Re: Partition size

The date and time was Saturday, August 22, 2009 12:19:49 PM , and on a whim, BillW50 pounded out on the keyboard:

In news:Ob7zEm1IKHA.1376@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
Terry R. typed on Sat, 22 Aug 2009 11:51:11 -0700:
The date and time was Saturday, August 22, 2009 8:48:30 AM , and on a
whim, BillW50 pounded out on the keyboard:

In news:%23Of6QWxIKHA.4628@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
Ron Badour typed on Sat, 22 Aug 2009 05:44:53 -0500:
There are some benefits to having multiple partitions.
Plus many negative ones. Like I have 5GB free on C, 15GB free on D,
and 15GB free on W. And I need 20GB free to edit a video file. Oops!
I can't do it even though I have 35GB free on the drive. <sigh>

Proper planning is key. My OS partitions are between 5 & 7 gig. My
data partitions (separate drives) can be enlarged at any time as I
keep empty space available and don't place any backup partitions next
to the data partitions. I do a lot of video work and use the larger
partitions to work on a project, then I move the files to two
different external media so I have 2 copies of everything, and
nothing on the workstation.

Planning? I planned and my first HDD was 10MB in size. And I planned that is all I would ever need. Like that lasted very long. Today I didn't plan on editing a video file and the program needs 20GB of space to edit it. Nor did I ever plan on buying X-Plane which eats up 60GB of space. The truth is Terry, planning just doesn't work very well! All you can plan for is the unexpected. And partitioning is a very poor plan!


You didn't plan the 10MB, that was all there was most likely. I first purchased a Tallgrass 20/20 that was a 20MB hard drive and a 20MG tape backup, which was the largest available at the time. When the computer was retired, the drive wasn't full and it was in operation until 1992.

My hard drives now have empty space next to any partition that may need to expand. If I need to do that, I can enlarge it and be fine for another year or two. Since I have multiple backup partitions throughout the 3 hard drives, I planned this very well. If I needed another 20 gig for something, I could have it right now. Planning works well and partitioning IS a good plan. Just because it didn't work for you doesn't mean it doesn't work at all.

defragging, etc., on separate partitions cuts down on running time
and hard drive wear.
There is no data that exists that supports this claim at all! A hard
drive doesn't care where it is writing or reading. At worst, all it
changes is seek time and nothing else. And that isn't very important
anyway since hard drives comes with buffers for years.
That's not what he said. A 7 gig partition will take a lot less time
than a 50 gig partition to defrag. Wear is relevant in this issue I
don't think.

Okay, but even still no defragging is even faster. So what's the point?


Scramble a hard drive with contiguous clusters and one heavily fragmented and see which one is easier to retrieve files on. Sure it's no biggie if there is a current backup, but all to many clients I have (and friends and relatives) DON'T have backups or don't do them regularly, regardless if they've been told.

I also *only* defrag my hard drives once every 2 years. I record the
boot time before the defrag and after the defrag. The time
difference is minimal and wasn't even worth all of the time it had
taken to defrag in the first place.
I think defragging is mainly for those who like things organized.

Could be. I believe even the worst fragged HDD doesn't slow down much since the I/O is the real bottleneck anyway. But virtually nobody brings this up at all. And if I am right, people defragging their HDD is just wasting their time anyway.


I don't see it that way. And I will continue to defrag. You feel differently.

And if you are a believer in lots of reading and writing all over the
place is lots of wear and tear on your hard drive. Then defragging
all of the time is one of the worst things you can do. As the head
is flying all over the place, the drive heats up higher than it
normally does, and it is reading and writing virtually everything on
the drive all over again. This is one of the worst conditions you
can do to a drive!
And video editing doesn't do the same? When I'm rendering video, it
can take 5 to 6 hours or longer and the hard drives are thrashing
away the whole time. That stresses a drive countless times more than
defragging.

Yeah! At least with video editing you *are* actually accomplishing something.


Regardless, defragging is far from "one of the worst conditions you can do to a drive".

Keeping your applications on another partition can save data if you
have a system problem and you did not get some data backed up.
If you don't back up, you lose everything if the drive fails to
spin. So it is your fault, whether you use partitions or not.

Others will tell you that multiple partitions are not required but
what it boils down to is personal preference.
You haven't made one reasonable point for supporting multiple
partitions yet. So why should anybody bother?
I support multiple drives AND multiple partitions. My workstation is
over 5 years old and it outperforms single drive duo core machines
easily. It boots to a Desktop in under 30 seconds (yes, processes are
still loading afterwards, and that includes PageDefrag on every boot).

Sounds okay by me. I have a different method though. As I am a big believer in multiple computers. And I buy the same models so I can always swap parts to troubleshoot or get something up and running within seconds in most cases (no computer service that money can buy could offer better). And backups are not that important since everything is generally cloned or close to cloned anyway. And if one computer is overwhelmed by one very busy application, no big deal. I just fire up another one. <grin>


Having that luxury is nice. But I can't keep multiple workstations like this one around. Your netbooks are fine if that's all you need. It's much easier to have my 3 hard drives and be able to get back to work in 30 minutes if a drive dies.


Terry R.
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