I’m getting a 1TB drive from work, to add to the 500GB already in the machine. When I installed Windows I made the OS partition too small, so I’ll probably rebuild the whole thing.

Is it a good idea to make one partition for Windows only? Or one for Windows and apps?

Most of the disk space is taken up with VMs for different build environments, which is where I do most of my work. But backing up the work on these VMs could be tricky, so I think maybe I’ll create a shared area on the main disk and put all the workspaces there for easy backup. Backing up the whole VMs would be difficult, since they run to 100s of GB in total and I’m sure more will come.

Any advice?

I split my Windows drive into two partitions, one for Windows stuff and Apps and another for data. That way if windows corrupts the file table my data partition will be ok (assuming it doesn’t corrupt that one as well).

All a bit irrelevant now I sync the whole partition to Dropbox.

I’m thinking Windows and apps together, then some data on the main drive and VMs on the other.

+1 – and very glad I do, not because I’ve ever had a disk corrupt, but it does make it easier to reinstall from scratch without touching my data. Have also wished the disk was partitioned like that when it was a single partition with OS/apps/data all in one.

At one point I was making 3 partitions on a disk, one for OS, one for apps (and their associated fixed data), one for user data, but realised it didn’t really add anything useful to separate OS and apps like that as if I reinstall the OS I’d also reinstall the apps. I have a feeling I once made 4 partitions for an install…

Not that MS makes it easy to do such a basic thing – on my laptops where they have a recovery partition rather than standard install discs it involves quite a bit of faff with creating dummy users which then get deleted once I’ve moved where Windows wants to put the data. If you do have proper install media then you can make an unattend script.

Scratched, as I just re-read your OP. Silly me.

I split mine between one partition for windows and apps, and a separate partition for my vms. seemed a logical idea at the time, but really there isn’t much benefit in reality.

If you are into your disk encryption software then you might want to think it through a bit more. i use bitlocker and its fine for my needs. it does of course make it impossible to recover any data from a boot cd, but that’s the whole point.

i put my normal workfiles/documents to skydrive folder, and for any data in the vms, id just install a normal backup agent, as for the most part, the data contained within them is tiny compared to the actual vms size (os etc.). or setup a wee batch file to copy them off to a nas.

if your using vmware workstation, you can just drag and drop your vms to a fully fledged VC which could act as a sort of backup i guess.

I can’t use NAS or Skydrive for backups, this is work – I have to be standalone. All I have is a 750GB portable disk.

Given that I have two drives now, is it worth putting apps on one disk and windows on the other? Of course, outside the VMs there’s not much in the way of apps beyond email and office.

Oh and what’s a VC?

Put the disks in.

Put the data where you want.

Make backups of your data.

??

Profit.

The whole OS / data / apps / swap file /etc partitioning idea is twenty year old good advice. Are you running Windows 95? Then stop buggering about.

Why dis it matter then and not now?

if your using vmware workstation – you can just setup a shared folder on the vm in question to your portable drive on your laptop. copy the files off to it via a batch file or whatever unixy type script you may need.

so, for example your f: usb portable drive can show up inside the vm as z:. “copy c:\imporantsecretfiles\ z:\vm1\” . bosh.

i’d just lump apps and windows on the one drive. vms on the other for performance. presumably disk space isnt an issue. SSD ftw.

VC – virtual center server. the expensive vmware.

Not point partitioning drives these days, it used to be common due to file system limitations meaning you wouldn’t be able to use the whole drive unless you partitioned it.

FuzzyWuzzy, I know it’s not needed any more, but you can use it these days to limit fragmentation and keep the stuff you use most together in the fastest part of the disk.

I’d listen to Cougar, he normally speaks sense when it comes to ‘puters.

I do listen to him but he hasn’t replied yet to my follow on questoin 🙂

…and molgrips (and some of the rest of us) also knows something about computers.

Thanks aracer 🙂

Also if you have two disks you can put apps on one and windows on the other so it can load both simultaneously which should increase speed.