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#46
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Universal Folder Access?
"Mayayana" on Tue, 28 Aug 2018 09:07:42
-0400 typed in alt.windows7.general the following: "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote | I do back up D:, just by a different method (SyncToy - so basically just | a copy - rather than a Macrium image). That's what I do, too, but not in any organized way. I just copy things like the graphics partition to a spare drive and/or USB occasionally. Most of it doesn't change. But I did something dumb last week. After reading a discussion about cleaning out duplicates I decided that was a good idea. I got Duplicate Cleaner Free. It listed 10s of 1000s of duplicates. At some point I gave up trying to oversee it, assuming that duplicates it found on F:\ would be lower priority than those found on C:\. But noooooooo. It deleted my current browser history in favor of a copy that I'd put on F:\ 3 years ago, as part of a general backup before swapping out a disk or some such. LOL. Automation allows you to make such mistakes more efficiently. Mitch Ratcliffe — 'A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequila.' tschus pyotr -- pyotr filipivich Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing? |
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#47
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Universal Folder Access?
"Ken Blake" wrote
| | I think many people overpartition because they use partitions as an | organizational structure. They have a strong sense of order and want | to separate apples from oranges on their drives. | | Yes, separating different kinds of files on partitions is an | organizational technique, but so is separating different kinds of | files in folders. The difference is that partitions are static and | fixed in size, while folders are dynamic, changing size automatically | as necessary to meet your changing needs. That generally makes folders | a much better way to organize, in my view. | I find partitions useful and always have. But I should note that I'm not the sort of person who has 30K songs or 5K movies. I don't photograph every experience and then put that in storage to torture friends with at the next dinner party. I do save a lot of articles, and sometimes audio talks or videos, but there's not much that I care about keeping, and articles take very little space. I usually convert them to TXT, anyway, for readability. I have more than enough room for what I need, so I don't worry about slight loss of efficiency. The way I do it is a large area up front for any OSs I want. 5-10 GB for XP. 60 GB for 7. Then I have a general data partition, a graphics and media partition (both FAT32), and an NTFS partition for very large files. I also have a 1 GB partition that I back up to CD/DVD. That contains things like business records, programming code, family photos, etc. Along with app data, that's my frequent backup partition. (These are annex, graphics, ntstore and attic, respectively. I then have a second disk that pretty much reflects the first, except that the second disk also has a very large partition named "Back40", where I keep crazy-big, non-critical things like Windows SDKs, Linux ISOs, etc. I then have shortcuts to each partition on my desktop. So, for instance, if I come across a photo I want to save I might find a specific place for it in Graphics, or I might just drag-drop it to Graphics and Graphics2 for now, to be sure I have copies. To each their own. My disks are 1/4 TB and 1 TB. I know some people wouldn't consider that big enough to store their data. For me it's very spacious. So redundancy and order come at no cost. At the other extreme, I know people who've paid a high price for an external disk, where they store *everything*, unaware that their external disk is no safer than internal, and usually neglecting 100s of GB of space on their computer because someone told them an external disk is a good idea. Those are people who are following the philosophy of partitions but don't get the basic idea, so they waste their money on superfluous hardware. If the external disk were used as redundant backup then it could be worth the expense, but I don't know anyone who does that. One friend bought his external disk on the advice of his "tech support guy", despite having 2 internal disks that are mostly empty. And he leaves the external constantly plugged in. The popularity of that misunderstanding can be seen visiting Staples or Best Buy: There are oodles of external disks in sleek cases, while a basic internal disk is becoming hard to find. |
#48
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Universal Folder Access?
