Re: How do I partition hard dive

Thanks Mike for your reply. I knew I read somewhere about this issue, but
could not remember where. It WAS Mike Steven's site!

Thanks Ken for your clarification.

Next question....
1. Do I really need to partition 80MG or is it ONLY for ease of data
'Backup'?

Just trying understand what is the advantage of partitioning other than on a
large drive ex. 200 MG

Thanks again, I am so pleased I received these answers so quickly and they
were right on the MARK!
--
Blaze Bene


"Ken Blake, MVP" wrote:

Dale wrote:

I have an 80GB hard drive which I would like to partition.
C: for O/S D: for programs and data. How can I accomplish this?
My objective is to have O/S on its own partition, so I do not have
re-install in case of major problems with programs and/or data.


Mike answered your question, but let me add a comment or two:

Many people separate their installed programs from the operating system with
the idea that if they ever have to reinstall the operating system, their
programs will be intact. Unfortunately that idea is completely wrong. All
installed programs (except for a very occasional very small one) have many
entries referring to them within Windows, in the registry and elsewhere. If
you reinstall Windows all those references are lost and the programs will no
longer run. If Windows is reinstalled, all the programs have to be
reinstalled too.

So for most people, it's better to have programs in the same partition as
Windows.

If you put your data in a separate partition, yes, it will survive a
reinstallation of Windows, but I'm always concerned that people who want to
do this may think that their data is safe there and no backup is required.
It is always possible that a hard drive crash, user error, nearby lightning
strike, virus attack, even theft of the computer, can cause the loss of
everything on your drive. As has often been said, it's not a matter of
whether you will have such a problem, but when.

The only real safety for your data is on external backup media. Just having
a separate partition doesn't cut it.

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup



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