HDD partitioning question

[zahc]

I have my HDD in my laptop partitioned into two 50GB partitions. D:/ currently doesn't have anything in it. If I was to store all my music, schoolwork, writing etc. on the D:/ drive, then could I reformat windows without having to backup all my stuff to DVDs?

And would that protect it if my computer crashed? Could the stuff on the D:/ partition crash too?

[mtnbkr]

As for reformating...Yes, you can reformat your system drive without affecting your D: drive as long as you don't repartition.

Concerning crashes... If it's just a system crash, you'll be fine.  If the DISK crashes, you'll likely lose the D: drive as well.  Back up anything supercritical to another physical drive or removeable media.  I back up my data to another computer (via SMB shares) and put the supercritical stuff on CD as well as on the other server.  On the server, I keep 2-3 backups in case the most recent one is corrupted for some reason.

Chris

[Phantom Warrior]

Nice.  I'm all about two hard drives.  It's a brilliant idea to put media on a seperate drive.  That way if your OS tanks you are still good.  That is exactly what happened on my old desktop and I didn't lose anything, even though I had to completely reinstall my OS.  

That's harder w/ a laptop, when you don't have the space for an extra hard drive.  You can, however, buy an external hard drive for $100 or so.  My roommate just bought a 160GB Western Digital for $125.  W/ the price of external hard drives and removable media so low there really is no reason not to back up.

[zahc]

yeah I'm actually thinking of building a desktop just for ripping, storing and burning my music. With a wireless network I can do all listening on my laptop. I think.

[cordex]

I keep a 7 day running, complete backup of my server on a 250gb IDE drive so I can restore to a snapshot of any day within a week.  The server runs off a five drive RAID 5 array that uses four of the drives for the array plus has one as a hot spare.  So, I could lose two of the SCSI drives in my RAID array and still be golden, but if I happened to lose 3 or more, I could still restore to any time within the previous week.  Offsite migration of a known good snapshot runs once a month.

Is that paranoid?

Most folks have just one or two drives.  I usually suggest that people buy a RAID 0 card and a second drive of identical capacity and have it run a hardware mirror in case of disk failure.

[HForrest]

Yeah, I've used a system like that for a long time- two partitions. My Windows screwed up, and all my files and $120 worth of BuyMusic downloads were saved- that is, until my aunt decided to reformat it for no reason while trying to fix Windows. Assuming you have no problems like that, you should be fine.

[P95Carry]

I run 2 x 120 internal - both partitioned into approx 30G drives.  Always try and leave C:\ for system alone.  Then keep data on 2nd HDD mostly - plus a firewire fed external 160G for back ups of main data.  

Reinstall of all my (too many) app's could be a total PITA but I do want to ensure I can keep all my hard work byproducts - image, web, etc.  I also keep a backup folder of most smaller app's installation files - in case a need to reinstall.

One thing I hate about so many puters is they come with one monster C:\ drive - period!!!  Priority IMO is install Partition magic - or use the XP facilities and split up early on.  Nice too to keep swap file on other than C:\.  Defrag sure is easier on smaller partitions.

[Gewehr98]

This dual P-III CPU Dell Precision workstation has the OS on one physical drive, and everything else, including MP3, MPEG, my graphics and image library, and software downloads w/upgrades located on a separate pair of mirrored IDE RAID drives.  I also have a 120gig USB external drive, partitioned into four separate drives, to do periodic backups with.

I've had too many crashes over the years, and I make it a point of reformatting and re-installing my OS and core apps once a year, anyways.  I use CCleaner, EasyCleaner, and Lavasoft AdAware, but even the best registry cleaners don't get rid of all the junk that finds its way into the stack.

[mtnbkr]

I've had too many crashes over the years, and I make it a point of reformatting and re-installing my OS and core apps once a year, anyways

.
I haven't had a crash in any Windows box I was responsible for in over 6 years (not including the drive failure I had a bit over a year ago).  That includes production systems used by our Govt.  However, I only use or used Windows NT (3.51 and 4.0) and Windows 2k.  I'm also particular about the hardware I use, choosing proven stability over raw performance every time.

Sorry, had to brag.  

Gewehr, I manually clean my registries.  I'm pretty comfortable mucking about in there though.  Mr. Irwin was commenting the other day how fast my 2yo PC opens MS Word compared to his shiny new system.

Chris

[Gewehr98]

Don't get me wrong, Chris, I've had very stable systems here at home.  The entire G98 network today is running XP Pro, and doing quite well. (Ok, there are a couple Linux boxes, but I'm just playing with them right now)

My crashed were mostly hard drives expiring, including a couple BRAND NEW Western Digital Caviar 80Gb drives, I had an exchange system with Western Digital for several months until I got a reliable drive from them.  

I'm still not too comfortable with poking around in the registry, but I'm getting there.  The home network keeps me busy, and I've since added another Tektronix color laser to the inventory since this snapshot:

[K Frame]

"Mr. Irwin was commenting..."

Wow. SO polite!

[mtnbkr]

Nice network and so nicely documented.

Makes me feel inadequate with my two computer "network"  Mine's a Win2k desktop connected to a Dell server running Linux that manages my aging HP Deskjet printer, website, and fileshares.  They are connected via a Netgear wireless DSL router.

Chris

[Dave Markowitz]

And I thought I was a geek.  Dayum.