How do you organise your HD & files?

Doublespresso

I am about to change my laptop to a new one. I will have about 100GB of HD.

I wanted to ask here, what do you think is the best way to organise the HD in terms of partionings and how do you keep your files in good order, allwoing to find work quickly as well as for easy backups etc.

Thanks for any input.

bookduck

firstly partitioning is not use the space in the most effective way. It may however make easier recovery and slightly faster usage. Also defragmentation only really needs to be done on the areas that have the most read access i.e boot and system partitions.

I'd make the very first partition on the drive boot and swap (3 or 4gb plus a few hundred mb more just incase.

Second partition id make the system partition depending on your apps/temp files/dvd burner temp images, around 8gb to16gb. This is for all you installed operating system files and essential programs (essential to you getting your system up and running (like drivers, winrar, possibly nero?)

Third, and remaining partition is for data and non essential apps like office, winamp, docs.

on the third partition it is faily easy to mirror the second partition in the form of layout, so when an app want to install to "second partiton":\program files\.... you change the drive letter only to point to "third partiton":\program files\....

totalsolutions

Modern OS it is not recommended. 100G is not much. Have backups of your data.

esuhl

I have a small FAT32 partition to boot from, then one partition for each of my operating systems (I have 1 Linux and 2 Windows installations - one for work, one to install junk like iPlayer, games, etc.), then a partition for each level of importance for my personal files (i.e. data that I would be devastated to lose gets one partition, data that I would be annoyed to lose gets another, and data I don't care about gets another).

So I have:

Disk 1:
1: Boot partition (FAT32)
2: Windows main installation (NTFS)
3: Windows gaming/streaming installation (NTFS)
4: Linux partition (EXT3)

Disk 2:
1: Data (NTFS - backed up as a priority - cannot lose data!)
2: Music (NTFS - backed up quite often)
3: Video (NTFS - rarely backed up - don't care if I lose it)
4: Windows swap (NTFS)
5: Linux swap (Linux Swap)

Disk 3 & Disk 4: 1 partition on each drive, used for backups.

Disk 5: External drive for Data partition backups (not large enough to back up everything else on this drive).

Hope this helps...

superscaper

Don't see any point to having partitions except when installing multiple operating systems (then it's a necessity, unless you're using virtual OSes etc). There's no real advantage to them that can't simply be done with folders. The idea that they're somehow useful in "backing up" is rather odd IMHO as well. I've never had a situation where having partitions made any difference in restoring from any kind of failure and the only times I've had data loss type failures it's been the entire hard drive that's failed anyway.

I've got 2 hard drives and even then they're still just one partition (in RAID striped configuration). Entire partition is kept imaged onto an external hard drive. But saving my data alone is usually mostly a matter of copying "My Docs".

BillScarab

No partitions for me. It's just as easy to back up the 'My Documents' folder as it is the partition that contains 'My documents'. Defragging isn't an issue as I rarely defrag anyway as the improvemnet it brings on most systems is barely noticeable and if I do bother I kick it off overnight or while I am doing something else so the time taken is irrelevant.

chunter

superscaper wrote: »

Don't see any point to having partitions except when installing multiple operating systems (then it's a necessity, unless you're using virtual OSes etc). There's no real advantage to them that can't simply be done with folders. The idea that they're somehow useful in "backing up" is rather odd IMHO as well. I've never had a situation where having partitions made any difference in restoring from any kind of failure and the only times I've had data loss type failures it's been the entire hard drive that's failed anyway.

I've got 2 hard drives and even then they're still just one partition (in RAID striped configuration). Entire partition is kept imaged onto an external hard drive. But saving my data alone is usually mostly a matter of copying "My Docs".

To be honest, for a single OS, I agree. The odd time it's been useful when reformat/reinstall windows, but it's rare.
Xp doesn't make it easy for the ordinary mucker to set his "my docs" to the partition so it's rarely used for the most practical use.
You can alway stick your music in there..

I think external hard drives now make partitioning less practical.

Aiadi

No partitions for me either but I created four TrueCrypt containers on my HD one for my documents, one for my music files, the other for my pictures and the fourth for my downloads. They are easily organised and backing them up to external drives is straightforward. They will also make sure my files are safe in the event the laptop is stolen/ lost.

superscaper

Aiadi wrote: »

No partitions for me either but I created four TrueCrypt containers on my HD one for my documents, one for my music files, the other for my pictures and the fourth for my downloads. They are easily organised and backing them up to external drives is straightforward. They will also make sure my files are safe in the event the laptop is stolen/ lost.

How confidential is your music? I know the iTunes EULA prevents you from building weapons of mass destruction but.....

I really need to start using Truecrypt more, it is a fantastic program and demonstrates all the positive aspects of open source.

isofa

Although I agree there probably isn't any need with a single OS, I still have partitions on my single (and multi OS) machines, both desktops and laptops. And I still like working in this manner, similar reasons to esuhl, data that is critical on one partition, data that is important but not critial on another, etc.

On Windows machines, I always have a standard C drive for the OS usually about a third or a quarter of the space, then a general data partition, then a critical work partition, then if the drive is large enough, a forth smaller temp/scratch partition for net cache, VM, scratch discs etc.

On one of my Macs which runs multiple OSes, I have 2 main drives each partitioned into 2, I personally find it useful.

Depends how you work, it can help keep areas less fragmented and add some order to systems.

I also like to run a full backup on the most important partitions regularly, I know this could be achieved easily using folders, but I have very large projects critical to my work, so I prefer to have some separation, my folders nest deeply!

Re the Truecypt via Aiadi - do you backup the files unencrypted, or just backup the encrypted containers? Just concerned that if the container file became corrupt and also the backup, you'd not loose one file, but potentially all files (although hopefully you'll have a backup history), whereas a separate file backup, although more insecure, would be more robust.

Aiadi

superscaper wrote: »

How confidential is your music?

That is a top secret......... No seriously, I wouldn't want some low-life (in the event of my laptop getting stolen) to enjoy anything that I have spent my hard-earned cash on. More importantly though, it makes all my files quite tidy and I can just drag these TrueCrypt containers (4 files in total) and drop them into any drive or memory to create an immediate backup.