Ken Blake wrote:
On Tue, 28 Aug 2018 05:27:55 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote: Agreed: AFAIAC, most prog.s become part of the OS, in effect. (At one point I could see the advantage of OS on C, progs on another, and data on a third, and admired people disciplined enough to do that; but now, since I consider prog.s - and their configuration - to be part of the "system" I want to be able to restore after any disaster, I'd see that as an unnecessary extra complication.) Yes, but It's not just a matter of what you consider. Since almost all programs have components within Windows, in the registry and elsewhere, keeping them on a separate drive or partition is useless. If you lose Windows, you lose the programs too. If you reinstall Windows, you have to reinstall the programs too, so the benefit that many people imagine of having them on a separate drive or partition doesn't exist. I think many people overpartition because they use partitions as an organizational structure. They have a strong sense of order and want to separate apples from oranges on their drives. Yes, separating different kinds of files on partitions is an organizational technique, but so is separating different kinds of files in folders. The difference is that partitions are static and fixed in size, while folders are dynamic, changing size automatically as necessary to meet your changing needs. That generally makes folders a much better way to organize, in my view. True, partitions can be resized when necessary, but except for newer versions of Windows, doing so requires third-party software (and the ability to do it in Windows is primitive, compared to the third-party solutions). Such third-party software normally costs money, and, no matter how good and how stable it is, affects the entire drive, entailing a risk of losing everything. Plan your partitions well in the first place, and no repartitioning should be necessary. The need to repartition usually comes about as a result of overpartitioning in the first place. What frequently happens when people organize with partitions instead of folders is that they miscalculate how much room they need on each such partition, and then when they run out of room on the partition where a file logically belongs, while still having lots of space left on the other, they simply store the file in the "wrong" partition. Paradoxically, therefore, that kind of partition structure results in less organization rather than more. I think this is a good philosophy too, with a couple of caveats: You at least should have a second partition (or preferably a second drive) to store image backups of your system. A second partition is especially handy for a laptop, which may have only one hard drive. I'd call this a minimalist approach, as using another drive would be more ideal, but it sure has come in handy for me in the case of my laptop experiments. Second, if you have stuff that takes an enormous amount of disk space, like a large collection of audio or video files, it might make more sense to have a separate partition for those, since you may not need to back those up as frequently. This approach keeps the system drive backup images much more reasonably sized and quick to restore. To me the most critical thing to protect is the system, especially if you like experimenting with it, like I seem to do. But trying to separate the programs from the app data and windows in separate partitions is just one step too far for me, since we need all of them linked and updated together to work properly, as the OP said above. |
#49
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Universal Folder Access?
On Tue, 28 Aug 2018 11:56:09 -0600, "Bill in Co"
wrote: Ken Blake wrote: On Tue, 28 Aug 2018 05:27:55 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote: Agreed: AFAIAC, most prog.s become part of the OS, in effect. (At one point I could see the advantage of OS on C, progs on another, and data on a third, and admired people disciplined enough to do that; but now, since I consider prog.s - and their configuration - to be part of the "system" I want to be able to restore after any disaster, I'd see that as an unnecessary extra complication.) Yes, but It's not just a matter of what you consider. Since almost all programs have components within Windows, in the registry and elsewhere, keeping them on a separate drive or partition is useless. If you lose Windows, you lose the programs too. If you reinstall Windows, you have to reinstall the programs too, so the benefit that many people imagine of having them on a separate drive or partition doesn't exist. I think many people overpartition because they use partitions as an organizational structure. They have a strong sense of order and want to separate apples from oranges on their drives. Yes, separating different kinds of files on partitions is an organizational technique, but so is separating different kinds of files in folders. The difference is that partitions are static and fixed in size, while folders are dynamic, changing size automatically as necessary to meet your changing needs. That generally makes folders a much better way to organize, in my view. True, partitions can be resized when necessary, but except for newer versions of Windows, doing so requires third-party software (and the ability to do it in Windows is primitive, compared to the third-party solutions). Such third-party software normally costs money, and, no matter how good and how stable it is, affects the entire drive, entailing a risk of losing everything. Plan your partitions well in the first place, and no repartitioning should