PPRuNe Pop

I am now about to order my upgrade about which some of you generously offered advice.

Now I need your advice again. I am "planning" to add a third HDD to accomodate the OS ONLY. I do need extra disk space and if I have an operating system only drive that will mean I do not have to transfer any applications to it. It will keep the OS clean.

-OR- have I got it all wrong and I can't do that?!

PPP

Naples Air Center, Inc.

PPRuNe Pop,

The Hard Drive you put your OS on needs to be the fastest drive in your computer. Windows is all about Disk Access.

Two things corrupt the OS, the first is the Windows Registry. (Think of it as the remote control for your TV. Every program you install will add something to your Registry.) The second is the dlls that programs add to your Windows System Directory.

No matter where you install the programs on your computer, it will not make any difference to the two things I listed above.

The only advantage to having your OS on a different drive is:

When you reformat the drive with your OS you do not need to backup all your data, since it is already on another drive.

Take Care,

Richard

Mac the Knife

PP - it IS a good idea to have your data separate from the OS for the reason that Richard gives (and some others). But there's no need to have it on another physical hard drive unless you have some special reason for this (and there are some).

You can divide the HDD into Partitions, which look and act like separate drives. You have to do this as you install 'cos it's a chore to do after. A reasonable split for a 40GB HDD would be a 20GB primary partition for the OS (this would be your C: drive), and a 20GB partition for your data [will probably end up being your E: drive after the CDROM which usually will be as D: (though XP lets you change all the drive letters if you want - some caution required BTW) ]

http://aumha.org/win4/a/parts.htm has a good guide (though I think he overdoes it a bit)

XP by default buries your data (My Documents) deep in the Windows directory on the C: boot drive (it's designed for people who don't know about partitions) which can be a nuisance. But it's easy to change this - "My Documents"/Properties/Move - and get it to point to wherever you've put your files are on the E: drive (it's only a pointer really). Then if you C: partition gets corrupted or whatever and you have to reformat it your data will be untouched.

Note that XP will still store some of your data (Outlook stuff for example) deep in it's bowels unless you make some serious efforts to persuade it otherwise....

And make NTFS partitions rather than FAT32 - safer and better.

[A separate physical drive IS safer in a sort of way, but if you're concerned about data integrity consider a RAID array or storing it on a separate data server (you do have backups don't you?). Data security is another matter altogether.]

410

PPrunePop, I agree with Richard that partitioning is a very good idea. This can be very easily done in about 30 minutes without having to re-format your HDs with PowerQuest’s PartitionMagic. I’m using Version 7, which I believe is the most current version on the market. It’s a very good product.

As well as re-partitioning, an even better way of attacking your problem is to pay the princely sum of USD$15 for a truly excellent little program called FileSynch (http://www.fileware.com/). (You can download it and use it without paying, but I’ve found it to be such a good product I felt I had to pay the guy who’d created it.) With this, I am able to leave my ‘My Documents’ directory in the Windows default location on my ‘C’ drive, but easily copy all my data to the separate partition on my main HD and to another on a separate HD in case of a hardware failure. (You can make as many copy profiles as you like.)

As added insurance, look to the thread here of only a week or so ago that shows you how to move your email Address Book and email Storage Folder into your My Documents directory and you’re making a total backup of all your data with File Synch in one easy step. The only other thing you need to do is make a FileSynch profile to back up your Favorites directory and you’ve covered all bases.

My suggestion for a far better use for your third HD would be to get a copy of Norton’s Ghost or something similar and make a complete copy (clone) of your C Drive on it. Lock this away somewhere far away from your computer. Any time you make a significant change to your operating system, ‘ghost’ it again to your spare HD, and should you ever be unfortunate enough to have a hardware failure, (it happens!), rather than go through the nausea of completely re-installing everything, you simply drag out you spare HD, stick it on as your C drive, and you’re back up and running, quite literally within minutes – and thanks to FileSynch, you have a copy of all your data on the separate HD, so all you’ll lose is anything you’ve done since the last time you ran FileSynch. (I do a copy to my separate HD every night before I switch off, which takes about 45 seconds.)

Similarly, should you ever pick up a virus that can’t be easily cleaned out, you simply drag out your spare HD, ‘ghost’ it onto your infected HD, which wipes the virus clean, and again, you’re back up and running with a pristine OS within minutes. I used this only last week after the Blaster virus managed to sneak through.

One last hint with Norton’s Ghost that took me many frustrating hours to discover: when using it, ensure you always set it up with the target HD as the primary master and the source as the slave. If you don’t, you can run into Paging File problems and get the dreaded blue screen on startup.

PPRuNe Pop

Thanks for all of that guys. Much appreciate it.

I had thought of partitioning but had a bad experience two years ago with Partition Magic and I am now reluctant to mess with it again.

So, I go solo OS on new 'C' drive. Then I can do what I want with data etc., But...............what do I do about deleting the OS on old 'C' drive. I have Office and many other apps on there - which can remain. How do I do that if you would be so kind?

Mac the Knife

I've had bad experiences with girls but it hasn't deterred me yet........just remember the good ones!

Was it in '86 or '68? - I can never remember

fobotcso

PP, I've kept faith with Partition Magic and am now up to Ver 8 (needed for XP). I use it a lot and it can, indeed, be Magic.

When it doesn't work it is a fault with the HDD. For instance Western Digital drives are difficult; Seagate and Maxtor are fine.

It can be a breeze to clone a backup of an active boot partition to an external drive in an enclosure as long as the enclosure is up to the job. Bit like what 410 was saying above.

