?: Install programs in C: partition or in seperate partition

[Matt_]

I just received my 2373-CWU T42 with its 80GB hard drive, and I just bought a copy of Partition Magic 8.0

I haven't partitioned a hard drive before, and I am trying to plan this carefully and go step by step.

I know that at the very least I will create a partition for data, but I can't decide whether to create an additional seperate partition just for programs or else just install all my programs into the C: partition and just have a second partition for, like I mentioned, data.

At first I was leaning towards having a seperate partition for programs -- I thought it would help with keeping things organized and also would keep down the "bloat" factor of the C: partition.
But the more I thought about it, the more I wonder about whether it would be a mistake for several reasons.
I read that

Realize, it's not just windows that installs on C:
Even if you direct programs to install on D: or wherever, temporary files, etc. are still created on C: and DLL's, and common dictionaries/common files will go in C:\PROGRAM FILES\ despite your best efforts

and also

Just remember that most programs integrate into Windows in a way that they would have to be reinstalled if you replaced the OS

In other words, it seems that anytime that I would be planning to upgrade (and/or install some new) piece of software, it would behoove me to back up both the C: partition and also the partition containing the programs.

And that's why, in following with that line of thinking, it's beginning to seem like it would make more sense to install the programs in the C: partition -- and an added advantage of that is that I would be able to back up just one partition all at once (by "one partition" I'm referring to a C:-partition with the OS and installed programs versus a C:-partition with OS and a seperate partition with installed programs)

If I went that route, then would it be a good idea to resize the C: partition so that it has only a reasonable amount of room to accomodate near-future growth (as opposed to giving it a gigantic-sized partition -- particularly for the reasons mentioned in the first half of this site) ?

If you install your operating system to a single, large partition, there's nothing to prevent both system & program files, over time, from winding up at the far end of the drive (Windows updates, program updates, driver updates, etc.).

System and program files that wind up at the far end of the drive take longer to access, and are transferred at a slower rate, which translates into a less-responsive system.

Thank you in advance for your comments and thoughts.

[Txiasaeia]

Right now, I've got two hard drives on my desktop. Before I had two HDs, I didn't know what I was missing. I can backup all my important files on the second HD, format the first, and then move everything back without a CD-ROM image.

If I didn't have two drives, I'd definitely have a 10 GB "junk" partition (at the very least) to store stuff on when and if I needed to reformat. Granted, it's not going to save your info if your entire HD crashes.

[Bruce Guttman]

Back in the "bad old days" with the 760, 770, and 600 (my favorite machines) the Hibernation file had to be on a FAT partition, which is limited to 2 GB, so if you have a larger hard drive, the setup would make C: a 2GB partition and the rest of the drive D: (or a series of 2GB partitions!).

Nowadays that isn't necessary any more, but your idea of a separate partition for your data is a good one; easy to back up. Whether you want to put the applications on a separate partition or not is your call. Windoze applications do install both in the Windows directory and their own directory. Then again, I haven't successfully used Backup to create a backup and Restore to create an exact original disk; seems it never wants to boot.

The idea of creating two partitions and using one as a "mirror" of the other as backup is a neat idea. If you have the drive space it could be useful.

I would suggest that the only worthwhile thing to backup is your documents. Keep the original media for all your programs so you can rebuild a system should you have a catastrophe and then just copy back all your personal stuff. This includes things like your Outlook Mail, Contact, Memo, and Calendar files.

Hope this helps.

[Deb Suran]

I have set up my HDDS with several partitions for almost as long as I can remember having a computer (1986). Currently I reserve my C: drive for programs, my D: drive is for active files that are likely to change with some frequency, and my E: drive is for static files like backups from old computers I no longer own but may need a file from someday, e-books I've downloaded from the Net, etc.

I mirror my primary drive to a backup drive regularly, and especially before I install any software or update WinXP. If I have to restore from a backup (and I've had to do it about 6 times in the year since I started using XP), it's easy to just mirror the C: partition back to the primary drive with DriveCopy. And if the HDD fails completely, I can just swap in the backup drive.

[Txiasaeia]

Keep the original media for all your programs so you can rebuild a system should you have a catastrophe and then just copy back all your personal stuff. This includes things like your Outlook Mail, Contact, Memo, and Calendar files.

