New 1tb Drive best practice for partitions

[JeremyAlexander]

YES

Yes Shootist that is exactly my point I dual boot the same windows, same machine, same licence. If I get a virus or whatever I simply reset push the down key once and Woomp-there-it is. Dig out whatever documents weren't recent to the copied partition from within windows. That is my kind of backup!

 

[Zepher]

I have my main 1TB partitioned to 200GB for the OS and the rest for storage.
the other 12 storage drives are just 1 partition each since there is no real need to re-partition those drives.

 

[mjf]

There is no point in the discussion getting unnecessarily heated.
MS encourage system imaging and it's use to restore to a new HDD is described in their own MS Answers Forum.

Keeping a cold standby disk is not cheating MS or any third party software provider. It is simply a convenience to the end user who would otherwise need to take time to buy a new HDD and go through exactly the same process anyway.

 

[whs]

I fail to see the convenience of having 2 parallel systems. Yes you can share a Data partition between the 2 systems. But what about all the program installations, settings, updates, etc. I have trouble maintainig my different PCs as it is.

Imaging is so much easier and provides sufficient backup.

 

[mjf]

I fail to see the convenience of having 2 parallel systems. Yes you can share a Data partition between the 2 systems. But what about all the program installations, settings, updates, etc. I have trouble maintainig my different PCs as it is.

Imaging is so much easier and provides sufficient backup.

I agree.
My use of the term "cold standby" is stretching it a bit depending on how you define it. It's really a spare drive made from a base image. It would boot up immediately if my current HDD died and I had something urgent to do, but it would soon be updated with my latest image.

I originally made it using an image envisaging all sorts of hassles. It ended up being very straight forward.

 

[JeremyAlexander]

Bootability

I understand your point completely about the 2 systems in parrell and I guess maybe I haven't given too much thought about how to keep the non used copied partition reasonably up to date.
To answer your question, if it was. Bootability! Recently my lenovo laptop crashed completely and I did have a system image on 3 DVD's. 18% through system image recovery FAIL. Examined dvd and it was trashed. So of course there's no gettng that to load. Love 1 key recovery (AWESOME).
I just want the peace of mind of knowing I could instantly boot to a functional windows no matter what.
If my computer won't boot it is as useless to me as if I had l---x on it.
I really want to listen to you guys becuase your the experts and that's why I came here in the first place, but the system image thing just hasn't worked well for me in the past.

 

[whs]

Yeah, making images to DVDs is not recommended. For my desktops, I keep at least 25 images at all times - and on 3 different disks. I never was unable to restore. And I need to do that a lot because I muck around too much with my systems.

For the laptops, I am a little less strict. But mine is infrequently used and my wife's are not being stressed. She is a careful user.

 

[pparks1]

I image to USB 2.0/eSATA drives. I've used Macrium, Acronis, and EaseUS todo, and all have worked. I use these applications at home and at work. They have all proven very reliable for me.

@WHS: 25 images??? LOL. I keep about 3. 1 plain vanilla right after install, activation and windows patching. 1 more after I get my apps installed and mostly customized. And about 1 at the end of each month that I can put back in case I just screw something up. My data is stored on separate backups, so I could restore any of these 3 images and be back in business quickly enough.

 

[JeremyAlexander]

3 System images?

Doesn't a system image essentially take just as much space as the original and you said you have 3. Why? What's the advantage? Can you make an system image faster than Acronis can copy the partition. Don't you have to sit and wait for it to make the image, then wait for it to be restored if you ever needed it?
It just seems to me that all that is twice the work as just making a copy of the partition that already boots. I think I have a way to keep it up to date if every month I delete the partition and then copy again into the unallocated space. I think that should take care of the parrel system not being up to date problem good enough to meet my needs.
But everyone does agree 1 partition for Windows at the start of the drive and just another larger one for everything else?
Except for maybe a tiny partition on the opposite drive for the swap file?
Is that much right that you guru guys can agree on?

