Vista - partition the hard drive?

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Steve - 25 Jun 2007 13:59 GMT

Just ordered an E520 with Vista. Currently using XP Home with a
partitioned hard drive. Drive C for Windows etc. D for other
programs, mostly not backed up. E for backups, cache, misc file
storage, not backed up. F for data, backed up.

Do you partition, or just set up separate folders to replicate what
would otherwise be separate partitions? The problem I have with
separate folders is that everything is in a sub-folder, just requires
a longer path. Plus, some backups require that the destination be on
a different partition.

Other pros and cons? Thanks!

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olfart - 25 Jun 2007 14:17 GMT

> Just ordered an E520 with Vista. Currently using XP Home with a
> partitioned hard drive. Drive C for Windows etc. D for other
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
>
> Other pros and cons? Thanks!

Need more info on your E520. You can probably take the HD out of your
present machine and put it in the 520 and a second HD.. Then you can boot to
XP in your bios or install a boot manager like Boot Magic

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Steve - 28 Jun 2007 15:56 GMT

How much space should be allocated to C drive for the Vista OS?

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If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

...Anatole France

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Tom Scales - 28 Jun 2007 18:07 GMT

My install of Vista Business takes a little over 8GB. Home Premium or
Ultimate would be larger.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve [mailto:hde@wbn.inv]
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
>
> ...Anatole France

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Steve - 28 Jun 2007 21:35 GMT

>> How much space should be allocated to C drive for the Vista OS?

Just received the E520, shows 10G in D (recovery) and 223G in C.

Disk Management > Shrink C:

228G: Total size before shrink

112G: Size of available shrink space

Guess this means the C drive is using 116G? No programs loaded, not
sure what would account for this, maybe some sorta swap file?

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If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

...Anatole France

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Steve - 28 Jun 2007 21:35 GMT

>Just received the E520, shows 10G in D (recovery) and 223G in C.
>Disk Management > Shrink C:
>228G: Total size before shrink
>112G: Size of available shrink space
>Guess this means the C drive is using 116G? No programs loaded, not
>sure what would account for this, maybe some sorta swap file?

Just noticed it also shows C as 96% free (214G available). So why
won't it shrink more than 112G?

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If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

...Anatole France

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Tracy - 28 Jun 2007 21:56 GMT

> >Just received the E520, shows 10G in D (recovery) and 223G in C.
> >Disk Management > Shrink C:
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
>
> ...Anatole France

Run diskpart.exe and you should be able to workaround that limitation.

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Hank Arnold - 30 Jun 2007 11:00 GMT

Same thing here.

Regards,
Hank Arnold

>>> How much space should be allocated to C drive for the Vista OS?
>
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
> Guess this means the C drive is using 116G? No programs loaded, not
> sure what would account for this, maybe some sorta swap file?

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Pen - 28 Jun 2007 18:35 GMT

> How much space should be allocated to C drive for the Vista OS?

My laptop with only TBird, Firefox and ms works installed still uses
11GB. Add your own programs to that.

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Journey - 28 Jun 2007 18:57 GMT

>How much space should be allocated to C drive for the Vista OS?

My Vista Business Windows directory is 8.81 GB. My Program Files
directory is 5.95 GB. I don't know where my swap file is -- I don't
see it directly under c:\. It's system managed and in the System
control panel applet it's supposed to be around 2.5GB so that may be
in one of the directories above.

Also I don't know where system recovery info is stored. That also
might be in one of the directories above.

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Barry Watzman - 29 Jun 2007 13:40 GMT

At least 20 gigabytes.

> How much space should be allocated to C drive for the Vista OS?

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Tom Scales - 25 Jun 2007 14:18 GMT

I use partitions or separate drives.

I don't have any "programs on D". I just put all programs on C. I
never restore, I always rebuild. Windows needs to be reinstalled
regularly with my usage.

So, I have C, D (Data backed up) and E (Data not backed up).

I have backup drives on a 'backup server' that all of the desktops and
laptops back up to.

Tom

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve [mailto:hde@wbn.inv]
[quoted text clipped - 22 lines]
>
> ...Marie Ebner von Eschenbach

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Steve - 29 Jun 2007 03:44 GMT

Just ran across this - ugh

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10877_11-6170510.html

Chances are youll discover that the size of available shrink space
can be much less than you would see if you were to look at the amount
of free space displayed in Computer. The reason for this discrepancy
is that the size of the available space can be restricted by the
amount of space currently allocated to and the location of page,
restore, shadow copy, and hibernation files. The location of the files
plays a big part - these files are marked as unmovable and the Disk
Management console tool is unable to relocate them.

If these unmovable files are located in the middle of the free space
on the disk, only the amount of free space on the other side of the
files will actually be available to the new partition.

The Disk Management Help file briefly mentions that you may be able to
work around this scenario by moving the page file to another to
another disk and deleting the show copies. However, after disabling
the page file, disabling hibernation, disabling the System Restore,
using Disk Cleanup to delete System Restore and Shadow Copy files, and
defragging the hard disk, I was still unable to get more available
space for the second partition.

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