Just in case anybody doesn't know: Outlook.pst contains all your mailbox info for MS Outlook (search for it in the command line). Before I figured this out, every time I formatted my HD I'd format all my mail (STORAGE) to a separate e-mail address and re-download them. Ack!

[Matt_]

Thank you all for the great replies and suggestions.
I have a few follow-up questions.

Txiasaeia:
If I didn't have two drives, I'd definitely have a 10 GB "junk" partition (at the very least) to store stuff on when and if I needed to reformat. Granted, it's not going to save your info if your entire HD crashes.

Bruce Guttman:
The idea of creating two partitions and using one as a "mirror" of the other as backup is a neat idea. If you have the drive space it could be useful.

I agree -- that sounds like a great idea, and since for right now I don't forsee my hard drive filling up more than very slowly, I'm sure I would have the room for it.
What I am not knowledgeable about regarding both this and the process of backing-up data is whether the backup partition has to be the same size as the C: partition regardless of how much room is left in the C: partition. For example, suppose I make the C: partition 20GB but it is only, say, 10GB full. To do the backup to the backup-partion, would the back-up partition have to be 20GB or, in this example, could it just be 12 or 15GB (i.e. big enough to be just a little bit bigger than how full the C: partition is) ?

One other question regarding the recommended size for the C: partition (bearing in mind that my hdd is 80GB):
I have decided that I will install my programs into the C: partition. Right now the only additional preloaded software that I purchased with the computer is Microsoft Office 2003, and I will be installing some other stuff like anti-virus, anti-spyware, Partition Magic, Microsoft patches/updates, and maybe some video editing software (if I ever get around to buying an external DVD burner). Otherwise, I can't think of much else (besides possibly programs that I've read about like Alcohol120% to copy to the hdd the kind of software that requires that the CD be in the CD/DVD drive so that you don't have to constantly have your CD with you). I want to make the C: partition reasonably large enough for future patches and software installations but not so big that it's wasting hdd space. This thread brings up Microsoft-related things that I'm not very knowledgeable about regarding things like "vmware", "system restore" (and how it differs from what RR&RR offer), a "swap file" and how much space that sort of stuff will need and ought to have.

Then, basic Windows XP and the IBM Tools plus Microsoft Office XP, Adobe Acrobat and that kind of stuff takes about 6 Gb.
Then System Restore can take up to 12 percent of your drive if you don't set it to a lower value.
The rest is your files, and personal files can be deceptively large. I have 4 Gb in general files such as software, drivers and like stuff, 9 Gb in 5 VMware Virtual Machines, and just about 1 Gb in documents.

Plus I've read that the recycle bin should be adjusted from it's default setting of 10% of your hard drive space.
So what do you recommend ?

[Bruce Guttman]

If you choose the mirroring technique, whether to create a true mirror of one partition or to use Norton Ghost (or the like) to periodically make a copy, the source and target partitions must be exactly the same size. You might want to keep your C: and "mirror" C: at 15 GB or so, with additional partitions for your data files, which may also have "mirror" partitions. You don't have to be so choosy about the document mirror since you can simply copy all of your documents into it with Windows Explorer.

Hope this helps.

[Matt_]

Thank you Bruce. That was a huge help. I have a quick follow-up question regarding this mirror partition. Would it cause the XP operating system to be confused either during the boot-up process and/or during normal computer usage (perhaps because it would have trouble figuring out whether, e.g., the information it's looking for are in the C: partition or the mirror partition) ?

[egibbs]

Just to add my 2 cents...

I don't bother with separate windows/programs/data partitions anymore. It's true that it makes data backup a bit easier, but if you keep all your stuff in folders under My Documents it is just as easy to back it up as if it's on a separate partition. Besides I prefer to use drive imaging software as my primary backup method, and MS Backup will backup just the My Documents folders as a secondary backup if you ask it to.

I think part of the reason in the past for the separate partition recommendation was for defragging purposes. The idea was the OS shouldn't change much and data does, so you only had to worry about defragging the data. But these days every time you open a file there are hundreds of changes made in Windows files, and they get just as fragged as the data.

