OS and files on seperate partitions...

mo786 · 18 Jan 2007 at 18:11

Hello all,

Thinking about another thread on this forum where peopel install their OS and files on seperate hard drives so that an OS **** up will not result in anythign happening to their files.

I don't have 2 seperate hard drives but I was planning on maybe doing a simialr thing over 2 seperate partitons...i.e on my 400gb drive give 10gb to OS and the rest to my files.

Anyone else done this and is it worth is? And what is the best make to make it seamless? i.e when I save a file to get it to save straight to the other HDD rather than continually having to browse to the other HDD.

Also would it work by having 380gb for files, 10gb for uBuntu and 10gb for Vista? Could I then save all my files to the 380gb section and access them from both OS's?

Finally what could cause the partitions to become messed up (other than a hard drive failure) i.e could a virus get onto my OS partition but still bugger up the other parts?

snowdog · 18 Jan 2007 at 18:28

I personally think its rubbish you need it for stability etc...

However there is a big advantage:

On the start of a HDD its a lot faster as on the end, so usually if you create partition 1 and 2, partition 1 is faster, thus if you keep windows on the 1st partition of the hdd, you ensure its on the fastest bit of the hard drive.

Heres a hdtach graph showing how performance decreases at the end of the hdd :

gumbald · 18 Jan 2007 at 18:33

Main benefit of having separate partitions: being able to format your OS partition and reinstall without having to wipe the rest of your data too. I used to have 50 out of 250 for Windows and Program Files, the rest for data, plus my other drive. After some bad Windows experiences, I've now given it a whole drive to itself...

Dual booting Vista and Ubuntu is not as simple for them sharing data, Ubuntu only has experimental support for NTFS if you add it in, so you'd have to format the rest of the data partition as FAT32, which has the 2gb file limit. If you did want to access files from both OSes, I'd suggest something like 50gb for Vista NTFS, 10gb Ubuntu ext3, 1gb swapspace, 40gb FAT32, and the remainder in NTFS.

Not having to find the other drive can be solved by something such as TweakUI, from which you can change the default folders for My Documents etc, or the shortcuts on the file open/save window.

Did I cover everything?

mo786 · 18 Jan 2007 at 21:06

Thanks for that. I might just leave a seperate partition for uBuntu as I am still only experimenting with it for now.

So would you suggest files on 1 partition and everythign else on the other? i am not too bothered about doing fresh installls of all of my software after an OS reinstall

how would you go about it? install vista on the first aprtition and then get it to recognise and format the next partition and then just basically use it as an addon drive?