Partitioning Your Drive – How do you feel?

Dave76 · 17 Sep 2010

mitchell65 said:

hkessels said:

My laptop has 2x 250GB HDD which i would like to merge into one partition
How do I do that ?

Whats the make and model of your laptop as I have never seen one with two hard drives!

My Dell laptop has two HDD bays

periboob said:

My Dell Vostro has space for two drives, but I have never been motivated to order the special adapter from Dell. Probably costs more than a 500GB drive. The Disk Management utility offers a "spanned volume" choice to make two drives look like a single drive--but I have never used it.

I like my partitions. Lately, (last ten years or so) I have always bought my computers with a small hard drive, at the same time I bought an extra, larger internal replacement. Then first thing out of the box, swap drives and install the OS etc on the new drive. If I ever sell the computer, the old drive goes back in. until Vista, I always formatted 3 partitions, OS/Software, Data, Temp. When the defragging on the fly feature showed up, I stopped making the temp partition.

Back a ways, I lost a HD, and everything on it. Cant remember the years, but it was a 20MB HD.

After that I got backup-fever, and the data partition just makes it easier.

I've run my HDD partitions with minimum OS/Software and Data for very long time.
Turns out it was good practice for the small SSD boot drive.

I got my Dell laptop second HDD carrier for $1.99, think the shipping was $5, if I remember correctly.

Locate it and order one if you think you'll ever use it, before they stop making them for your model.

periboob · 17 Sep 2010

Dave76 said:

...
I got my Dell laptop second HDD carrier for $1.99, think the shipping was $5, if I remember correctly.

Locate it and order one if you think you'll ever use it, before they stop making them for your model.

Thanks for the info Dave. As my old NT Tower and my 2K server may die someday, I have already considered that this laptop would become my primary backup someday. Another drive might make more flexible.

hkessels · 18 Sep 2010

@mitchell65, it is an HP DV7-1070ek entertainment notebook

HP Pavilion dv7-1070ek Entertainment Notebook PC - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

so how do i make one partition out of the two using RAID ?
is there software available?
thx

update: i think i have bad luck. W7 64 does offer something called spanned volume (disk management) to extend volume/partition over more than one disk but for that i would need to have at least two more HDD next to a startup drive. So sad

other than that i would have to buy a hardware RAID controller but that is too much nuisance for me as I do not like to open up my laptop. thx anyways for having shared your ideas with me.

Dave76 · 18 Sep 2010

Are you currently setup in a RAID array?

Do you mind telling us why you want only one partition?

Post a snip of your Disk Management.

hkessels · 18 Sep 2010

why i want this?
because i already have network (music etc) and paid online (for precious stuff) backup facilities. I just want to use the max of my laptop storage capabilities while keeping OS and data separated. I have always used disk 0 for OS and disk 1 for data. I thought i could do this differently more efficiently.

Well after googling round I have now managed to do it using disk management from W7
steps:
I started with a fresh setup/install from my w7 family pack install CD (always good to do a clean install once a while)
I deleted both disks and created a 50GB partition to install W7 OS
In disk manager i changed disk 0 and disk 1 to "dynamic" types (basic does not work for striped volumes)
Next i right clicked on an unallocated space/partition and selected "create striped volume"
A wizard guided me thru the whole process and the end result in explorer is a "small" C: drive and a "big" D: drive of 390GB (made from 2x250GB HDDs)

I guess i now have a working software RAID0 or 5 i think

cheers and thx for the all feedback

Tometo · 18 Sep 2010

I always prefer to partition the drive and have a back up on the OS separated from the data that's important for me. Evert time I put something in the secound partition, I also palce it encrypted on a locked with bit locker and locked external HDD. I also always archive the data with winrar and a password beside simple encryption before and after the archiving.

Nicci

Dave76 · 19 Sep 2010

@hkessels, Sounds like you got it sorted out, congrats.

When you said that you wanted one partition, I was going to suggest one partition for the OS and one partition for Data.
Good choice.
I would have made the OS partition minimum 60-80GB depending on your other space requirements. It should be ok on a 50 GB partition, depending on the number of apps you install.

You should have a 50GB unallocated space on the non OS disk, you can use it as another partition.

Stormkitty · 06 Mar 2011

Right now I've got 3 drives on my system and 5 partitions. Drive0: OS + Programs/Games Drive1: Downloads/Misc + UserData Folders (Libraries, Desktop, anything in C:\Users\<user>\ that can be moved) Drive2: Video Library
The reason UserData is a seperate partition was it was originally on a 4th drive but I've since removed that drive due to its slow speeds and simply moved the partition onto the other drive.

Also, I've got Windows 7 on a 20gb OS partition and even that's too much. It's surprisingly compact as long as you don't fill C:\ with lots of junk

pparks1 · 06 Mar 2011

Always do 2 partitions. One for OS and one for data, downloads, music and such. This way if I want to lay back down an image or install the OS again on the C drive, I can keep all of my data without moving it elsewhere.

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