partitioning and backup strategy etc.
in [Freeware]
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From: M.L. on 23 Jul 2010 16:01 >>>>I have always installed most programs to D: >>>>When I reinstall the operating system my programs are still sitting >>>>safely on D:. >>> >>>If you installed your programs under 'C:\Program Files' and took a >>>regular image of that partition, when you restored it the programs >>>would also be there without any further tinkering. >> >>But the imaging process would take longer and the final archive would >>be larger. One has to weigh that against the possible D drive >>tinkering afterwards. > >How much longer? How much larger? My C and D partitions are 34 and 13 GB respectively on my Vista system, so including the D drive imaging would take about 38% longer and the final archive would be about 38% larger, assuming the process is proportional. >Taking an image would certainly take longer if the C:\ partition also >contained the user's Program Files. In my case the complete C:\ >partition consumes 1.6GB with 0.9GB of that being Program Files. > >Taking an image of the whole lot takes ~45secs. Based upon my own >situation, the image size is currently ~1.2GB, without Program Files it >would be ~0.5GB. >For this I get all my programs included in the image - one single image >backup containing the Op/Sys, Program Files and of course the Registry. >Restore time is about 30secs using a Linux boot CD. > >All that said, there are other partitions I have which I mirror onto >other physical drives instead of imaging because they are so big and >the imaging time takes up to 25mins for a 640GB partition.
From: HTH on 23 Jul 2010 22:46 M.L. wrote: >My C and D partitions are 34 and 13 GB respectively on my Vista >system, so including the D drive imaging would take about 38% longer >and the final archive would be about 38% larger, assuming the process >is proportional. I doubt if adding 38% of files would add quite 38% more time since the imaging process only needs to start up once. And you don't say what disk space is used on each - do you really have 13GB of programs? and Vista really takes up 34GB? Whatever, one of my own partitions has 17GB of files on it and imaging it takes ~4.5mins. Adding 38% would add 1.7mins. I wouldn't think twice about adding that lot together. YMMV :-)
From: M.L. on 23 Jul 2010 23:11 >>My C and D partitions are 34 and 13 GB respectively on my Vista >>system, so including the D drive imaging would take about 38% longer >>and the final archive would be about 38% larger, assuming the process >>is proportional. >I doubt if adding 38% of files would add quite 38% more time since the >imaging process only needs to start up once. And you don't say what disk >space is used on each - do you really have 13GB of programs? and Vista >really takes up 34GB? The 250 GB drive apportions approx 116 GB to each. 34 and 13 GB represent the actual amount of used space on each drive. >Whatever, one of my own partitions has 17GB of files on it and imaging >it takes ~4.5mins. Adding 38% would add 1.7mins. I wouldn't think twice >about adding that lot together.
From: HTH on 24 Jul 2010 06:09 Robb wrote: >I appreciate your response and respect that you are trying to help me. quite so :-) It's a fairly interesting subject which often gets debated. >When I think back, I probably initiated installing my programs to D: in >my earlier Windows days when I was dual booting Windows versions or >sometimes also booting Ubuntu as a third option. That's a very good reason for setting things up the way you have. >Having installed my programs to D: meant that whatever Windows or >Ubuntu operating system I logged into, any changes I made to the data >on D: was available to all operating systems. When I put the current system together, I thought seriously about how to partition the HDDs (3x 640GB + 1x 500GB) and how to back them up, because multiple partitions have pros/cons as discussed recently in another thread. The major issue that came to light was whether Program Files should be alongside the Op/sys on C:\ or on a seperate partition. In view of my quite small Op/sys installation (0.6GB) and the advent of disk imaging, I decided to keep them all together like on the previous system, but then I don't multi-boot and have no plans to do so. But I still have a bunch of partitions to handle mirroring backups of audio/video etc so eg: the Audio partition on drive 1 is mirrored to the Audio-bu partition on drive 3 etc. For stuff which is very important I double backup: once as part of a regular image on a 2nd drive and once as a mirror on a 3rd drive. I think I worked out a backup regime which should mean that if any single HDD fails, I can always recover without loss. >Thanks all for your suggestions, I'm pretty comfortable doing things >the way I'm doing them and won't be making significant changes in >future.
From: HTH on 24 Jul 2010 12:57
M.L. wrote: >The 250 GB drive apportions approx 116 GB to each. 34 and 13 GB >represent the actual amount of used space on each drive. Wow! Is your installation of Vista fairly regular? or do you have a lot of other stuff on that partition? As said, my XP-Pro op/sys takes about 0.6GB of disk space and is fully functional, except for 'restore points' and 'indexing' disabled ...both superfluous for me. Ditto your Program Files: do you have a lot of biggy apps installed? Mine only take a trivial 0.9GB of disk space. HTH |