TSGL: what to do with a FOUR GIG drive?

[Don Penlington]

Chuck wrote:
>Is it preferable to partition a drive that big into two  or more logical
>drives?>>


Yes, definitely. I'd go along with what Engineman says--I also have mine in 
3 partitions.

If ever XP goes awol on you (it can happen even in the best of families), 
and you need to reformat and reinstall the OS, you only have to reformat 
the C-partition and won't lose all your data on the other partition(s). 
Also, the system will eventually need a good cleanout sooner or later. 
Nothing beats a reformat and reinstall (except an image replacement, 
virtually the same thing without the pain).

A little hint for later--- make a backup of the C/Documents and Settings 
folder once you have all your basic software installed and the computer 
setup as you want it---perhaps a month of so after it's first set up. Just 
ensure that there's nothing stored in the My Pictures/Music etc 
folders---these should be in your data partition. There's a special way to 
move these inbuilt folders out of the C-drive. This should be done at the 
start so that these data don't clutter up the C-Drive.

Then, if you ever have to reinstall XP, you can replace most of your 
settings in one simple hit. If you also make a backup of the registry (use 
ERD for that) then you won't even have to reinstall most of your programs. 
But you need to do it fairly early, before the system gets a chance to 
accumulate much crud.

A better alternative is to "image" the C partition---but I think you said 
you don't have any imaging software such as Acronis, which is quite 
expensive. Imaging is different from copying.

Don Penlington


 From the Beach at Surfers Paradise in sunny Queensland.
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