You want to have a good background defragmenter running if you have everything in one partition, but that would be the case even if you had separate partitions for Windows and Data.

Ed Gibbs

[matyst]

I would reccomend a solution that I use personally, i.e. I install the system and all the programs on C:\ and I move the whole My Documents folder, folder containing e-mails, Favorites folder and Desktop folder to separate data partition (D:\). It's very easy to do it using TweakUI Powertoy or any other tweaking program. Then you can make a backup of your c:\ partition using Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image; if anything gets screwed up with the system, you can just restore the c:\ partition in a couple of minutes without worrying about any of your documents, e-mail, favorites and so on.
IMHO there is no sense in making backup of your documents on another partition on the same drive; if the drive fails, in most cases you're gonna lose everything anyway. For backup definitely go with CDs, DVDs or another hard drive (external or Ultrabay).

[Matt_]

and MS Backup will backup just the My Documents folders as a secondary backup if you ask it to.

You offered some great suggestions, Ed., regarding how you use the "My Documents" folder along with MS Backup. Would you mind explaining that in more detail -- I am unfamiliar with it, and went I did a search at Microsoft's site, the results (1, 2, 3) refer to usage of it within Windows 95.
And what you say about defragmenting is maybe how I got the idea that (in the past) the C: partition didn't need to be defragmented.

I would reccomend a solution that I use personally, i.e. I install the system and all the programs on C:\ and I move the whole My Documents folder, folder containing e-mails, Favorites folder and Desktop folder to separate data partition (D:\). It's very easy to do it using TweakUI Powertoy or any other tweaking program.

That's a great idea, too. I've heard of Powertoy, but not having used it before, should I be a little worried about for myself whether it is easy to accidentally change something that would mess something else up. I read how to change the My Documents folder manually

1) To change the location of "My Documents", choose "Start", right-click "My Documents", and select "Propterties".

2) Click "Move", and browse to the new location you want for "My Documents". Click "Make New Folder" if necessary (the folder will still appear as "My Documents" in the Start menu and Explorer). Click "OK".

Are the other ones easy to adjust without an extra program like Powertoy ? Also, when you say "Desktop folder", are you referring to the folder that contains the icons that one sees on the screen (after any open windows are minimized) -- if so, what is an advantage of moving that folder to the data partition ?

IMHO there is no sense in making backup of your documents on another partition on the same drive; if the drive fails, in most cases you're gonna lose everything anyway. For backup definitely go with CDs, DVDs or another hard drive (external or Ultrabay).

That's true. I think I was figuring out how make the mirror partition scenario work for two reasons. Hopefully after I've "test driven" my new laptop to make sure everything's fine, I should be able to finish figuring out what kind of interal hard drive and external enclosure to get -- but if it looked like it were going to be awhile, I could then create a partition for backing up the C: partition for when I am about to install something (e.g. SP2) where I'd be worried about it making things unstable -- and then I could just restore the C: partition from that (though I guess for that scenario, something like XP's rollback/system restore is supposed to be better -- haven't learned how to use it yet). The other scenario is that I thought that if for some reason I were away from home and had, for some reason, to install something and I were uncertain about the effect, I could backup the C: partition. But then again if that kind of scenario, I guess it'd be a lot easier/more convenient to have an ultrabay hdd or 2.5" external hdd.
But for now, I'll hold off on any mirror partitions -- about all I'm planning to install for now is Partition Magic, anti-spyware stuff, zone alarm, and some anti-virus program (such as the free version of AVG) instead of using the pre-installed norton anti-virus.

Thank you again, everyone, for taking the time to offer a lot of great ideas.

[egibbs]

You offered some great suggestions, Ed., regarding how you use the "My Documents" folder along with MS Backup. Would you mind explaining that in more detail -- I am unfamiliar with it, and went I did a search at Microsoft's site, the results (1, 2, 3) refer to usage of it within Windows 95.

Just keep everything in folders located under the My Documents folder. When you riun MS Backup select "Backup documents and settings" and then "All users documents and settings."

I do NOT recommend MS backup as your primary backup method, but if you use a belt and suspenders approach with a real backup or imaging program as the belt, MS Backup makes a good set of suspenders.

Ed Gibbs