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General discussion

How to Partioning Hard Drive - For "this" Dummy

Jan 31, 2011 3:32PM PST

I am curious on 1.) What is the purpose for partioning you hard drives; 2.) What software (if any) is the most user friendly for the novice user; 3.) Is there a step-by-step (only a dummy will get it wrong) website that I can refere to?

Any and all positive feedback/assistance is greatly and extremely appreciated.

Discussion is locked

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Re: partitioning
Jan 31, 2011 3:50PM PST

For most of us, one partition is both enough and the most easy. So I wouldn't care about it.

Kees

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To expand on Kees . . .
Jan 31, 2011 8:59PM PST

Partitioning a drive breaks up one physical drive into more than one, for lack of a better word, virtual drives. Hard drives will have a drive letter. A drive with two partitions will have two letters, and in essence act like two physical drives. Drives can be partitioned into many drives. Why? Only the owner knows. All my drives, from the smallest 80 Gig to a 400 Gig have one partition.

Windows will partition a drive for you, but not the drive it's installed on. In other words, if your C: drive has Windows on it it will not repartition into any more drives. Software called Partition Magic will do this. But in the process all data is destroyed.

May we ask why you want to partition a drive? And don't take this like it's going to sound, but if you're just learning, do not try it on a working hard drive.

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Re: Partitioning & To expand on Kees.....
Feb 4, 2011 12:27PM PST

Totally BULL.
Always partition a HDD; primarily for security.
Using EASEUS Partition Master, you can partition a working HDD & NOT lose any data!
I never use a HDD bigger than 320 GB (NO NEED for it). "C" Drive for the OS and programs;
"D" Drive for private data (Sys.Restore turned off on this drive); "E" Drive as a tenative "Back-up" (Sys. Restore turned off on this drive & NEVER De-fragged!); if a need should arise, could also have a smaller "F" Drive. MAX. Partitions on a 320 GB HDD running XP: 4. MAX. Partitions on a 320 GB HDD running Win-7: 3 (Windows also makes a separate sys. partition!).
Been doing that for over 10 years now (XP & Win-7), NO problems, NO data loss, Nothing!
Using just one (1) HUGE partition is plain stupid!

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I'll Disagree...
Feb 5, 2011 1:08AM PST

Although I see your point, there are many who need a hard drive bigger than 320 GB and that includes normal home users.. I've got a number of friends/customers who are DJ's that use, and need 1 TB hard drives every day... They store thousands of songs and videos on the drive and as should be, they make backups of their primary drive to a SECOND 1 TB drive, as well as to other removal tools. Some use a single partition because the data is found quicker and works smoother for them. Some use two partitions, one with the operating system and programs files while the other is used as file storage. Either way, it's not necessary to create multiple partitions on a HDD.

And although you may have not had issues with partitioning software, we see folks on these forums who had data lost on both single partitions and entire drives. None of the programs are perfect, Partition Master, Partition Magic, etc. so users need to be cautious before using such.

As it being "plain stupid" not to partition a drive, I'll guess you haven't had the same experiences the rest of us had.. As a system admin, the most common hard drive issue we have is with the entire drive failing. When a drive fails, which they all do eventually, it doesn't matter how many partitions you've got on the machine. A single partition works fine for most in the business world and also for most home users as well. It's personal choice as to which path to follow but it's certainly not "stupid" or "bull", nor does it increase your "security" by creating multiple partitions. Eventually, a drive dies. It might be a short time till such happens or it might be a long time but either way, drives fail.. Depending on the type of backup made for such drives, using the same hard drive as it's own backup location (your statement of "E" Drive as a tenative "Back-up") is doomed to cause problems when the entire drive fails. Routine backups to another drive, DVD, CD, flash drive, tape drive, etc. is the best way to be secure in your knowledge that your data will be preserved.

Hope this helps.

Grif

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I'll disagree....
Feb 5, 2011 11:31AM PST

Interesting.
You're a sys. admin.; good for ya!
I was too. I now run my own business, and have seen all kinds.
I posted an opinion, not "the word of god". Your answer is accepted and noted.
But, an opinion is like an *******, everyone has one, OK.
Cheers!

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"you can partition a working HDD & NOT lose any data!"
Feb 5, 2011 11:34AM PST

After too many losses I have to write that this is not always true.

