Is it safer to put my data in c: drive?

[zigzag3143]

One thing I havent seen and it is OT but if the OP is that concerned with his data he should a lso discuss a strategy for backing up the data that works

 

[sup3rsprt]

Yes I agree

My strategy is simple. Just copy my important files to an external drive.

 

[justi]

One thing I havent seen and it is OT but if the OP is that concerned with his data he should a lso discuss a strategy for backing up the data that works

I do have the habit of backing up my files regularly,but I also wanna keep my computer running smoothly and stably,rather than someday it gives me a black screen and say it can't boot,your drives are raw or unknown do you wanna format it now?... etc.Power on,do my things,that's it.Reinstall OS and programs,transfer the backup data copy to your harddrive....It's painful,at least for me.
So now I'm at the beginning of everything,a blank hdd,two new OS.I can still dump my files when the disk is still empty.I don't want to do that when it's full of data.I just wanna keep my computer running for years,unchanged,just like what I did with xp,until the next OS release,win 8 win 9 win what....
Thank you all for reading.

 

[wallyinnc]

justi, besides death and taxes, hardware failure is also pretty sure in life. They all have MTBFs and it is as bad as the worst component inside that unit. Therefore there are no guarantees you will operate your machine flawlessly for years to come, no matter where you place your partitions. I think you should worry about a good backup strategy, rather than where to place the files. Barman's post is the one to be followed.
My US$ 0.02

 

[justi]

Yes,I'm aware of that and not planning to use a hdd or other unit forever.I know someday I have to meet the failure and have to solve it,so I always make some backup.I never put all the eggs in a single hdd.

 

[wallyinnc]

I never put all the eggs in a single hdd.

 

[justi]

So everybody seems to give a "no" answer?
If it's pointless to put the data in 1st partition,I'm gonna leave it like this.

 

[Dave76]

So everybody seems to give a "no" answer?
If it's pointless to put the data in 1st partition,I'm gonna leave it like this.

The general consensus seems to be no, it won't help to move your partitions around. A good backup strategy is your best defense.
Leave the partitions as they are.

 

[wallyinnc]

There is an advantage about putting your OS in the first partition: if you want to enlarge it you don't have to move it around (as you would if it is the last). If you move your OS might recongnize it as a hardware change and you have to repair it. All of which may cause problems.

 

[johnhoh]

You should assume that the hard drive will fail at some point, so there is no way to protect your data if its all on that drive somewhere, regardless of partitioning.

An easy free way to backup is to have all your data on e: and f:, where e: and f: are hard drives or external drives or a networked drives. Then make a file called backit.bat, put it on your desktop, and edit it using notepad such that it has two lines only:
----------------------------------
start /w robocopy \e\ \f\ /s /xo
start /w robocopy \f\ \e\ /s /xo
----------------------------------
This small batch file, anytime you click it, will cause drives e and f to syncronize files. It helps if you rename data files regularly so that you do not overwrite older files, if you want to keep older copies around.

 

[wallyinnc]

Don't forget to download robocopy first!
Welcome to the forums, Johnhoh

 

[johnhoh]

Don't forget to download robocopy first!
Welcome to the forums, Johnhoh

Its in my windows/sysem32 so I assumed win7 put it there

 

[justi]

I decide to take the advice and leave it there.
Thank everyone for help!

 

[Dinesh]

you are welcome. happy computing.

 

[wallyinnc]

Don't forget to download robocopy first!
Welcome to the forums, Johnhoh

Its in my windows/sysem32 so I assumed win7 put it there

I stand corrected. It seems to have become a standard feature from Vista onwards.
Good advice and catch!

 

[Oldroser]

What if you have two hard drives?

Vista currently on C, data on D.

Better to put Windows 7 on partition on C or partition on D?

 

[Raargh]

Hi All;

For Win7, I bought another internal drive, 500 GB Hitachi SATA. XP is on Disk0, and while in XP I intitialized and formatted the new drive and assigned it letter F: Then installed Win7 on disk1. When I boot to Win7, it reports Win7 on drive c:, XP on drive d: . When I boot to XP, it reports XP on C:, Win7 on F: .

Regarding backup - I am very, very paranoid . I have critical data going back 20 years that I cannot live without, and I also HATE re-installing any OS. Here's what I do:

I have three external drives that I rotate. I use GHOST SS 2.5 to create images of (now two) internal drive(s), about once per month. I rotate the external drives, so that if the system AND the backup target crashes during the backup, I have another copy. One I keep in my car (in case civilization collapses and I have to get out of town fast). One I hide at home. The other is across town at work. I also run Mozy Home, set to backup EVERYTHING including the OS stuff - I like to be sure.

I've been using this system since Win95 days, and I have survived several disasters with zero loss of data and minimal time to restore.

To restore, I just grab the most recent external drive, boot from the GHOST floppy and/or CD, and do the restore. A few hours later the system is back in the state it was in at the time of backup. I then use Mozy to bring back the files that were written since the GHOST backup.

Raargh

 

[gregrocker]

Windows 7 Backup Center will back up your selected files and keep a current system image to a primary partition and/or an external drive on a schedule. Just keep your external plugged, set it and forget it.

Another use of the 100mb is that it puts the repair console available at f8 at bootup.

An example of the functionality of both: I was in Panera on my laptop having coffee when the OS would not bootup.

Because I had the 100mb (and didn't have the installer or repair disk) I tapped F8 and ran startup repair repeatedly but it wouldnt' start.

But I keep a copy of my current backup image in a primary partition so all I had to do was F8 into "Recover Using an Image" and it reimaged my HDD from the Primary Recov Partition in the time it took to get another cup of coffee.

 

[Raargh]

@gregrocker;

Thanks!

I've now got four different backups in three different places.

Raargh

 

[gregrocker]

Vista currently on C, data on D.

Better to put Windows 7 on partition on C or partition on D?

Always better to have it on C: since you will want to get rid of Vista soon enough, and moving 7 over into that space is a bit complicated, but we can help.