 

[GeneO]

Drive with windows - do not partition it, there is no advantage to partitioning it. Let defrag and superfetch do the rest (unless you are planning on an SSD for the OS). On the second data drive, reserve a partition of about 100GB or less at the logical beginning for caches (e.g. IE, Firefox, chrome, Photoshop caches) and the rest for data. The first logical 100GB (physical outer part of the platter) is the fastest on the drive - about 2x faster than the inner part of the platters. Putting the caches there will give you perceivable performance improvement.

Make image backups to the data drive and make sure you create a repair CD so you can restore them in a disaster scenario.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Jeremy:

Swap file location wars have been going on for 20 years and more. Nothing is resolved, people are still fighting. I say leave it alone and let Windows put it where it wants to put it. Not that you could ever tell the difference.

Image files normally take about half the size of the space occupied by the source partition. That is, if you have a 100 gig partition that has 30 gigs occupied, an image file of it would take somewhere around 15 gigs. And that would take less than 10 minutes to make.

 

[JeremyAlexander]

How cache

How do I get IE or anything else to cache in a specific place I am only aware of the windows swap file?

 

[whs]

Doesn't a system image essentially take just as much space as the original and you said you have 3. Why? What's the advantage? Can you make an system image faster than Acronis can copy the partition. Don't you have to sit and wait for it to make the image, then wait for it to be restored if you ever needed it?
It just seems to me that all that is twice the work as just making a copy of the partition that already boots. I think I have a way to keep it up to date if every month I delete the partition and then copy again into the unallocated space. I think that should take care of the parrel system not being up to date problem good enough to meet my needs.
But everyone does agree 1 partition for Windows at the start of the drive and just another larger one for everything else?
Except for maybe a tiny partition on the opposite drive for the swap file?
Is that much right that you guru guys can agree on?

1. The images are compressed - about 55% (in Macrium that I use)

2. I image in the background and continue doing other things. The OS images in 4 to 20 minutes depending on the speed of the output drive. But many times I also image my data partition.

3. I used to image every day (was automatically scheduled). But now I only do 3 times per week (on my desktops - less on the laptops). In total I use 2 internal and 6 external disks for the images.

4. I never move the page file. It is hardly used anyhow. All my systems are on SSDs. That in itself would not make a duplicate OS installation very practical. The data partitions are on the HDDs (on the desktops).

 

[pparks1]

Doesn't a system image essentially take just as much space as the original and you said you have 3. Why? What's the advantage?

The images are heavily compressed. My drive has about 40GB of space used, but my images only take about 17GB of space when I make them.

I keep 3 images.
1). Right after Windows is installed, activated and patched. I call this plain vanilla. This image is great because it contains absolutely nothing extra on it. Therefore, if I ever decide to start out from scratch, this image will save me the time to load the OS, find and load the drives and go through activation.

2). Then I install the majority of applications that I always use. Things like Open Office, ImgBurn, Firefox, Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD, VMWare Player, FileZilla, 7Zip, Paint.Net, FoxIT Reader, Exact Audio Copy, Microsoft Security Essentials, Malwarebytes, PDF Creator, Skype, Sandboxie, and TrueCrypt. Therefore, if I do screw up my box and want to get back to a point where all of these apps are installed, i would use this image.

3). These I take on a regular basis. Before installing games, or before a major Windows update, or before a service pack, etc. This way, if something screws up my box, I can go back to this image and get right back to where I was quickly.

The 2nd image is questionable as to it's value. I'm most likely to use #1 or #3. I like #1 as who knows if 1 year from now, I will still be reliant on 1/2 of those applications in #2. So, if I find I don't use them anymore, I'd rather lay down an image without those things and just install what I need...rather than laying down a full image with all of my apps and having to sit down and uninstall all of the stuff I no longer want.

Can you make an system image faster than Acronis can copy the partition. Don't you have to sit and wait for it to make the image, then wait for it to be restored if you ever needed it?

