Partitioning Options - Drive Arrangements
Mar 12, 2007
My personal partitioning scheme is primarily to facilitate a backup routine that I can use easily and regularly. C: drive is 10 GB and holds only my OS; no program files, no data files, no personal settings. E: drive is 58 GB for program files, temporary internet files, downloads and such; no data files. f: drive is 10 GB for Documents and Settings. I: drive is 4 GB and is devoted to a 3 GB fixed pagefile. J: drive is 72 GB for wave files only. K: drive is 8 GB for image files only. L: drive is 30 GB for video editing only. I regularly make images of my C: drive and F: drive. These are my primary backups. Installed program files don't change often. I have my programs' preferences set to store data files on F:. I don't need to backup E: very often; only when I install a new program, or uninstall an old one. Of course, when I make a new image of E:, I also make an image of C: and F: My J: drive is just my CD library ripped to the computer. I still have all the original CD's, so I don't really need to backup this drive very often, either. (I don't care for MP3's). K: drive is the target for my digital camera. I make images of this drive regularly. L: is for temporary use for video editing, and I burn the final edit to DVD, so I don't make images of this drive at all. Defragmenting is quick and easy. Having a permanent pagefile on a dedicated partition keeps it from becoming fragmented. Making backups is simplified, so I actually do it regularly.
And these are backups that will get me up and running in minutes. And before someone says that it won't work properly, I'm sorry but it does. I've tested it extensively, even from one drive to another, and it just works. I used nLite to customize my installation, so programs default to E:, Documents and Settings default to F:. I used internet options in IE7 to relocate temporary internet files for all users on this machine to E: I run AVG Anti-Spyware, Windows Defender, and NOD32 as services for all users, and have nightly scans run automatically-I never turn this machine off. I dump temporary files, defragment, run manual malware scans and HJT before I make an image of any partition. And maybe the best benefit of all? I haven't done a reformat/reinstall since Windows 95.
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Nov 22, 2009
I have just bought and installed (to the point of completing initialization under Disk Management) a new 1 TB hard drive. Originally, I was planning to use it solely for data storage.However, I am thinking of installing Windows XP Pro and all the programs I currently use on it, thereby making it the new OS and programs drive, while using the original 120 GB HD as a data/backup drive.I think the main appeal of doing this, for me, is that it also presents an opportunity to reinstall Windows on a machine which hasn't had this done for more than three years, and which currently seems to take at least five minutes to boot to a "usable" state, despite having a reasonably high spec for its age (it was bought in 2001, but as a result of the upgrade
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Feb 3, 2008
not being computer literate , i am having a problem with a new hard drive . i took out the old one . i have the windows disc and product codes , but i can't get it to boot to start the windows installation. i have done it on another computer , and the disc begins installing windows on start up. i have tried starting the computer with the disc in place , and without it . obviously , i must be missing something to get it started . the disc is brand new .
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Sep 1, 2009
I have WXP Home, a 160gb HD. Asus Motherboard. I partitioned the C drive with Paragon 9 and moved all my data to the D drive due to some problems and had to format and reinstall windows on the C drive. when I finished and rebooted I could access everything. A short time later I could not access the D Drive, the error message said that I did not have permission. No explanation, Just locked out. I can access folders on the D drive if I search for a folder then copy them across from the search window into the C Drive, or if I boot into Safe Mode. That is no good. I need access from My Computer by clicking on the D Drive Icon. Any suggestions.
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May 12, 2008
I need to reformat the 60Gb drive on my laptop and I would like to partition my hard drive to kill 2 birds with 1 stone. I wanted to put XP Home in one partition and my docs on another.
1. Would 10Gb for the 1st / XP partition and the remainder for the second partition seem reasonable?
2. I will put the MyDocuments folder on the 2nd partition - do I try and install all programs on the 2nd partition, right? The 'Documents and Settings' folder sits on the 2nd partition also, right? I think I want to keep Windows away from everything, to keep it 'pure'.
3. Will any programs try to deposit temporary files application data in the 1st partition - and do I then shift this data over to the 2nd partition?
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Jan 19, 2005
I have been reading past messages regarding partitioning a drive.I understand why it's done and am interested in doing this myself. The question I have is my computer came with xp already installed so I have no disc to work with.The computer was of course set with the c drive being large, do I just partition the rest of the available space? If so what is the best way to go about this?I have seen programs recommended and also talk of first needing to make the c drive smaller to start with, but have no idea how I can do this since I am starting after the fact.If someone could explain to me how I might best go about this it might help me put all I've read into perspective. I definitely don't want to mess anything up.
