Partitions? Are we talking room construction? or what?

[jean_bridge]

Okay, what are partitions, and how do I construct them on my hard drive?

I've just seen a list of Commandments by one Scott Vincent (at http://www.acgnj.org/2k00/archives/9...ttvincent.htm) that tells me I ought to have a system, application, and data partition (or rather, all three) on my hard drive. Argh. Can anyone point me to directions for achieving same? And does everyone agree it's a good idea? (Why?)

Thanks in advance, as usual...

[KeithMcL]

There is an executable file on your HD already that allows you to create partitions called fdisk.exe but I would recommend getting a porgram called partition magic instead as it does all the hard work for you

Afraid I don't have the homepage for the program hany, sorry.

[James]

There are two ways to make partitions on your PC:

1. Reformat your hard drive, and use the tool "fdisk" to re-partition it. Thats the hard way
2. Buy some software like Partition Magic, which will partition the drive for you without losing your data.

While I always use the first one, and have never actually used Partition Magic before, I'm told its very good
If you have any more questions, please dont hesitate to ask

Edit:

lol Keith, I just posted mine and saw you beat me to it I must be faster next time. Just two minutes between us

[Elledan]

IF you decide to use PartitionMagic (or Partition-it, which is about the same thing) don't forget to backup your data!!!

No matter how safe it may look, problems will pop-up when you least expect them to happen.

I've used Partition Magic, and I must say that I like the program (it never 'did something' to my data ) so it's really safe and certainly much more convenient than that (crappy) program FDisk.

Use any program you want, but always backup your data.

(sorry for rambling so long, but I'm suffering from the 'losing-all-the-data-on-the-HD-within-seconds' syndrome since it has happened a few times to me )

[Hierophant]

First I have to ask what operating system your using? and How big your hard drive is?

If your using Windows 95 make sure you have at least Windows 95B and convert your drive to FAT32 (it is in the helpfile). Under Windows 95 if your disk is larger than 2 gigabytes on FAT16 you must have multiple partitions to use it all.

If you using Windows 98 you only need multiple partitions if your hard drive is more than 30 gigabytes. If you do partition your drive make sure you enable "Large Disk Support" or "FAT32" in whatever program you use.

In common usage there will be no perceptual advantage to using multiple partitions on a single drive. It will not speed up your system, though it may store files a little more effectively. The only decent reason I can think of to partition your hard drive is to install multiple OSes. But with the low costs of drives today this is becoming less of a need. 13 gigabyte drives are going for between $50 and $70 dollars at OEM pricing which is a real good deal. If your looking for a slight performance boost then adding a second drive will be a better option.

If your a relative beginner I would recommend using Partition Magic over fdisk. fdisk can be very cryptic and using it will cause you to lose all your data unless you backup first. There is only a small chance you'll lose data using Partition Magic.

[somms]

I have a partition set aside specifically for large files such as .mp3 and .wma files. To vastly increase the speed of this partition I have formated it for 32k bytes/sector using the following:

format /z:64 /u /autotest

[Hierophant]

Originally posted by somms
I have a partition set aside specifically for large files such as .mp3 and .wma files. To vastly increase the speed of this partition I have formated it for 32k bytes/sector using the following:

format /z:64 /u /autotest

Actually that could possibly slow down performance. Memory is read in 4K blocks. If you don't have an exact 32K memory segment available then your going to have to do multiple reads to the drive per sector. This is the sort of thing that causes Windows swap files to grow and hard drive thrashing.

[Nicky]

I use Fdisk, it's already paid for. May be difficult to use at first but you get used to it after a while.