I use Acronis True Image Home 2010 to make my images at home. It takes about 5 minutes to make the image and about 5-7 minutes to lay it back down. It's WAY faster to put an image back down than sitting down and reinstalling everything by hand.

But everyone does agree 1 partition for Windows at the start of the drive and just another larger one for everything else?
Except for maybe a tiny partition on the opposite drive for the swap file?
Is that much right that you guru guys can agree on?

I would always do at least 2 partitions if you have 1 physical drive. This way you can put downloads and data onto the second partition and if you have to reinstall of re-image your C drive, you don't have to copy this data elsewhere as it would be safe on the D drive.

If you have 2 drives though, I just do 1 partition per drive. For example, my box has an 80GB SSD for the OS and apps. And a 1TB for the data, downloads, music and video files that I make with my camcorder.

 

[GeneO]

How do I get IE or anything else to cache in a specific place I am only aware of the windows swap file?

IE has a cache location in properties. Firefox has a property (that you must add) in about:config. Chrome has a command line switch (that you can put in a shortcut or taskbar shortcut) for which ytou can specify the cache locatin:

Firefox about:config (type in about:config in the URL bar) and add a string

browser.cache.disk.parent_directory

with a value of the directory where you want the cache (e.g. on my system it is "Z:\Caches\Firefox").

In chrome a command line switch:

--disk-cache-dir="Z:\Caches\chrome" --disk-cache-size=8000000000


again - fill in your directory and the cache size is optional

for IE I am not sure what it is in IE9, because I don't use IE, but in IE8 it was under internet options -> Browsing History -> Settings


As noted, there is one reason you may want a separate partition for the OS: if you have data and the OS on one partition of a large drive and you want to make an image backup, it will back up both the OS and the data which can take a long time. You may not want this. I like to keep my OS backup small ( I have a 320 GB drive dedicated to this) so I can do an image of it often enough. I then do incremental backups on my data.

 

[JeremyAlexander]

System image

Ok I have heard from enough people that I will try to use system imaging if it's compressed and doesn't take that long.

That said, I need help before I can commit to that. My laptop has an option in the F8 boot menu to repair computer which would let me restore a system image just like a windows dvd, I thought I had this on my desktop at one time,(maybe RC) though I could be wrong about that.
Is it possible to get this on a retail version of windows 7 Pro? Is that just an OEM thing since I didn't get a physical install disk with the laptop - just one key recovery AWESOME BTW.
If it is possible how did I loose it and how do I get it back. If not are there any other options that in a worse case scenerio of windows not booting I DO NOT have to rely on a DVD to even get to my system restore image. The idea of that scares me already.

Edit: Never Mind I found my own answer Here.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/58455-recovery-partition-create.html
Very Awesome !!

 

[whs]

Imaging is the safest and fastest option to get your system back. And depending how often you make an image, it may be very close to today. I always have an image that is at most 3 days old.

I have used and tried many imaging programs and found free Macrium to be the easiest and fastest. It is also very reliable and has never failed me. I made a video tutorial that can you watch and go from there: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html?ltr=I

If you want more general information, you can read this: http://www.sevenforums.com/backup-restore/128494-imaging-strategies.html

 

[mjf]

Make sure you put your OS and installed programs on a separate, smaller, partition.
Imaging does not discriminate between OS, programs and data. If you had one partition with say only 600GB on it, it would take ~ 5 hours to image it. Totally impractical.

I believe you should always have a current image no older than ~ 2 weeks, depending on installs etc.

 

[whs]

Example: Just this minute I completed an image of my OS partition - 31GB occupied, the image is 17.5GB. It took 15 minutes from the SSD to an external Seagate FreeAgent on USB2.

 

[JeremyAlexander]

Another Question

Ok, got my new 1TB HD
One more stupid question regarding seek speed. As you move in the access time slows down, but my question is wouldn't that be platter specific or not? I read that my Seagate Barracuda drive has two 500G platters. So would it still fall off if I made 2 500G partitions or does it always start at the begining of the drive regardless of platter?