Newsletter reader Robert Storm wrote:
In reading your Monday 10-17 newsletter I find your discussion on ‘primary, ‘logical’, ‘extended’ the same as it has always been for many of us, and that would be confusing.
I have all the tools available to reformat, partition, backup, you name it. I also have an 80gig external harddrive that I make backups to.
To me the partitions on a new hard drive shouldbe roughly… 3 gig C drive for the operating system , 20 gig D drive for pictures and videos. A 6 gig E drive for music. A 5 gig F drive for applications. A 5 gig G drive for data. I’m sure I left out something.
I don’t do any of the above because I can never figure out to go through all the myiads of files on the hard drive to decide what goes where. Also where does the operating system actually reside?
Any help you could give would be appreciated.
Rbt. Storm
Thanks for the question, Robert. You are right, the subject is confusing. In part, that is because there are so many options to setting up partitions.
The concept of drives and partitions is so confusing to most people that Microsoft recommends, and most computer manufacturers follow that recommendation, that we create one big C: drive and let everything go there.
While this is not the optimal solution, especially for “power users,” it is the “minimize confusion” and “minimize our Tech Support calls and costs” solution for the computer manufacturers.
The concept of putting everything on the C: drive has become so ingrained in the thinking of most people that even some programmers are falling victim to the problem. Some programs will install to any directory you like, as long as it is on C:.
Other programs will install in whatever directory you specify on whichever drive you want to use, but they won’t run unless that was C: — truly sloppy programming.
Some even let you specify your choice of location, but still insist on installing some of their files on C:. Of course, most programmers do not fall into this trap and most programs will install on, and run from, any drive.
However, there are hidden problems with one big C: drive. First and foremost of these, you can not back up the drive easily. It does force you to back up to a different physical hard drive, which is a good thing.
If your backup of the operating system and your data are on the same hard drive, and the drive itself dies, you are out of luck.
Backing up to an external hard drive or to another internal hard drive in your computer is the way to go. I like to use image backups for ease of reinstallation — that is one reason why a big C: drive is bad — the backup image is huge and takes a long, long time. [Read more about backing up data and your system in my Backup article category.]
As far as how you should partition your drive, if you do not want to use one big C: (which I do not do!) that is a matter of personal selection.
Given that many programs really like to be installed on C:, I have finally accepted that as the default for installing almost all software. After all, if I ever have to reinstall Windows, I will have to reinstall any programs that I installed on other drives, anyway.
This is because almost all programs install configuration information in the Windows Registry, which is actually one big registry file for the computer plus a separate registry file for each user. When you reinstall Windows, the Registry is rewritten and loses all that other information. So, this leads me to make my C: somewhere in the range of 14 GB to 20 GB.
In the days before Windows XP, the C: drive was always the place that the particular installation of Windows that booted was installed. [That "reads funny," but that is what I meant.] Windows 3.1, 95, 98, Me (and I think 2000) all could install to any primary partition that you installed on your computer. Only the partition that is set as “Active” actually boots, but there are several programs that you can use to boot whichever partition you choose — e.g., System Commander, Powerquest’s BootMagic (but Powerquest got purchased by Symantec, so that’s not available), and BootIT NG (a great boot manager and image backup program from Terabyte Unlimited (www.terabyteunlimited.com)).
In the Windows XP world, one of the “fixes” was to prevent Windows from renaming drives whenever another hard drive or CD/DVD drive was installed. Now, if you install Windows XP over an existing Win98/WinMe partition, you will still get C: as the booting Windows XP partition. Similarly, if you install Windows XP on an empty drive.
However, if you create multiple primary partitions, and try to install Windows XP while you already have Win98 or WinMe on a different primary partition, the Windows XP partition will be set to something other than C: — probably E:. Although Windows XP will let you change the drive letters for any other partition, it will not let you change the drive letter of the Windows XP partion itself. The only “fix” to get C: is to erase the drive and let it install as the first primary partition, using whatver size you want to specify.
[Gee, this has gotten long, and it still seems complicated. It is much easier to understand by doing it, than it is to understand by reading about it]
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