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General discussion

Should I partition my 250gb external hard drive?

Dec 13, 2005 8:37AM PST

Hello, I just bought a Comstar 250gb external hard drive (actual size is 232gb). Are there any reasons that I should or should not partition it? Will partitioning affect performance or reliability?

Thanks

Discussion is locked

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My thoughts
Dec 18, 2005 9:03AM PST

Multiple partitions won't add performance in most cases. If you are using an older format such as FAT-32 instead of NTFS, multiple partitions can improve the space allocation efficiency to some extent. Some folks like to have dedicated partitions to organize files by type. The choice is yours.

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My. . .
Dec 19, 2005 7:44AM PST

20, 40, 60, and 80 Gig drives have one partition under XP. I've really never figured out why anyone would partition a drive. On purpose.

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Reasons
Dec 21, 2005 2:12PM PST

Partitions...I setup all of my systems with a minimum of two partitions and preferably 2 hards drives.

Drive 0 is say an 80gb HDD with two partitions C: and D:

C: is 30GB and holds the OS and the APPs.
D: is 50GBs and holds all the data downloads, patches, PICs, etc., etc.,

Drive 1 is 120GB and usually has 2 partitions:

E: 2GB partition for a swapfile and
F: 118GB partition for backup in the form of images of C: and D:

Once the system is setup...the OS, the drivers, the apps and the apps configured, I use Ghost create an image of C: on F:. Same with data on D: ...create an image on F:

If the C: becomes corrupt or won't boot...I get my imaging restore SW out and restore the image stored on F: back to C: If drive 0 dies completely ....I replace it and use the imaging SW to restore the images from F: back to C: and D:

If drive O wasn't partitoned and I restored the image it would most likely wipe out anything on the disk and eliminate any data not saved in the last image. If I simply restore the image of drive C: to the C: partition ....the D: partition remains unaffected. In this case separating the OS and APPs from the data allows you to wipe C: at any time without losing any of the data you've saved on D:.

I can only tell you if the sh*t hits fan...I can get back up and running faster this way than almost any other way I can think of. Backup and restores are very very quick with two hard drives. Drive C: takes 10-15 minutes and D: takes 15-20 minutes and I'm back in business. If I had to reinstall my stuff it would take 10-15 hours not mention the finding the disks, finding the product keys, downloading patches updates and reactivating or regsitering all the SW. I'm getting a headache just thinking about it. Just don't want to spend my time rebuilding my PC and restoring all the SW.

Make sense ? ANy questions ?

VAPCMD

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Partition / Backup DIY Source/Docs
Jan 3, 2006 11:48PM PST

VAPCMD - your reply makes sense.
I recently learned a painful leason, and have seen the backup light. For a DIYer like me (w/ Win98SE Compaq), pls recommend: Should I learn about partitioning, backups, ext-HD from a book, or w/in software & hardware documentation?

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More info on restoring is required.
Oct 2, 2011 8:04PM PDT

Bro, plz help me wid one thing, if my system doesnt boot then how do i restore my C drive from my external disk to the hard disk back again. and will i need to reinstall the OS (XP in my case) first on my main internal HD before being able to restore the C drive or like wats to be done.
Plz help me with this one more thing. I have already on my external hard disk lots of important data copied from my office PC, but now i wanna make partitions on this external disk of mine (1TB space). so how do i partition it now without risking data loss? i have downloaded the EaseUS® Partition Master 9.1free edition for this purpose but somehow am not confident of using it. if any other free ware can help then plz do mention. also cracked versions will do!!!!!!! Silly)
thanks.

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IMHO
Dec 25, 2005 7:20PM PST

Hi,
I think it depends on what kind of data you want to keep on your external HDD.
If you are going to use it just for simple storage, single partition will be enough.
But if you want to use it for backup/and other data it'll better to partition.

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Also for the purpose of backing up data for different OS's
Aug 24, 2007 1:02PM PDT

If you are backing up data for different OS you may want to keep different partition. Although Linux will let you mount PC partition it may not be totally compatible with NTFS.

Do I make sense here?