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Partitioning Hard Drives

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dik

dik

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Apr 13, 2001
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Is there a valid reason for setting up partitions on hard drives? I generally set the partitions at about 2TB each, a carry over from the good old days... but, don't have a real reason for why.

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik
 
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Well, if you want to back them up to physical media under your control, 2TB Passports are pretty reasonable these days.


Mike Halloran
Corinth, NY, USA
 
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Thanks, Mike... That's why I partitioned them in the first place... to allow smaller drives, but is there any reason to do this today... I can get a 10 TB portable for about $300CAN.

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik
 
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My main backup drive is a 10TB formatted NTFS as a single partition... My other backup drive is a 4TB M.2, PCIe 4, formatted NTFS. My main file system is C:, an M.2 2TB, D: an M.2 2TB, and E: to H: as partitions on an 8TB HDD; each drive has a name. I'll be transferring files to my new computer, which accommodates PCIe 4, with similar drives and will create directories using the same names as my drive names and don't plan to partition.

Is there a reason that I should?

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik
 
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What the heck do you need multiples of 2TB for??! I have 30 years of stuff on my computer including tens of thousands of large format photos, a bunch of movies, hundreds of drawings including 3D, and thousands of product PDFs. I'm clear up to about 700GB. I use a 4TB passport to back up 6 computers with multiple copies.

Wait let me guess you're hosting a 100 porn sites.
2pt4b3o.gif


Keith Cress
kcress -
 
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Nope... not yet. The M.2s are used for OS and some drivers and the other M.2 is used for applications... the HDD is used for data... I have lots of memory... not going to run out...

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik
 
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Whatever the size of your storage, it'll always be 95% full. Like your garage. It's easier to keep small storage places sensibly clean and tidy.

Steve
 
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It's easier to keep small storage places sensibly clean and tidy.
Click to expand...

Either way can be messy; I've got lots of small boxes of stuff, but can't keep track of the boxes.

There are, however, good utilities for finding stuff on multiple hard drives, provided you have good file names. This one works well for me.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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"Valid" reasons:

System restore: This is typically a default for computes that ship with Windows. Allows recovery from a data corruption that kills your OS. Not likely to help if the drive suffers physical trauma.

Data backup: Could save you if your main partition fails in a "soft" way. Not likely to help if the drive suffers physical trauma.

Multi OS boot: You must have separate partions for each OS. You can have another partition for data that can be accessed by both.

There might be some added data isolation or security options.
 
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MintJulep: thanks...

System restore: This is typically a default for computes that ship with Windows. Allows recovery from a data corruption that kills your OS. Not likely to help if the drive suffers physical trauma.
That's why I use the M.2 drives for OS and apps because of their speed and they're a lot faster with PCIe 4... and HDD for data storage... I've heard that M.2s are less prone to failure than HDDs (something to think about in future).

Data backup: Could save you if your main partition fails in a "soft" way. Not likely to help if the drive suffers physical trauma.
Yup... see above. What I'm doing with my current build is using the HDD for backup with drives E to G as folders rather than partitions.

Multi OS boot: You must have separate partions for each OS. You can have another partition for data that can be accessed by both.
Good idea... my son has asked for years that I do a Linux partition.

There might be some added data isolation or security options.
Don't know either...

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik
 
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I just bought a new-to-me HP Z220 with a 2TB hard drive and a 120ish GB SSD.
It arrived with a BIOS option to use the SSD as a meta- cache for the HDD. Seems to work fine.

It also arrived 'with' Win10Pro, but kept trying to do a PxE boot instead of booting from the hard drive as I expected.
Which meant it had an authorization code stored in the BIOS that would 'authorize' Win10 installation from an ISO downloaded from MS.
First and last partitions were empty. The big one was nearly full. But I couldn't get any of them to mount in any Linux I had.
The downloaded W10 ISO was 5.6GB, too big for any DVD recorder I own, so I put it on a USB drive.
... which wouldn't boot. Given the publicity W10 has gotten recently, I took that as an omen.

... and installed Fedora32, letting it reclaim all the space on the drive for its own use.
Working fine so far...



Mike Halloran
Corinth, NY, USA
 
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Was the HP part of a server/network system?

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik
 
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Rotating drives do have certain failure modalities, but flash drives are not exactly immune; flash drives have somewhat limited R/W cycle life, i.e., you can only read/write so many times into any given bit before a wearout mechanism degrades that bit. some amount of wear loading is required to evenly distribute the R/W cycles across the entire drive

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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IRS: Yup... a lot of read-writes, though...

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik
 
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The HP Z220 was designed for a corporate environment, where downtime just isn't tolerated.
I've read the user manual once so far, and it's amazing.
It can be, and obviously was, used with a PxE boot scheme.
The refurbishers seemed pretty limited in understanding details like that,
or setting it up to boot from a hard drive, or much of anything 'technical'.


If I read right, the computer can be remotely shut down, started, rebooted, updated, whatever.
When that fails, you send in your parts changer, and expect his/her immediate return with the unsat part.
All the parts except the motherboard can be replaced in seconds without tools. You just grab the latch on the cover, and pull up to open and remove it.
Then the power supply and the drives sort of tilt up like little dump trucks, and everything just unplugs.
Even the cards that plug into the motherboard are retained by a fancy multiple clamp, no screws.

It's a pretty sophisticated piece of mechanical engineering.



Mike Halloran
Corinth, NY, USA
 
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Maybe with a little electrical stuff thrown in... I was not familiar with PxE before... and my son clued me in...

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik
 
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