TeraByte Unlimited

I would like opinions on the following choice.

I set up my friends laptop to use the following partitioning scheme:

10 GB V Virtual (for pagefile)
40 GB C System
600 GB D Data
50 GB Z Recovery (for system images and documentation)
(sizes approximate)

Now he's outgrown the 40GB and I need to repartition. I'm thinking of 100GB for Win7 on the C drive. However my other problem is that the size of system images means that the 50GB recovery partition Z can only store one current image and the original setup image. So I also need to expand Z.

So I'm thinking of scrapping the Z drive and just storing images on a separate folder in D (which will now be approx 590GB), rather than just increasing Z at the expense of drive D. Then I don't have to worry about running out of space on Z until the whole physical disc becomes inadequate.

Is there any downside to doing this bearing in mind that now there will be a number of large 4GB files (images are limited to 4GB chunks so they can be backed up on a FAT32 external drive). Will the access to everyday document files on D be slowed down? Maybe I'm worrying unnecessarily?

Any opinions will be gratefully received.

On Mon, 27 Aug 2012 11:55:29 PDT, just as I was about to take a herb,
rustleg disturbed my reverie and wrote:

>I would like opinions on the following choice.
>
>I set up my friends laptop to use the following partitioning scheme:
>
> 10 GB V Virtual (for pagefile)
> 40 GB C System
>600 GB D Data
> 50 GB Z Recovery (for system images and documentation)
>(sizes approximate)
>
>Now he's outgrown the 40GB and I need to repartition. I'm thinking of 100GB for Win7 on the C drive. However my other problem is that the size of system images means that the 50GB recovery partition Z can only store one current image and the original setup image. So I also need to expand Z.
>
>So I'm thinking of scrapping the Z drive and just storing images on a separate folder in D (which will now be approx 590GB), rather than just increasing Z at the expense of drive D. Then I don't have to worry about running out of space on Z until the whole physical disc becomes inadequate.
>
>Is there any downside to doing this bearing in mind that now there will be a number of large 4GB files (images are limited to 4GB chunks so they can be backed up on a FAT32 external drive). Will the access to everyday document files on D be slowed down? Maybe I'm worrying unnecessarily?
>
>Any opinions will be gratefully received.
>

The drive is being used very inefficiently IMHO. 10GB for a
pagefile...not needed. I have 8GB RAM and a 4GB page file (Win 7 x64)

Cannot see any point in keeping the data separate unless one wants it
to be accessible to multiple OSs.

I'd suggest an external hard drive.
--

Cheers

DrT
______________________________
We may not be able to prevent the stormy times in
our lives; but we can always choose whether or not
to dance in the puddles (Jewish proverb).

DrTeeth wrote:
> ...
> > 10 GB V Virtual (for pagefile)
> > 40 GB C System
> >600 GB D Data
> > 50 GB Z Recovery (for system images and documentation)
> >(sizes approximate)
> >
>
> The drive is being used very inefficiently IMHO. 10GB for a
> pagefile...not needed. I have 8GB RAM and a 4GB page file (Win 7 x64)
>

Yes maybe the pagefile space is a too big - I think I set up an 8GB pagefile (4GB RAM Win7 x64). The point of keeping most of the pagefile on a different partition is to avoid fragmentation - maybe not necessary? Used to do this with XP maybe Win7's more efficient? (Also was previously to avoid imaging the pagefile with the C drive until Terabyte included this option in the image program)

> Cannot see any point in keeping the data separate unless one wants it
> to be accessible to multiple OSs.
>
Ok thanks

> I'd suggest an external hard drive.

He has an external drive which is used to back up the data including system images.

On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 09:43:59 PDT, just as I was about to take a herb,
rustleg disturbed my reverie and wrote:

>Yes maybe the pagefile space is a too big - I think I set up an 8GB pagefile (4GB RAM Win7 x64). The point of keeping most of the pagefile on a different partition is to avoid fragmentation - maybe not necessary?

The way to avoid fragmentation is to give the pagefile a set size (min
and max the same). Having it on a different drive does not make any
difference. At some point, it was a fashion to have a page file on a
different physical drive as it was supposedly good for performance -
doubtful on a modern system.
--

Cheers

DrT
______________________________
We may not be able to prevent the stormy times in
our lives; but we can always choose whether or not
to dance in the puddles (Jewish proverb).

