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General discussion

Last configuration of XP with many hard drives

Jun 14, 2012 7:54AM PDT

I will use XP until my fingers quit typing. But, Here is where I need some input about hard drives, what to store on what drive.

Presently I have the following configuration:
C Drive 500GB IDE cleaned and formatted just waiting

D Drive 500GB IDE cleaned and formatted just waiting

E Drive 1T SATA will be totally cleaned, reformatted and assigned as boot drive. Not sure if I want to separate operating system and programs away from created data.

F Drive 2T SATA will be totally cleaned, reformatted and possibly divided down into some functional "smaller sized drives" such as mirror copies of the data files assigned to one drive letter and the base programs and such assigned to another drive letter.

G & H External SATA Drive formatted and just waiting for assignment. This might be storage for a large family history project with Cloud Backup storage for others to add their comments and insights to the history being assembled.

So, the question is... What the heck am I going to do with all of the storage available. I know that there is an operational cycle life to be expected on all drives. I would suspect that the IDEs to be over half way down the road. The SATA drives are all new since January 1st of this year.

I would appreciate any suggestions or observations on what I could consider to cover al sides of the road and still coume out alive at the end of the day with my data save and secured. Thanks.

Discussion is locked

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Re: what to do with all the storage.
Jun 14, 2012 8:01AM PDT

Didn't you make a good scheme? Then make a better. Only you know what you want to store and how much data you have.

Kees

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Just a note.
Jun 14, 2012 8:30AM PDT

If you've used XP that long, didn't you discover many apps balk if you don't put the OS on C?

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For me...
Jun 15, 2012 4:59AM PDT

For me I think you have a great set of drives both for OS, programs and personal files, and for backups.

Whatever you decide you may want to consider what the regulars always say here, backup, backup, and backup. That's backup 3 times. What you backup is up to you, but certainly your personal files, photos, documents, music and videos, (3 times on different media), and then consider whether to backup the OS, or simply have an install plan for if ever the current OS fails.

SATA drives are faster than IDE drives, but not blazingly faster, so if you are not concerned about the latest fast action video game on this computer you may consider using the IDE drives until they drop. if this were me I would keep the OS, programs and personal files on the one drive as it makes backup easier.

That said, if you eventually have to move onto a SATA drive for the OS you will come across the "XP does not know what SATA" is problem if you are not already aware of it, so transferring an OS from an IDE drive to a SATA drive, (as in a cloned backup), will fail. In that case you may decide to load the OS onto a SATA drive right away and just use the IDE drives as external backups.

Good luck.

Mark

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thank you for the fast reply!
Jun 15, 2012 6:43AM PDT

Thank you for your suggestions. I know that there will be "end dates" to all drives and even us unfortunatly.
Your sugestion about just going for the SATA to be the "C" drive and use the IDE'S - could be dedicated backup drives does make sense as you explained the situation.

I actually am preparing to start work on my family history and that will become a real key board killer for typing and scanning. So, that backup and related research files absolutely must be dual or triple copied as you suggested.

So, now it is time to just let the suggestions sit and to draw a simple flow chart for me to understand what is going where.

I appreciate your input.

Dennis Small
Burnsville, MN