Partioning a hard drive

[philipbaker]

Hi I have to partition my hard drive on my samsung rv511 what is the best split? It has a 640 hard drive. Thank you in advance for any help you can give

 

[Hawkeye22]

You didn't list which OS you will be using. You don't have to use partitions. You could make it the size of the entire drive. If you want to split it, just check the system requirements for the OS, and of the programs you want to install. Add extra space for breathing room. Make that your OS/boot partition and use the rest for data (pictures, documents, and such).

 

[philipbaker]

You didn't list which OS you will be using. You don't have to use partitions. You could make it the size of the entire drive. If you want to split it, just check the system requirements for the OS, and of the programs you want to install. Add extra space for breathing room. Make that your OS/boot partition and use the rest for data (pictures, documents, and such).

The os is windows 7 plus i will be putting on a share and stock programe that I think will take a fair bit of space . Is there a great benefit for splitting the drive?

 

[Hawkeye22]

The only real benefit is if you seperate your programs and data, then you can back them up seperately. For example, you have the OS and programs on C drive. You have all yor data (pictures, music, documents, and such) on D drive - the second partition. Now you can image the C drive and do a normal file backup of D. Now if the OS ever gets infected or corrupted you can restore the image without losing your data. In the future, you could even overwrite the OS with a new version and still have your data intact. Another benefit is it will take less time to backup your data since you won't need to backup the OS with it.

Basically, it's just a matter of preference.

 

[philipbaker]

The only real benefit is if you seperate your programs and data, then you can back them up seperately. For example, you have the OS and programs on C drive. You have all yor data (pictures, music, documents, and such) on D drive - the second partition. Now you can image the C drive and do a normal file backup of D. Now if the OS ever gets infected or corrupted you can restore the image without losing your data. In the future, you could even overwrite the OS with a new version and still have your data intact. Another benefit is it will take less time to backup your data since you won't need to backup the OS with it.

Basically, it's just a matter of preference.

Thanks for that Hawkeye it was very well explained. I do have one question though what do you mean by image the c drive and how do you do it. I think Samsung suggest a split on the hard drive 40% c drive and 60% d drive. Does that sound sensible in your experience? Cheers

 

[Hawkeye22]

You can use windows built in backup software to image the partition or use a free program like easeus To-Do Backup.

http://www.todo-backup.com/products/home/free-backup-software.htm

An image makes an exact copy/clone of the partition. Normally you do not have the option to restore single files from an image, instead it will restore the entire partition. A standard backup will backup individual files and folders andt thus you can restore individual files and folder. This is what you normally want for your data partition.

As for partition size, according to Microsoft - 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit) . So, you will need that amount of space for the OS + additional space for programs you want to install. It's better to overestimate than underestimate as it can prove to be difficult to resize the partitions later. A 40/60 split may not be bad, depending on the size of the drive.

 

[philipbaker]

You can use windows built in backup software to image the partition or use a free program like easeus To-Do Backup.

http://www.todo-backup.com/products/home/free-backup-software.htm

An image makes an exact copy/clone of the partition. Normally you do not have the option to restore single files from an image, instead it will restore the entire partition. A standard backup will backup individual files and folders andt thus you can restore individual files and folder. This is what you normally want for your data partition.

As for partition size, according to Microsoft - 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit) . So, you will need that amount of space for the OS + additional space for programs you want to install. It's better to overestimate than underestimate as it can prove to be difficult to resize the partitions later. A 40/60 split may not be bad, depending on the size of the drive.

Thanks the drive is 640gb

 

[Hawkeye22]

40% of 640 = 256Gb. It should be more than enough unless you are one of those people that doesn't uninstall their games when you finish playing them. Of course, that leaves 384gig for data. If you have tons of music, documents, and pics, you could probably even make this a bit larger.

Also, those are approximate sizes. Some space is used by the file system itself, so after partitioning and formatting you won't have exactly 640gig.

 

[philipbaker]

Thanks again. I will not have any games but I will have a stock and share programe that takes up 202 megs (oh so not as much as I thought)