While it may work most of the time, those that are so bold to try this without a backup eventually get burned.
Bob

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in response to: "to expand on Kees..." dtd Feb 01, 2011
Apr 18, 2011 6:03PM PDT
*** I must apologize for just responding to ur reply re: "How to Partitioning Hard Drive...." but I was on a cruise celebrating my 2 yr anniversary. ***

Thk you Coryphaeus for ur response and the detailed info you provided as well. You asked me "Why would I want to partition a drive?" I was/am somewhat curious on the subject because my desktop actually has two operating systems (Vista Business & Windows 7 Home Prem.) so I thought if I had ea. operating sys. partioned on a separate drive thgs might be a li'l smoother.

~ The other things is when I click on (my computer) to view my hardrive(s), it shows two Local Drives:
[1] Local Disk (CHappy NTFS 191 GB free of 465 GB;

[2] Local Disk (QHappy (this drives has no info, so i'm wondering what purpose is it serving if any, and if not can/how can I remove this drive?)
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The PURPOSE of partitioning a drive ...
Feb 1, 2011 1:44AM PST

is so the OS can "see" and format the drive which cannot be formatted until partitioned.

The purpose of multiple partitions depends on the user. Some want to keep their OS on a different partition from their applications and others want separate partitions for OS, Applications, and Data. Still others, and I fall into this camp, find that on large drives making a couple of partitions makes defragging quicker when using apps and performing tasks that cause severe fragmentation (such as working with databases that have autogrowth defined or a lot of file editing and deleting that cause the file to grow or shrink, or Video editing and rendering, or even frequent installation and un-installation of apps, utilities, games, beta software, etc.) as you can defrag a smaller partition more quickly than a large partition.

Some people partition so they can "back up files to a different partition" - these people are only fooling themselves and discover that in the event of a catastrophic hard drive crash their "back up files" are gone along with the rest of the drive.

Some people have an old legacy application or game they just can't live without that only runs under DOS which only "understands" FAT 12 and FAT 16 and is thus constrained to a partition of less than 2 GiB but it is hard to find such small drives these days.

As you can see, it is really just a matter of convenience or taste about how many partitions one has but it is a fact that if you intend to get any use out of a hard drive it MUST contain at least one partition.

Here is a link that explains a partition table:
http://www.ntfs.com/partition-table.htm

Enjoy. Happy

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Personal Choice
Feb 5, 2011 9:57AM PST

This topic always raises strong opinions! Remember the P in PC is for Personal, what suits one person may not suit another.

Number 1 rule - before your even THINK about partitioning a drive, make sure you have a verified backup of the ENTIRE disk, including any recovery partitions.

Why would you do it?

The most common reason offered is to separate your data from your programs, then if Windows croaks, you can reload it and all the applications without losing any data. Works for some people, too much hassle for others.

When I was consulting, I had a laptop that went everywhere with me and when I was visiting two clients on the smae day, it was useful to have their files on separate partitions and hide the "other" client's partition. This laptop was backed up every day, sometimes twice!

You may want to do it on a test machine, to provide a standalone partition for testing a new operating system, rather than use the dual boot option.

How to do it? Windows 7 has built in tools and Techrepublic (CNet's sister newsletter) had an article last week on how to shrink a drive and add a new partition step by step. I've never used it - no guarantees!

I used to use Partition Magic (which doesn't lose the data, by the way) but time overtook it and it isn't safe to use on NTFS-Extended drives ("isn't safe" as in deletes the partition table entry).

Partition Wizard (Home edition is free) appears to overcome this issue. But if you decide to try, make sure you have a VERIFIED BACKUP first. Then run it from the bootable CD option, NOT the installed version.

But as others have said, in most cases, it's a lot easier just to run with a single partition. Remember that partitioning may protect your data from a software failure but it will NOT protect you from a disk hardware failure.

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some other reasons
Feb 9, 2011 7:55AM PST

Some people make some of their backups using disk imaging tools that copy an entire drive or partition, including the blank space. These go much quicker if your data is on a properly sized partition.

Some people set up a multiple boot environment with different OSes, each on its own partition.

Some file systems (for example FAT32) are extremely inefficient if the partition sizes are large. On the other hand, if your drive is that large, you might not really care.