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Finally made it to Windows 7 -- looking for partitioning reccomendations

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tomos:
If you can manage it, having two internal drives is great - it gives you a lot more freedom and security.

My partitions are:

[drive #1]

* OS
* Backup: from second drive (I also do external backup)
[drive #2]

* Temp folder / Page file
* Files: Big Partition w. my files
* Backup: OS-images / downloads folder
so at any (average) moment and time, only one partition on each drive is in use (normally OS, & Files)

MrCrispy:
The goal of partitioning should be (or at least is for me) the ability to wipe and restore a partition without affecting others. Doing it for space/categories doesn't make sense because

1) folders work just as well. If you must, mount a folder as a drive letter
2) sooner or later you'll run out of space while another partition has free space

So what I do is make a OS partition (40-50gb is enough) and a data one. On the data partition are 2 folders - Data and Apps. Then I move my user profile folders into Data, so that all docs, music, pictures are in there. All portable apps go in Apps. Everything else is installed by default in c:\.

This allows me to reinstall Windows or restore an image of the OS partition without affecting my data. I try to use portable apps, and if not (e.g. Visual Studio), reinstalling is simple. Data gets backed up as usual, and I don't worry about data on c:\ since by definition it is expendable.

Polosoft:
I wouldn't go too overboard with partitioning. Segregating the drive into one partition for the operating system and programs; and a second partition for user data should be sufficient for general use. Basically this divides the drive between what needs to be reloaded from CD and everything else that will get lost if it isn't backed up.

Beyond that I'd just organize into general folders (music, my documents, etc.) and optionally take advantage of the Libraries feature if I needed to take it beyond that.

FWIW I normally create 3 logical drives in a single disk system. Drive C is for the OS and Programs. Drive D is user data. And Drive E is for special backups (hardware drivers, e-mail, browser stuff, etc.) and for storing the current system recovery image(s).

There's been previous discussions at DoCo that got into this in much more detail. The main goal was to have the hard disk set up in such a way that it was easy to backup user data to an external drive; and to allow for easy recovery of your complete system via disk images (with all your current programs and settings intact) in the event the system drive got screwed up royally. This is what's often referred to as a "recoverable without reinstalling" strategy.

And like most things, it's easy to do.
 (see attachment in previous post)
But the devil is in the details. And it's best thought Duplicate File Cleaner will help you about in advance when you're setting up a 'clean' system.

Does this answer your question or do you need more specifics? :)

-40hz (October 20, 2011, 02:15 AM)
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brotman:
Hi,

I'm the originator of this thread. so I thought I'd top it off with an explanation of what  partitioning I finally ended up with, FWIW:

Disk 0 internal 1,5TB
  drive C: [200gb]  Win7
  drive D:  [500gb] Data
  drive K:  [200gb] "spare" windows partition
  drive P:  [500gb]  Programs

disk 1 internal 1TB
  drive B: [1tb] Backups
--------------
drive C is for the OS and MS office programs and files and others that "like" to be on c:  hibernation file, swap file Windows Folder, system,  Boot sectors  and  other  reasonably small base utility programs

DRIVE D  is for personal Data, email files, Music, downloads, etc

DRIVE K was created as a recover win7 installation, and I've kept it spare (and Bootable)

DRIVE P is where the rest of the programs go, especially big ones, like Desktop publishing, dictionaries and other references,

DRIVE B  is for Backups of programs and data as required, note it's on a separate internal hard drive from everything else, for better recoverablity.

Additionally there are two "recovery partitions" (~20gb total), left over from the factory install and a couple of external drives used for extended backups and data

This setup works for me and has certain advantages (I'll go into more detail if anybody cares enough to ask...

Your Mileage may vary...

Thanks to all who answered here! I hope someone may benefit from this thread

Chuck

D0UG:
Backups should be on another drive for both performance sake and reliability; therefore, I would have K and B on another drive.  Using D for a HDD probably meant changing the letter for your optical drive so I would have used U for user files instead.  I cannot think of any reason to add P instead of the default C drive. 

Using separate partitions is not as popular as it once was.  Many of the utilities for backup, recovery, cleaners, etc. do not work well if programs and files are in a separate partition.  Just remember that when running such tools.

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