Re: New year, clean install, any advantage to having applications on D: instead of C:?

On Jan 4, 11:27 am, Johnny B Good <jcs.computersb...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<snip>

Hello all, happy new year, happy hangover etc.
I'm going to clean reinstall today. Any advantage to having a smaller C:
for windows and making a separate D: partition for applications?

 Yes! And, you could go even further if you have a 120GB or larger drive..

 Assuming it's winXP, create a 10 to 12GB drive C to install the OS to,
a 20 to 30GB drive D for the majority of your apps and the remaining
space as a general purpose data/large apps (usually gigabyte sized
games) and multimedia stuff.


I see.. later you say 3 separate disk volumes. ok


 You can make the first two FAT32 if you wish to have a "Get Out Of
Jail" win98 boot floppy recovery option, but, if you're planning on
being able to store media files larger than FAT32's 4GB-1 byte limit, I
suggest you use NTFS for drive D, especially if you have more than 64GB
of space to throw at it.


you know there`s not much point anymore?
those advantages of FAT32, are more-or-less equalled with NTFS
nowadays.

DOS boot disks - if natural, have no ability to read NTFS or USB , and
have issues with long filenames. There are programs, very easy to use
that give it NTFS access, and there are programs one can fiddle with
to get USB access(besides the USB drive you may be booting from)

Things like UBCD are the alternative people use nowadays. A
lightweight windows that runs off a CD, reads NTFS fine. (prob came
out in the windows xp days, so I guess it`s win xp based - and xp
being win nt, reads ntfs fine).


 A point worth keeping in mind is that you can (and should!) move the
"My Documents" folder onto drive D (needs to be done for each user
account when more than one such is inflicted on a _Personal_ Computer).
This is very easy to do, just right click on the desktop icon and edit
the drive letter shown in the path (followed by clicking the apply
button, followed by saying yes to the question of moving the data).


do techies use that directory, or is it just end users? ;-)

Windows XP has this issue of user directories being in long paths.

I know one can use environment variables - including standard ones
like
%USERPROFILE%, but that means SHIFT+blah to get the %. And one can
use TAB for filename or directory completion. I tend to either put
folders on my desktop and click to get to them. OR better, I put them
in a directory on C with a very short name like c:\blah

I know a guy that uses doskey macros and batch files to get around the
file system. (cmd /? shows how to make a batch file run
automatically.. so he had a batch file that ran doskey macros to e.g.
CD to various directories)

I used to use a program called ShortKeys , that was brilliant.. may go
back to that. The free version only let you store around 15 shortcuts
though. It replaced text as you type. So was perfect, whether I was
wanting to get to some path in start...run, or whether I was writing
java (without a good programming "IDE". Or needed to enter my address
into a form (it typed TABs too, but I had shortcuts for each line
too, incase the form had improper support of tabs)


 You'll find that defragging drive C will be a matter of minutes rather
than hours. You'll also discover it makes very little improvement since
you've got all those wanderlusty OS files corralled into the fastest 10
or 12 GB of the hard drive instead of being spread right across the disk
in amongst the apps and data files.

 Even assuming you stick to the same defragging routine, the total time
to defrag the 3 seperate disk volumes will be significantly less than in
the case of defragging a single huge drive C occuppying the same space.


I figured defragging was going out of fashion, what with it taking all
night!

Your method would help with virus checking too. (if OS is behaving
funny, just check that partition). Should be fine unless virus is in
an application on the larger application partition.

 Ignore any advice that suggests it's ok to lump the more modest sized
apps in with the OS files, you'll lose a lot of the benefit of
corralling the OS files into one tight high performance space on the
drive.


Doesn`t modest mean smaller? I thought you were saying to put smaller
apps there, but keep larger apps in the separate partition,

Is certainly an interesting idea.. (though I do not really have any
large apps)

And since I am on a laptop that uses non standard RAM, and only have
256MB of it, on win xp. I may consider separating them. More for the
sake of imaging.
The main cause of slowdown for me is a greedy process - I see it in
task manager, 70MB RAM, 130MB RAM, I just end task it.
The "other" main cause of slowdown is rubbish on the system, programs
starting up.

Defragging is being a bit of a perfectionist.. But is worth a shot
*if* it is that quick.

<snip>

 Even restoring from a 6 month old image backup is a vast improvement
over the "Install From Scratch" alternative. Obviously, in the early
months of the life of a new PC with a freshly installed OS, you should
be making monthly backups (or even weekly ones within the 'Honeymoon
Period') but once you have left the 'Rapid Churn' phase of
installing/uninstalling apps behind you, you can reduce the frequency of
such backups to the point where you can get away with just 3 or 4 a
year.


I have at times done one image of the system in its virgin form (all
drivers installed).

And another with the programs I like installed.

Before experimenting with new programs..

But when you have the program installation files stored, then either
way is no big deal. The image with programs installed is better.
There is not much installing and uninstalling when you know what
programs you want. And none of them are that bulky. If they are then
it is for lack of an alternative - which does not happen very often if
at all.




.

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