Re: Unofficial Bloodlines Patch 4.5 released!

Nostromo wrote:

John Lewis wrote:

On Mon, 14 Jan 2008 07:21:18 +1100, Nostromo <nospam@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Btw, how do you get around the annoying 'feature' of Windoze when apps want to install themselves in C:\Program Files, many which do it w/o even asking you?

Which ones?
I allow the MS Windoze apps, Professional third-party apps and key
utilities, emailers etc. to always install in their default locations.
Makes for much less grief at the time of major updates.


Those are mostly what I'm talking about, plus some games & other mickey mouse s/ware that has on occasion just dumped things under the root dir on C:, or in Program Files, without so much as asking.

The point here is, if you're still installing Windows software (MS & 3rd party) to your C: drive, you've lost control & can't say with any certainty how big your partition will need to be. Plus you'll still suffer from fragmentation due to constant (un)installing, so apart from imaging a nominally smaller partition, what are the real benefits? None I can see.

My grand vision was to have an almost static C: partition (around 10Gb) with just the OS on it. Never grows (well, hardly, apart from MS's stoopid all-DLLs-in-one-bucket design) & you can maintain it & image it very easily.


with Win XP Pro, you can live with a 10GB
C: partition, *provided* you put the OS on
D: or E: (i prefer E: and i set up C: and
D: as fat32 coz it doesn't remember who
the "owner" is, whereas NTFS does (at least,
i haven't run into that annoying problem
(i keep 2 ID's for myself: a and b, with
b a non admin), so i try to keep a *large*
D: where i keep my downloads, letters, e-mail,
newgroup stuff); installs go onto the E: OS
partition, and i keep a large raid0 F: for temp
work file stuff (video processing consumes
large amounts of disk when you are busy)



I never install any games in the C: partition. For some games you do
need to manually intervene by clicking Browse on the install-directory
screen. Some games alternatively use a "Custom Install" setting to
allow you to choose something other than C:\Program Files for the
target install-folder.

Well aware of all that. All good s/ware installers should allow you to choose your dest drive/dir.

I'd love to just have the OS on a nice, small 10Gb partition for
imaging, but this one nuisance + the creeping doom of windows disk usage has always deterred me.


see above



My C: directory (XP Pro) has around 12Gbyte occupancy. (The partition
size is 20Gbytes.) Remember that I also have some rather large
professional apps on the C: drive. I use my faithful old workhorse
Drive Image 7.03 to image the partition about once per week With
"medium" compression Including a full blockverify it takes about 15
minutes to image the C: drive to an external hard-disk. ( CPU X2 4400+
Toledo )

I'm only taking backups using Nero BackIT to rotating DVD-RWs every week. Must invest in an external USB drive methinks.

I also have a 4Gb fixed swap file which I've left in the
root dir of C: drive, again because the D: drive is a P2P thrash drive & I
thought it made more sense to keep the swap file away from that constantly
used & heavily fragmented drive. Any/all advice much appreciated.


I just let Windows decide swap file space. All resident in the C:
partition.

You can get significant swapping benefits if you create a fixed size swap file, preferably away from the OS drive, of about twice the size of your physical memory. Give it a try - you might notice windows starts up quicker & apps thrash a bit less.


i used to do that with Win98SE

i've been meaning to try it with XP Pro

fwiw, i also used my above partitioning
scheme with Win98SE but the "cooperative
sharing" nature of it was too iffy;
a couple of times install apps filled
defaulted to the C: drive and went bad
and filled up the partition

i had to go into DOS and manually spend
hours with Norton's detailed disk fix program
(still included with has System Works suite
thru the Win ME and Win 2000 days); name
escapes me for the moment)

bill
.

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