Partitioning a 2tb hd for Windows 7 64 bit

[GreyCloud]

I always to a clean install and use Linux Mint.


The RAM I use is CE by Kingston. I haven't had any of the problems your
link refers to.

That is because there is nothing in software or hardware that will tell
you that you've got a problem. The article is quite firm about this.
All ram without any detection will eventually corrupt data.
This is a known fact.

 

[Mike Tomlinson]

I must be lucky, then, because all my data is just fine and has been
since 97

How do you know? (serious question)

 

[Rod Speed]

Rod Speed wrote

Not really.

Yes, really.

My laptop keeps going on battery for hours after a mains failure,

And desktops don't.

and everything else is on a UPS that's good for about 90 mins. Home type
UPSs aren't so expensive these days.

Most don't have them.

And they don't last anything like as long as the PC that's on them.

 

[Rod Speed]

That is because there is nothing in software or hardware that will tell
you that you've got a problem.

Wrong. There are plenty of checks that do just that.

The article is quite firm about this.

Its just plain wrong on that and doesn't say anything like that anyway.

All ram without any detection will eventually corrupt data.
This is a known fact.

But its also a known fact that there are other ways to detect that when it
happens.

 

[Ed Light]

Most of us have Rod Speed filtered out, for past malevolence.

I'd say anyone that can ask the right question in the right area, can
handle it. About the only thing that would be hard, is the size you'd
make the "system", and that was what was ask.

30 Gigs should be ok, but if you anticipate loading it up particularly
heavily with programs then you could make it 50. Especially if you run
System Restore with alot of space for many captures.You can put all data in your own folder tree on the Data drive, not in
Win's tree. _You can Google how to change, like Thunderbird's tree of
mail and settings to another place.

It's very easy under Windows 7. Almost no data is stored anywhere but
the "user" folder. My entire "User" folder is not even on my "System"
drive.

How did you move it? Just drag it? I haven't been reading the whole thread.
I copied my system to the end of the disk and booted it up. It booted
alot slower, as on a previous generation of HD. The end of a HD is close
to half the speed of the beginning. Less platter flying by.

Very true.

But most people would use one partition. Could you, if you have several,
say that one of the partitions is short stroked?

You know of a free one that's a "non trivial exercise"? Even my paid
one, only a computer "geek" would know what folders NOT to select to do a
real system backup, but not get the data. No you can't just exclude the
"user" folder (system would not boot!).

With the imager in Boot It Bare Metal, Image for DOS, (note this all
runs from boot before loading a boot menu item) you have to image the
whole partition. It's not for backing up data. You can exclude the
hibernation and swap files - they'll be reconstructed empty on restore.

Hope I haven't answered Rod here. Have him blocked.
OK. But I copy them to an external HD. When I'm imaging I'd rather not
image to the external, and this way I have 2 copies in case the external
or main gois down. So not "Mad".

Then you've never used portableapps. They have their own "data" area in
the portable folder. Just like a full blown system, but no data is added
to the system. True, there are some limits, like you can not use file
"opens with", but if you do the "open" inside the program, it works just
like any other program.

You can actually install portable apps on the main HD or 2nd HD and then
you give the opens with honor. I have them on a TrueCrypted partition.
If it's not mounted, then you get an error.

I'd NEVER use it for MY system, but it's still

very user friendly for "visiting" someone elses system when you don't
have install rights. Friend uses it ALL the time at work.

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[Ed Light]

I would never do the 3 partition system. Just gets in the way down the
road.

It does let you defrag system or data without having to defrag your
latest gigabytes of video
System
Data
Multimedia
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[Rod Speed]

David Simpson wrote

It does let you defrag system or data without
having to defrag your latest gigabytes of video
System
Data
Multimedia

No point in furiously defragging anymore.

 

[Paul]

No point in furiously defragging anymore.

The built-in defragmenter in Windows 7, will not defrag files of
50MB in size or larger. This is part of the reason it is so much
faster. Nothing in your video folder would be of interest to it.

But a third-party tool would still be interested. If you pay
$39.95 for a tool to do this, it'll make everything "neat as a pin".
That's because the third-party designers, know their user community
too well.

Paul

 

[David Simpson]

30 Gigs should be ok, but if you anticipate loading it up particularly
heavily with programs then you could make it 50. Especially if you run
System Restore with alot of space for many captures.

