Partitioning hard drive - any point?

[longrun]

I also use the Acronis TrueImage/Genie Backup routine and have partitions for OS, programs, data, and temp/swapfile, but I'm not sure I'd do it again. One thing you should be aware of if you're considering this is that many applications store valuable data in the Application Data folder under the OS, and other programs store data in unexpected places, so your "data" backup may not include everything you'd like.

[Carol Haynes]

One of the nice things about Genie is that it is possible to write scripts to ensure all the registry settings and extra files etc. are all backed up for applications.

You can use something like Total Uninstall to monitor the registry and file changes that happen when a program is used to help write the script.

[f0dder]

Repeat after me:


RAID/mirroring IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR BACKUPS!
RAID/mirroring IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR BACKUPS!
RAID/mirroring IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR BACKUPS!
RAID/mirroring IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR BACKUPS!
RAID/mirroring IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR BACKUPS!
RAID/mirroring IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR BACKUPS!
RAID/mirroring IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR BACKUPS!


mirroring is great, and I wouldn't be without it. But it's only useful to guard against data loss in case of harddrive crash - it doesn't save you from errant deletes, viruses, filesystem crashes et cetera.

Multiple partitions is a good thing, since you only lose one partition in case of filesystem corruption. Granted, filesystem corruption doesn't happen often if you run NTFS, but it CAN happen, and when it does it usually hits you hard. VERY hard.

A separate partition for your paging file is nonsense. It only helps if you put it on a separate physical drive. Besides, you should have enough RAM that you don't need a paging file (which is, of course, impossible if you use anything from Adobe ;-) )

I have a partition for OS + apps, one for documents and source code, one for games and then a "dump" partition. When I get the time to back up stuff etc., I'll merge games and "dump" since there's not much point in having them separate. "dump" is where I have temp files, downloads, misc. large data files et cetera.

[Rover]

f0dder, you're right.  This is the difference between availability and recoverability.

Availablility - My data is usable right now.  RAID 1,3,5 & 10 all do things to make your data less likely to be lost due to a single drive failiure.  Other solutions allow for multiple drive failes (at the cost of less usable disk).

Recoverability -  My data is not available now (due to some failure) but I can replace (reformat) the failed equipment and RESTORE my data from my last backup.  There are 1.21x10^8 power ways to backup your stuff.  Some will even do continuous backups so that your "last backup" may be only seconds before your system failed.

Backups are also good for keeping various versions of configurations, so you can recover system settings to a point in time.

Availability (redudant sytems & RAID) and Recoverability (backups) are different animals with different purposes.
so:

RAID/mirroring IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR BACKUPS!

[f0dder]

I hope to play with RAID-5 in the future... sounds like a good balance between wasted space and redundancy. I'll probably wait until I can afford some dedicated controller for it though, instead of a software solution.

As for backups, I don't currently have anything really good. I use subversion for my source code though, so at least that is relatively safe. Using TrueImage at work for backups, but it's not really ideal for that. Kicks ass for drive imaging, though