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Aug 3, 2005
I'm partitioning an external hard drive that's connected to my Win XP machine. I set an 80GB partition for XP (NTFS). When I tried to allocate the rest of the drive as a FAT32 partition (for my Win98 machines), FAT32 was not an option, until I reduced the partition size to 20 GB. I'm using XP's Disk Management. Is there a maximum limitation of FAT32 partition size?
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Oct 2, 2006
Using 2 seperate hard drives, I set up the system files on drive D: and the made a blank partition on drive C. I wanted to set up WinXP so that when I install programs they are saved to C: leaveing drive D: for only system files. The problem I am having is that when i install new programs they dont want to be installed to drive C. Instead programs want to be installed to the system drive D. I would just tell programs to install on drive C but some of them will only give me the choice to install to D. How do I set up the partition so that programs will install to drive C?
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May 12, 2006
Recently I installed Ubuntu Linux on a partition on my secondary hard drive (it's a worthwhile education, I'll give it that). Since then, when in Windows, the remaining space, used for games, alternates between being accessible and being unaccessible. What's the go?For example, when I go in My Computer and try to open D: drive this is the message i receive:D: is not accessible The parameter is incorrect.
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Mar 25, 2006
Is there a way to partition the primary disk on a computer without reformatting?A computer that I inherited (HP Pavillion) has a 120Gb hard drive partitioned into two sections C drive 104Gb NTFS primary D drive 7Gb FAT32 recovery I would like to split the primary into two sections, if possible without reformatting
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Feb 24, 2008
we have an XP box at work we use for testing custom apps we create...we threw in an extra drive and put Vista on this drive just to test out our apps...after testing, we removed the drive (and hence Vista) leaving just the main drive with XP...our boot options still list Vista as a boot option..i know fixmbr works with XP, but there is another command (can't remember what it is, never used it) for Vista...using XP, can i use the fixmbr command to remove the Vista boot option? if not, how should i remove the second boot option from XP?
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Nov 28, 2006
I have two HDs installed on my comp. The master (C drive) is running WinXP home edition. The slave (E drive) was taken from my old comp which ran under Win ME (which should still be installed on it). I need to boot up with ME as a "work around" to print some files using a RIP program that is not supported by XP.Is it possible to boot from the slave HD? I looked under the setup options accessed by hitting f12 key during start up, and the "E" drive did not show up on the list of drives. Floppy, Cd drives, and a USB external drive did show up. I also tried looking under a menu accessed by hitting the f2 key...and a second hard drive showed up in that menu, but the options I had available were "off" (the setting I found it set at) or "auto", I changed it to "auto" and tried to reboot but it said "no loader_"
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Apr 1, 2007
I need to reinstall XP on my current hard drive (160 Gig 5400 RPM Maxtor) due to a failure of xp to boot. First however, I would like to copy over my old files so I don't lose them when I eventually reformat this drive. At my disposal I have 1 working laptop, 1 300 Gig External 3.5 USB 2.0 HD and 2 40 Gig 2.5 (Laptop HD) and USB 2.0 external laptop drive enclosure, Windows XP Install Disc. I have ran scandsk /p (1 error found) and tried running the recovery console. My idea is to use one the 40 gig hard drives for a new install of windows and put the unbootable drive in the external enclosure to copy my files over however on my working computer, I don't believe it is that easy... If I remember correctly, you cannot just copy files off a once bootable hard drive?
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Sep 8, 2009
I have a fresh install of Win XP on my C: drive and whenever I boot the PC I get options on which windows install to boot into. I had a Win 2000 install on my D: drive at one time but that drive has since been reformatted, so I'm at a loss as to why I have to choose an install at every boot.
I tried to rebuild the boot.ini file using the XP Setup Recovery console but that only added a 3rd option to the list of installs to choose from at boot-up.
My question is, can I edit the startup options manually and delete the 2nd and 3rd lines, or is there another way to clean this up so my rig boots to the C: drive automatically every time?
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Oct 23, 2007
I am trying to format my PC as it has been affected by Spyware and malware.
I set CD-Rom as boot option but when PC reboots it do not start formatting irrespective of presence or absence of CD in CD-Rom. Similar thing also happened when I set this option for Floppy Drive. How Can I resolve this problem.
I have formatted PC once before the CD I have with me. But now I want to make new bootable CD. Can you please suggest me the procedure and resources to get (software/program) to be included in CD from Internet (freeware program). So that the CD will format the drive cleanly and clearly. It should format C (program file drive) and other drive like D, E F.
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Oct 13, 2005
I am using Win Xp Pro and somehow the general and the view tabs are missing as an option under My computer -- Tools and then folder options. The only tabs that are available are the File types and Offline files tab. The general and the view tabs are missing. I became aware when I wanted to show all hidden files with a folder on my C Drive.