With a 2TB drive, why squish it. My dad's Vista machine is at 90GB all the
time, with system restore. (out of 1TB, because 1TB is better that 500G,
when you only use 35GB! I was not there to buy that drive. ;-) )

You can put all data in your own folder tree on the Data drive, not in
Win's tree. _You can Google how to change, like Thunderbird's tree of
mail and settings to another place.

Very easy. I truely like the Library thing they added. (which I
personally don't use, as I've been doing the same thing under XP for ages.
But because of all this talk, I may switch to! It's too easy not to!)

How did you move it? Just drag it? I haven't been reading the whole
thread.

I did not want to post this, as it really should ONLY be done on a 2 DISK
(not partition) system, and then ONLY if the system disk is a SSD. This
saves massive amounts of writes to the SSD, as except maybe for TEMP, is
the number one most written to location on the system, after install and
patches. You should also move "TEMP". If you don't know how to change
"TEMP" DO NOT TRY THIS EVEN IF YOU HAVE A ssd/hd SETUP!!!

Again, the User folder is pretty small, so this is NOT for backup reasons,
and you HAVE to backup this new location any time you backup your system,
to get the latest system setting, and now you can LOOSE YOUR SYSTEM if
EITHER drive fails. (in my case, any of 4 drives fail, I have to restore)


DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I"VE SAID ABOVE!!! (Yes, I did the caps for a
reason!!! This is not something to do "because")


So, back to the question, NO, the "User" folder replaces the "Documents and
Settings" folder from XP (not "My Documents", which can be moved). You
can't just move it, as it contains system settings too, is locked after
booting in any mode except "safe", and you can't boot without those files.

BTW, the "Document and Settings" folder you see on Vista and W7 system
drives is a NTFS symbolic link to the "User" folder, not a real folder.
(this was done by Microsoft because some programs hard coded the path, when
they should have read the path from the system)

To "move" it, you do the following, in general.

1. Install system and patch.

2. Copy (not move) C:\User to the location you want it. (this new location
MUST be present when Windows is booting, not after login. In other words,
an internal drive) Use a program that copies all files, including
locked/system ones. (I used Macrium Reflect paid version, free version
cannot do folder backups. I think robocopy can do it too, with the right
options)

3. In Safe mode, rename the C:\User folder. (in case you miss something,
you have a copy, and you can just rename it back)

4. Still in safe mode, use the mklink command to create a NTFS symbolic
link named C:\User to the location you made in step 1.

5. Reboot, and if you did it correctly, and things run OK, delete the
folder you renamed in step 2.

Here is a link for step by step instructions:
http://lifehacker.com/5467758/move-the-users-directory-in-windows-7


Or, if you want, you can learn Windows system installer script and make it
at system time. (believe it or not, the first way is MUCH easier)

I copied my system to the end of the disk and booted it up. It booted
alot slower, as on a previous generation of HD. The end of a HD is
close to half the speed of the beginning. Less platter flying by.

A good defrag program can keep "needed" things in the correct location,
and is a lot easier to do, even if you make only 1 partition. Nice free
one is MyDefrag. The built in one is garbage.

But most people would use one partition. Could you, if you have
several, say that one of the partitions is short stroked?

You get the effect some what, as long as that program doesn't need anything
on another partition. So, but lets say you click on a mp3 file at the end
of your disk. First thing that happends is you load you mp3 playing
program. It's in the system partition at the beginning. Head moves there.
It then loads and gets the files name, then it goes to the end of the disk,
where the mp3 is. long delay (relitively speaking) A worse case, you have
your programs on a second one. Program starts loading, but needs a DLL,
Oops, that's on system, go there, back to program, then another DLL, etc.

Now if you replace the word "partition" above with "disk", all that goes
away! Windows would work very well with 3 very fast HDs, but at that
point, you'd be better with a SSD/HD combo.

Short stroking is ONLY using the outer most tracks. You buy a 1TB drive,
and only use 100-200GB, never partition or format the rest. When you are
building a $10-20K server, buying a few extra 1TB drives is not a big deal.
Track to track speed is average for the WHOLE disk. Track to nearby track
is much faster. Still much slower than a single track access, though.

This won't be done much longer, as SSD are making their way into Enterprise
even faster than gamers, though with the price changing, and 60-120GB SSD
makes a GREAT speed increaser. All my new desktop will be built that way.