Miglia and La Cie are good. Amacom and another unbranded low-cost enclosure I tried can waste a lot of your life.

Naples Air Center, Inc.

PPRuNe Pop,

Another advantage of WinXP is you can do a repair and even a fresh install of WinXP without touching any data that was not in the Windows Directory.

I regularly do fresh installs of the OS, since I am continuously changing hardware, on my drives which have my data on them and nothing is lost.

Take Care,

Richard

PPRuNe Pop

OK, Ok I have given in! I downloaded PM version 8.0 for free from the internet tonight. Seems fine - so far.

Maybe you missed my query. How do I delete Windows XP from my current 'C' drive when I go solo on my NEW 'C' Drive? I have a fair bit on the drive as I mentioned.

Ummm. I am getting quite excited

Thanks again guys.

Mac the Knife. Haven't we all - but some of the bads ones were brilliant! Was it Mae West who said " When I am bad I am good!"

Naples Air Center, Inc.

PPRuNe Pop,

Once you have the new HD setup with the OS running, then add in the old HD (which has your Old OS on it) in to your comp again. Then all you do is delete the Windows Directory on the old drive and the old OS is gone forever.

Take Care,

Richard

Front_Seat_Dreamer

Felt I had to add my tuppence worth here.

Partition programs are great as long as you have an HDD that is absolutely gauranteed not to fail, how many out there can give that gaurantee. If the HDD fails then all partitions are gone, not pretty. (remembers back to last year and a batch of fujitsu 20Gb disks - still can hear customers shouting at me cause it all went bad - still swapping flaky disks out with my suppliers)

If it is XP you are installing use your fastest disk as your primary boot device, then store apps, docs, mp3's etc on a separate drive and spend 10 minutes a week/day (whatever frequency suits you) doing a backup of important info then you will have a trouble free computing life. Personally I ghost my disk onto removable disk then hide it away safe.

2p well spent...

Mac the Knife

FSD - no HDD is guaranteed not to fail - and if it does your data is in trouble whether it is partitioned or not (and all HDDs have at least one primary or extended partition after they're fdisk'ed anyway). And if the MBR goes then you're shafted unless you've copied it onto a stiffy with a restore program (doesn't apply to NTFS, but that's a much more robust system anyway).

Ya, I remember reading in The Register about the Fujitsu debacle, it was one out-of-spec chip from another source as I remember. Expensive for Fujitsu!

"Personally I ghost my disk onto removable disk then hide it away safe." - best idea, so do I. Lives in a safe in a concrete shed at the bottom of the garden.

No need to spend any time on it really. The venerable XCOPY and a batch file will do it (does anyone write batchfiles anymore these days?). Use a customised batch file similar to SAFETY.BAT below and stuff it (or rather a shortcut to the .PIF) in as a daily/weekly task for Task Scheduler. You can play with the PIF to exit automatically or change the window or whatever.

SAFETY BAT

@echo off
cls
goto START

:NOTE1
Batch file to save selected folders to a secondary drive.
Automate daily/weekly with Task Scheduler.
Change or add the XCOPY sections to suit

:NOTE2
If you are using a removable drive or doing anything that might change
driveletters it is a good idea to build in a check that you are writing
to the intended drive. You can do this by creating a zerolength marker
file in the root of the backup drive, thus

echo > E:\marker1.fil <enter>
and set it read-only
attrib +R E:\marker1.fil <enter>

Here is a check to see that the marker file E:\marker1.fil
is in the root of the [removable] E: drive. If it isn't,
either there is no disk pack in the removable drive or the
wrong pack is in the drive.

:START
if not exist E:\marker1.fil goto error

:DOIT
echo.
echo Working - Please wait...
echo.
XCOPY C:"MyDocs\Soundclips\*.*" E:"MyDocs\Soundclips" /D /R /H /C /S /I /Q /Y
rem add /O for XP
if errorlevel 5 if not errorlevel 6 echo Disk write error occurred
if errorlevel 4 if not errorlevel 5 goto initerr
if errorlevel 2 if not errorlevel 3 echo User halted Xcopy process
if errorlevel 1 if not errorlevel 2 echo No files were found to copy!
If errorlevel 0 if not errorlevel 1 echo.
If errorlevel 0 if not errorlevel 1 echo Xcopy successful!
echo.
XCOPY C:"MyDocs\Words\Posts\*.*" E:"MyDocs\Words\Posts" /D /R /H /C /S /I /Q /Y
rem add /O for XP
if errorlevel 5 if not errorlevel 6 echo Disk write error occurred
if errorlevel 4 if not errorlevel 5 goto initerr
if errorlevel 2 if not errorlevel 3 echo User halted Xcopy process
if errorlevel 1 if not errorlevel 2 echo No files were found to copy!
If errorlevel 0 if not errorlevel 1 echo.
If errorlevel 0 if not errorlevel 1 echo Xcopy successful!
echo.
goto END

:initerr
echo
echo Initialization error occurred.
echo There is not enough memory or disk space.
echo.
echo Most probable cause is that there are too many files to fit
echo on the disk. Check yours filesize totals and try again.
echo.
pause
goto end

:ERROR
echo.
echo ERROR! The marker file was NOT found! Make sure that:
echo.
echo 1: You have no changed or added drive letters.
echo If you have you will need to edit this batchfile
echo 2: That there is a drive in the removable bay.
echo 3: The correct drive is in the removable bay.
echo 4: That the marker file has not been accidentally erased.
echo.
pause
goto END

:END

-------------------------------

Error and omissions excepted. Customise to your own requirements.
Now the batchfile mavens can poke holes in my "programming" and logic..