry. So that makes registry a valuable thing to back up. But some of us install and uninstall programs almost every day and given my track record for laziness I would not even think about spending even a fraction of my time doing this stupid backup every time. So I looked for a solution and found a sweet little piece of software called ERUNT which makes back ups of your registry with dedication every day. Once it is set up, you can afford to forget about it and it would dutifully make the backups, in my case to another partition which I named R Drive (R stands for Recovery). So now when windows crashes, you would just do a fresh reinstall along with your registry and get back to internet addition within under an hour. I have experienced the withdrawal symptoms of my daily internet fix, it can cause lacrimation, diarrheas, cramps, foul mood...

Well I guess thats enough for today. I started this new thread so that I can also update it with more specific information as and when I would remember. Till then goodbye...

BGM · Credits: 104764 My Scrapbook

Good thread Ajax, is there any way by which we can change the partition after windows installation?

blue_mars · Credits: 32055 My Scrapbook My Reading List 3 Books

ajax · Credits: 1122 My Scrapbook My Reading List 10 Books

BGM · Credits: 104764 My Scrapbook

Thanks Ajax. Thanx Blue.

dweep · Credits: 9790 My Scrapbook My Reading List 2 Books

Having a dual boot system helps tremendously.
I still kept win98 is dual boot along with xp, so that when xp crashes(and it does!) i am not lost, i can atleast boot into [snip] and get access to all my imp documents.
You can use any other windows os ([snip], me, millenium, vista) or even linux as a dual boot option. I preferred win98 as its small and very stable.

BGM · Credits: 104764 My Scrapbook

docmojo · Credits: 803 My Scrapbook

partition magic also helps one to create rescue disks... floppy disks or.... CD... its damn useful.... especially when the system crashes unexpectedly,, maybe because of some kind of malware...

those rescue disks are bootable... and provide Graphical User Interface for complete control over the HD without any need to use the 'command prompt' commands,,, which is the way to go while using the Windows Rescue disks....
any guy can have compete control over the HD without any great computer skills!

BGM · Credits: 104764 My Scrapbook

Akil · Credits: 28114 My Scrapbook

There are freewares available for "disk partitioning without reformatting". The idea is simple.

Hard disk has data in chunks. Windows systems usually save them in random places all over the drive(or partition).

Something like
######``````##```###
#- data
`- blank areas for writing other data

Now there is an option called "disk defragmenter" which tries to put contiguous files together... like
###########``````````

Now, the data is all in the beginning of the partition and blank space behind!

In this scenario, we can just "resize" using diskresize softwares many of which are free! And partition the newly created empty partition space as a new partition.

One reason, I like about linux distributions is that they have disk management like charm about it. But in ubuntu, the software is NOT installed by default (though it shows up in liveCD) So for changing disk partition, one has to Sign In using liveCD unless they have manually installed the same. This happens to be a security feature just to prevent unsolicited partition 'damages'.

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