OK. But I copy them to an external HD. When I'm imaging I'd rather not
image to the external, and this way I have 2 copies in case the
external or main gois down. So not "Mad".

As long as that is also part of the "system" backup process, you are fine.
Don't delete the last image on the external disk, until you finish coping
the new one! ;-)

My system backup is as follows:
Backup C: to E:\Backups
Backup D:\User to E:\Backups
(yes, 3 drives).

Clean out older versions on E:\Backups, make new CRC file. System backup
time is about 15 minutes. About 9:30 that night, the new files are copied
to my local server, where the old ones still are. Next day, run CRC check.
If crc passes, delete old files.

Run backup program on server and make 2 copies to eSATA HDs. Run CRC on
those disk. If pass, remove files from eSATA drives.

When visiting dad (250 miles away, use sneaker (car) net to copy my images
to his server. I do the same for his systems. Most of the time, the off
site files are 2 or 3 monthes out of date, but that's just in case of a
total system loss. (as in fire/flood)

My data files backup daily, and then nightly to dad's.

QED

You can actually install portable apps on the main HD or 2nd HD and
then you give the opens with honor. I have them on a TrueCrypted
partition. If it's not mounted, then you get an error.

That was Rod. Yes, that is the way my friend does it at work, except with
a small external HD.

I just use my phone, which I really like, but battery tech needs to advance
a bit to make them really nice. I want a week, low/mid usage before I'll
be happy. Oops, I degress!



--
_______________________________________________
/ David Simpson \
| (e-mail address removed) |
| http://www.nyx.net/~dsimpson |
|We got to go to the crappy town where I'm a hero.|
\_______________________________________________/

 

[David Simpson]

It does let you defrag system or data without having to defrag your
latest gigabytes of video
System
Data
Multimedia

Just use a newer defrag program with "zones". My multimedia files never
move, unless I screw with them. Try MyDefrag, and make a custom
script.



--
_______________________________________________
/ David Simpson \
| (e-mail address removed) |
| http://www.nyx.net/~dsimpson |
|We got to go to the crappy town where I'm a hero.|
\_______________________________________________/

 

[Mike Tomlinson]

I guess I don't really know for sure because I haven't tested all my
data individually but everything I use works fine. Recently I did take a
look at some really old photos and all were well and some date back to 97.

Thanks. I wondered if you did anything like calculating a checksum at
the time of creating the file and checking it at intervals afterwards to
see if bit rot had set in.

You're not going to notice subtle corruption in things like image files,
sound files, videos, etc.

The problem with memory bit rot is when critical system files get read
into bad memory then written back out to disk. You get a slow,
insidious corruption of the system and the subsequent lockups and
crashes are put down to "Windows just does that".

 

[Rod Speed]

Rod Speed wrote

The built-in defragmenter in Windows 7, will not defrag files of 50MB in
size or larger.

Because the fragmentation of those doesn’t matter
a damn, because the rate at which they are played is
entirely determined by the media play speed, so some
additional seeks between fragments isnt even observable.

This is part of the reason it is so much faster. Nothing in your video
folder would be of interest to it.

And they wouldn’t be moved even if they were
in the same folder as the other data files.

But a third-party tool would still be interested. If you pay
$39.95 for a tool to do this, it'll make everything "neat as a pin".

Because they don’t have a clue about what fragmentation matters.

 

[GreyCloud]

I must be lucky, then, because all my data is just fine and has been
since 97. Either that or the article, firm as it may be, is incorrect.

Most likely for most, lucky in that it hasn't hit anything critical... yet.
If you did have error detection in your hardware, you would've seen them
reported to you. What you don't have is detection between cpu to ram...
cpu to hard disk... cable connector to cable connector... detection on
the hard drive electronics themselves... any write error detection...
etc. That is why your average user PC is very low cost. A good system
will cost you over $10,000 easily.
And nowhere in linux will you see any software embedded in the kernel
that detects hardware errors let alone soft errors.
Same goes for the mac, in that their back up system called Time Machine
will happily backup any corrupted data to an external drive. Nothing is
done there for data verification for its validity.

 

[GreyCloud]

I guess I don't really know for sure because I haven't tested all my
data individually but everything I use works fine. Recently I did take a
look at some really old photos and all were well and some date back to 97.

They may look fine, but I'd say that the data that comprises the whole
picture will have at least one or two pixels that don't match. In this
case it doesn't matter, but for monetary records one bit mismatch could
be a disaster.