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Jul 12, 2005
I have a computer that I formatted the hard drive on. Then installed Windows XP Pro. When it boots up, it goes to a black screen and has Windows XP Pro and Windows XP listed with the Win XP Pro selected and boots to it in 15 seconds or so if nothing is selected. I have read somewhere about this before and have NO clue where I read it, but does anyone know how to get rid of the option (Win XP) that really doesn't even exist on the hard drive?
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Dec 24, 2008
I have ended up with 4 different options for XP Pro when my computer starts. This is, basically, as a result of me re-installing Widows a couple of times to try and solve a very slow running system (more help needed there but I will start a new thread for that).How do I remove the 3 unwanted start options?
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Mar 3, 2005
I'm running Home oem and would like to partition my hd. For some reason I didn't seem to be able to when I installed Windows. Do I need to use Partition Magic or can I do it within Windows? I wanna run a dual boot system.
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Mar 23, 2006
Is this something I should try through Fdisc or should I buy Partition Commander? I am learning a lot but don't understand all the ins and outs of the articles I have read concerning partitioning, yet.
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Oct 18, 2004
The question frequently comes up about how to format and install XP from scratch. Following are the steps I take when I get a new system. I mention the "brand names" of software I use not as an endorsement or recommendation, but just for the sake of example.After unpacking and connecting all hardware, here's what I do:1Partition the HD according to my preference, thus deleting everything on the drive (the number and size of partitions is entirely up to the individual user – I prefer several, keeping the OS on c: and various programs, cache folders, swap file and data on other partitions).
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Aug 28, 2005
Is there any way to partition a hard drive in two without having to reinstall the OS? Do I have to buy a seperate program to do it? Or does Windows include some sort of utility that does it?
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Jul 17, 2005
When I check the properties of the C: drive (4 Gb), it shows only about 270 Mb free space, but when I look through the files, to clear out some space on the drive, I seem only to have about 2 Gb used. I have my settings set to view hidden files and the like, but it seems like I'm using twice the amount of space
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Jul 18, 2005
A case of other files in other paritions "spilling over" into the system partition, or does partitioning itself use space that's basically invisible to Windows?
Mike, your setup sounds pretty close to mine. I know I can change the partition sizes, and that's my next plan, but it seems like I've lost 2Gb into the abyss.
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Mar 13, 2008
I have just bought a new hard drive, partitioned it, and had some stuff copied to it.I then deleted the partitions, and set some new ones up (was changing the size of the partitions). I havent put anything on the disk yet.Then, i realise i want some of the stuff (new emails i just received using mozilla) that is on my new disk, prior to me changing the partitions.Is there any way of checking what is on the new disk? I assume windows hasnt actually written over the stuff that i just put on ther
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Aug 18, 2006
I'm an intermediate user just beginning to study for MS sys admin.Both my laptops run XP home, but I have 2000 Pro from when I had a desktop...which I unfortunately gave to a family member. I'd like to install this on one of my laptops because the Pro capabilities will allow me to "study" a little better than just home XP. At any rate, I'd like the experience of configuring everything. will I lose everything in XP if I set up a partition to install 2000 Pro? Is it even possible to install both of them without installing 2000 first? The XP came pre-loaded on my computer but I do have a disk.
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May 30, 2009
Hoping someone can help. Just reformated my hard drive and since then, everytime I boot up, it asks which OS I want to uses, Windows XP Media Centre or Windows 2003. Don't understand since I have only one system (Media Ctr). Aslo, there is only one HD in my computer and it is not partitioned.
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Sep 15, 2008
I recently decided to try out running OSX on my PC. This post isn't about that, so don't worry about any legal issues. Anyway, I was planning on just using Windows' disk manager to create a new partition, but the guide gave the following instructions using the command line-based 'diskpart'. I figured maybe it would work slightly different than the usual method, so I followed the instructions listed
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Mar 3, 2008
I am having xp in my c partition in my hard drive,if i copy windows 2003 from another hard disk to another partition means the two partition will work fine or not? shall i use windows xp & windows 2003 server.may i able to boot from both xp & windows 2003
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Aug 27, 2005
If I partition my hard drive and want to append a partion to the windows xp partition can this be done.Also If I am having problemsdefraging a partition (it say's something about a retore file on it) but this partition does not have an operation system. I just use it to keep web sites I develop on it. How can I defrag it.
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Aug 18, 2005
i put fat32 on partition 1 and NTFS on partition 2 on the same hard drive can that be why my system isnt running good because i just installed windows xp on a formatted hard drive and it runs poorly. or can anybody tell me the best way to partition a 40 gig harddrive to get the most out of it....? I thought there was something wrong with my windows xp disk because out of all the times i have fdisk and reinstalled windows it never ran this bad...
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