Re: Partition size

In news:ezLEVv2IKHA.1340@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
Terry R. typed on Sat, 22 Aug 2009 14:02:18 -0700:
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.

Well kind of close to the truth so I'll give you that one. <grin>

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.

Just because it works for you doesn't mean it will work for others.
Let's say I got you interested in X-Plane that needs 60GB. Now what will
you do?

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.

Yeah well we can't help people who don't listen. Many don't plan for a
disaster and don't care until it happens.

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.

You can, but I don't know why? Back in the 80's drives were formatted as
MFM and were very slow. Defragging them made a *huge* difference! And
here is where all of this *must* defrag stuff got started IMHO. As when
IDE drives came out in the 90's, it made little difference. And today
manufactures has worked a couple of decades of eliminating the poor seek
time. And I feel they have done a fine job and defragging is virtually
not necessary for almost anybody.

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".

I disagree. It is the most useless hard activity you can do to a drive.
Some people swear they see improvements. Well if they see it, I say
fine. But if you don't and I haven't for the passed 20 years, I don't
see the point.

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.

I have 5 netbooks and two laptops I use regularly. I gave up on desktops
about 5 years ago. And I usually only use one at a time. So if one goes
down, needs to reboot to update or something, it just isn't a problem. I
just grab another one. Life seems so simple to me.

--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 702G8 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Windows XP SP2


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