 

[GreyCloud]

Wrong. There are plenty of checks that do just that.

No, there are many places on your mobo that won't check for it.
That is why servers use ECC ram. For mission critical services, you
need checks not only in ram but across the bus, between cpu to ram,
between cpu to the hard drive... and between one end of a data cable to
the other end of the data cable. The old DEC VAXes did do this level of
checking, which during its time was rather expensive. The system also
logged any errors to the system error log and on the operator console.
In the error logs you'd see which ram address had bit loss, which
register in the cpu had a bit loss problem and which bit, problems
between the data connectors to the hard drive or back then the tape
units as well. Today's consumer pcs are cheap because there isn't
anywhere near this level of checking needed. But you will need it if
you are doing mission critical services.

Its just plain wrong on that and doesn't say anything like that anyway.

It is very emphatic about it.

But its also a known fact that there are other ways to detect that when
it happens.

Such as?

 

[Ed Light]

The built-in defragmenter in Windows 7, will not defrag files of
50MB in size or larger. This is part of the reason it is so much
faster. Nothing in your video folder would be of interest to it.

But a third-party tool would still be interested. If you pay
$39.95 for a tool to do this, it'll make everything "neat as a pin".
That's because the third-party designers, know their user community
too well.

Paul

That's very handy to know. Thanks. I was using jkdefrag gui. I'll have
to check if it can do that -- it's on another boot item from the one I'm
using at the moment. I know there is a free one on portableapps.com that
can do it. Forgot its name.
--
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Iraq Veterans Against the War and Related:
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[Ed Light]

With a 2TB drive, why squish it. My dad's Vista machine is at 90GB all the
time, with system restore. (out of 1TB, because 1TB is better that 500G,
when you only use 35GB! I was not there to buy that drive. ;-) )

It's to get the ultimate speed by letting the head move around shorter
distances. But on a 2TB, it wouldn't be going very far, would it? Hadn't
thought of that.
...........

Thanks for the tutorial!

I'm definitely not hip to networking and CRC's.
But I keep a portable HD with backups in a safe deposit box.
Also, I have all my unloseable files encrypted by "backup4all portable"
to a 32G thumb drive in my pocket at all times! And those backups with
the program copied back to my system's 2nd HD.

I didn't know Roddy alters other peoples' posts. Maybe he is underworld,
and will seek each of us out in real life with a sniper rifle.

--
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Better World News TV Channel:
http://realnews.com

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[Rod Speed]

Alias wrote

Most likely for most, lucky in that it hasn't hit anything critical...yet.

Most likely for most, it hasn't actually hit anything at all...ever.

If you did have error detection in your hardware, you would've seen them
reported to you.

Nope. Those who religiously do CRCs on their files don't.

And those who do run ECC memory don't either.

What you don't have is detection between cpu to ram... cpu to hard disk...

That's just plain wrong with both of those with CRCs on files moved.

cable connector to cable connector...

That's just plain wrong, there are CRCs at that level.

detection on the hard drive electronics themselves...

That's just plain wrong, there are CRCs at that level.

any write error detection...

That's just plain wrong, you can turn that on with most drives if you want
to.

etc.

There is no etc.

That is why your average user PC is very low cost.

ECC systems don't cost that much more.

A good system will cost you over $10,000 easily.

Mindlessly silly.

And nowhere in linux will you see any software embedded in the kernel that
detects hardware errors let alone soft errors.

That's just plain wrong.

Same goes for the mac, in that their back up system called Time Machine
will happily backup any corrupted data to an external drive.

And if you apply CRCs to those files, you will find that they don't get
corrupted.

Nothing is done there for data verification for its validity.

That's just plain wrong and you can do that if you want to anyway.

 

[Rod Speed]

Alias wrote

They may look fine, but I'd say that the data that comprises the whole
picture will have at least one or two pixels that don't match.

More fool you. Its completely trivial to prove that they don't.

In this case it doesn't matter, but for monetary records one bit mismatch
could be a disaster.

Fantasy. And trivial to ensure that they don't anyway.

 

[Ed Light]

Just use a newer defrag program with "zones". My multimedia files never
move, unless I screw with them. Try MyDefrag, and make a custom
script.

What do you think of Smart Defrag? It's free and appears to do that stuff.

http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html

--
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