I keep OS and Data on a separate drive. Take weekly OS backups and monthly data backups. If I need to restore the OS, the data will not be lost and will be up to date. If using windows live mail, move mail to data drive works great. Just do not put virus/Firewall stuff on data drive, as sometimes it thinks a virus was installed when you restore the os (only). Backups do go to a separate hard drive as well.

Just my preferences, and it keeps the OS drive relatively small (windows - ha ha, not!)

DrTeeth wrote:
> ...
>
> The way to avoid fragmentation is to give the pagefile a set size (min
> and max the same). Having it on a different drive does not make any
> difference. At some point, it was a fashion to have a page file on a
> different physical drive as it was supposedly good for performance -
> doubtful on a modern system.
>

Understood, but how do you ensure that the page file won't immediately be fragmented when you set it up? I would have thought that if the next available space for file allocation was fragmented the file would be scattered into those fragments.

tas3086 wrote:
> I keep OS and Data on a separate drive. Take weekly OS backups and monthly
> data backups. If I need to restore the OS, the data will not be lost and
> will be up to date.
>...

Good plan except I shudder at the thought of having to redo the changes in the data since a monthly backup which might have been over 3 weeks ago. I backup at least daily to a second physical drive (using Syncback free) and to the internet (encrypted). My friend backs up daily to his external drive.

I backup the system only every few months as I try to avoid installing software I don't need. The applications I already have are sufficient - most of the other work is on the internet. Also I'll do a dual OS backup. First the current system as is. Then I reinstall using the last "clean" OS version image, do all updates then immediately re-image. This way I can be sure I don't bury some hidden malware deep in the backups.

On Sun, 2 Sep 2012 09:04:03 PDT, just as I was about to take a herb,
rustleg disturbed my reverie and wrote:

>Understood, but how do you ensure that the page file won't immediately be fragmented when you set it up?
It is ALWAYS created unfragmented. This was so from the Windows 3.1
days.
--

Cheers

DrT
______________________________
We may not be able to prevent the stormy times in
our lives; but we can always choose whether or not
to dance in the puddles (Jewish proverb).

DrTeeth wrote:
>...
> It is ALWAYS created unfragmented. This was so from the Windows 3.1
> days.
> --

Ouch. I hate it when I find there is something like this that I have missed for so many years. Thanks for the info.

Actually in my own PC I have 2 drives and put the page file on a different physical partition. Data is mostly on a NAS.

I expect now if I were to set up Windows on a PC or laptop with one drive I'd create a pagefile on C thanks to your advice. A separate partition was useful some time ago when I was only using BootitNG which didn't allow the pagefile to be omitted.

having the page file on a physical drive that is different than the main
drive used is still technically better as the pagefile can be heavily used
depending on memory in system and how much stuff you're loading. Using the
same drive for paging, dll, reading, writing, especially traditional drives
that have to move the drive head around are going to be impacted more than
SSD type drives (also could reduce effectiveness of internal drive cache).

The pagefile tries to create unfragmented if it can, but can become
severally fragmented as it grows, I've had a system with over 70K
fragmentations (up to 130K at one point) in the page file.

I don't go out of my way to put the page file on a separate physical drive,
but if someone wanted to go that far, more power to them.

On the same physical drive in a different partition, that reduces or
eliminates fragmentation issues, the question is head movement, if it's far
away from the other data being accessed, then it could be slight, no gain or
negative (lot's of factors from drive caching, bus types, etc..).

And of course, always put the page file on a partition who's cluster size is
4K or larger.


"DrTeeth" wrote in message news:[email protected]...

On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 09:43:59 PDT, just as I was about to take a herb,
rustleg disturbed my reverie and wrote:

>Yes maybe the pagefile space is a too big - I think I set up an 8GB
>pagefile (4GB RAM Win7 x64). The point of keeping most of the pagefile on a
>different partition is to avoid fragmentation - maybe not necessary?

The way to avoid fragmentation is to give the pagefile a set size (min
and max the same). Having it on a different drive does not make any
difference. At some point, it was a fashion to have a page file on a
different physical drive as it was supposedly good for performance -
doubtful on a modern system.
--

Cheers

DrT
______________________________
We may not be able to prevent the stormy times in
our lives; but we can always choose whether or not
to dance in the puddles (Jewish proverb).