imaging & partitioning queries

[urlwolf]

Tomos,
Can you post any links on the _advantages_ (speed?) of having the pagefile on a different partition?
Actually, now that I have a laptops with two 160Gb HDs (Yay!), I may think carefully about how  to place things so I get the best reading speed possible.

Right now, I have:
disk 1:
C: -OS- 40gb.
G:(should be E: for compatibility with my older laptop) data: 109gb

disk 2:
D: music 148Gb

Of course, data will be accessed more often than music. Maybe I should place that partition at the beginning of disk 2.

Any other recommendations? Should I create a  pagefile partition on disk 2?

Thanks

[Carol Haynes]

Page file should be on Disc 2 - preferably the first partition on the disc (the fastest area of the disc). You could use a partition manager to resize D: and move it up to make space (probably worth backing up first though).

[tomos]

Tomos,
Can you post any links on the _advantages_ (speed?) of having the pagefile on a different partition?
...
Should I create a  pagefile partition on disk 2?

-urlwolf (August 19, 2007, 07:27 AM)

Carol answaers that one 

Page file should be on Disc 2 - preferably the first partition on the disc (the fastest area of the disc)

-Carol Haynes (August 19, 2007, 07:41 AM)

see also the ms links above
ms recommends having a 128MB minimum pagefile on C partition as well as the bigger one on second drive/seperate partition

have a read here as well urlwolf
https://www.donation...61.msg71663#msg71663

[Carol Haynes]

Depends whether you actually use Windows Memory Dump for debugging - given that no one seems to offer any support out there (unless you are extremely rich) and the data dumped is cryptic in the extreme I have never seen much point in enabling this feature.

[tomos]

you're a mine of information Carol -
I always try to err on the side of whatever-it's-called when I dont know.
 
makes life easier just to have one (paging file)

[tomos]

any ideas on the size to make the partition (for the paging file)

[Carol Haynes]

Depends how much memory you have. I would say you want the page file about 1.5 x the memory size you have (up to a maximum of 3Gb) so if you make a partition of 3.5 Gb it should be adequate for all eventualities - but strictly it just needs to be large enough to hold the file. I do find Windows XP complains that your disc is nearly full if you make the partition exactly the same size at the pagefile (you get constant balloon notes popping up in the system tray). You can either disable 'disk full' notifications or just leave a bit of spare space on the partition.

To work out page size multiply memory (in Gb) by 1024 to get the size in megabytes (which you need to calculate the pagefile size). You are best to make the pagefile a fixed size (set minimum and maximum to the same size) then it saves Windows having to bother shrinking and expanding the file as required.

[urlwolf]

Also, I have read somewhere that having a partition 100% full is bad.
That's the case for my music partition. Any idea why this is bad? Should I sacrifice some music for better overall performance?

Thanks

[Carol Haynes]

It's bad if you want to put anything else on there

The main reason you don't want totally full partitions is that you can't defrag them. If you are simply storing data and don't need to add anything or defrag the partition it isn't a problem.

The main irritation are the blasted balloon pupus that tell you every time you start your system.

[tomos]

you could also try one of the free Open Source partitioning and imaging Solutions like gparted http://gparted.sourceforge.net/ (only for partitioning) or parted magic http://partedmagic.com/ (does imaging too) -- you'll need to dowload (about 50mb, I think) and burn them on a CD. Gparted is easy to use and reliable. I must admit that I have never used the Open source imaging solutions though (only on parted magic), only the partitioning one.

-Armando (August 16, 2007, 08:57 PM)

I used that [sorry! EDIT: Parted Magic] for the partitioning
with the help of this tutorial
it was very easy

[unfortunately I cant say the same for the windows install, but thats another story that will hopefully be sorted out when nlite has finished preparing the xp + sp2 bootdisk]

EDIT: corrected link

[Darwin]

urlwolf - TWO 160GB drives in a notebook? I'm swooning with envy. You've probably mentioned this elsewhere, but what's the brand and model of the notebook? I'm being SERIOUSLY by a sale at the moment and would like to compare specs/look for what you've got!

Ta.

[Armando]

I used that [sorry! EDIT: Parted Magic] for the partitioning
with the help of this tutorial
it was very easy

-tomos (August 23, 2007, 08:27 AM)

Thanks for the feedback tomos! It's good to know.
Good luck with the other part of the process... It shouldn't be that hard, really. It should be as easy.

[tomos]

I used that [sorry! EDIT: Parted Magic] for the partitioning
with the help of this tutorial
it was very easy

-tomos (August 23, 2007, 08:27 AM)

Thanks for the feedback tomos! It's good to know.
Good luck with the other part of the process... It shouldn't be that hard, really. It should be as easy.

-Armando (August 23, 2007, 04:20 PM)

I'll frame that & put it on the wall... hah microsoft, grumble grumble
(plan to make a post about it but prob in new thread..)
Actually I did manage to install XP ok eventually - so I happy enough 

[PhilB66]

Could someone explain the difference between HD cloning and imaging software and what's considered better for backing up the HD. Thanks

[Carol Haynes]

Cloning = 2 hard discs in your machine => one is copied to the other so you have 2 identical disks

Imaging = Save a copy of your disk partitions (or multiple partitions) into an image file (or set of files) which could be on another partition or burned to CDs/DVDs etc. The image can be restored to the hard disc to restore the condition of the disk at the time of creating the image. Some imaging software allows you to update the image with changes since the last backup - that way you can keep one large image of the partitions + 'incremental' bits of the image as separate files - you can then restore your system to any of the times at which you made a backup.