be necessary. The need to repartition usually comes about as a result of overpartitioning in the first place. What frequently happens when people organize with partitions instead of folders is that they miscalculate how much room they need on each such partition, and then when they run out of room on the partition where a file logically belongs, while still having lots of space left on the other, they simply store the file in the "wrong" partition. Paradoxically, therefore, that kind of partition structure results in less organization rather than more. I think this is a good philosophy too, with a couple of caveats: Sorry, but I disagree with your caveats. See below. You at least should have a second partition (or preferably a second drive) to store image backups of your system. A second partition is especially handy for a laptop, which may have only one hard drive. I'd call this a minimalist approach, as using another drive would be more ideal, but it sure has come in handy for me in the case of my laptop experiments. I strongly disagree. A second drive is a very bad choice for backups and a second partition is even worse. Doing that leaves you susceptible to simultaneous loss of the original and backup to many of the most common dangers: severe power glitches, nearby lightning strikes, virus attacks, even theft of the computer (and especially with a laptop, if you travel with it, theft of the computer is almost always a real possibility). In my view, secure backup needs to be on removable media, and not kept in the computer. For really secure backup (needed, for example, if the life of your business depends on your data) you should have multiple generations of backup, and at least one of those generations should be stored off-site. Second, if you have stuff that takes an enormous amount of disk space, like a large collection of audio or video files, it might make more sense to have a separate partition for those, since you may not need to back those up as frequently. This approach keeps the system drive backup images much more reasonably sized and quick to restore. Yes, I agree. Your partitioning scheme should generally be based on your backup scheme. To me the most critical thing to protect is the system, especially if you like experimenting with it, like I seem to do. Again, I strongly disagree, although I grant you that not everybody is the same. For the great majority of people, the most important thing to protect is data (including photos, videos, etc.). It make take considerable effort, but you can always recreate the system if need be. You generally can *not* recreate most data, especially photos and videos. |
#50
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Universal Folder Access?
Ken Blake wrote:
On Tue, 28 Aug 2018 11:56:09 -0600, "Bill in Co" wrote: Ken Blake wrote: On Tue, 28 Aug 2018 05:27:55 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote: Agreed: AFAIAC, most prog.s become part of the OS, in effect. (At one point I could see the advantage of OS on C, progs on another, and data on a third, and admired people disciplined enough to do that; but now, since I consider prog.s - and their configuration - to be part of the "system" I want to be able to restore after any disaster, I'd see that as an unnecessary extra complication.) Yes, but It's not just a matter of what you consider. Since almost all programs have components within Windows, in the registry and elsewhere, keeping them on a separate drive or partition is useless. If you lose Windows, you lose the programs too. If you reinstall Windows, you have to reinstall the programs too, so the benefit that many people imagine of having them on a separate drive or partition doesn't exist. I think many people overpartition because they use partitions as an organizational structure. They have a strong sense of order and want to separate apples from oranges on their drives. Yes, separating different kinds of files on partitions is an organizational technique, but so is separating different kinds of files in folders. The difference is that partitions are static and fixed in size, while folders are dynamic, changing size automatically as necessary to meet your changing needs. That generally makes folders a much better way to organize, in my view. True, partitions can be resized when necessary, but except for newer versions of Windows, doing so requires third-party software (and the ability to do it in Windows is primitive, compared to the third-party solutions). Such third-party software normally costs money, and, no matter how good and how stable it is, affects the entire drive, entailing a risk of losing everything. Plan your partitions well in the first place, and no repartitioning should be necessary. The need to repartition usually comes about as a result of overpartitioning in the first place. What frequently happens when people organize with partitions instead of folders is that they miscalculate how much room they need on each such partition, and then when they run out of room on the partition where a file logically belongs, while still having lots of space left on the other, they simply store the file in the "wrong" partition. Paradoxically, therefore, that kind of partition structure results in less organization rather than more. I think this is a good philosophy too, with a couple of caveats: Sorry, but I disagree with your caveats. See below. You at least should have a second partition (or preferably a second drive) to store image backups of your system. A second partition is especially handy for a laptop, which may have only one hard drive. I'd call this a minimalist approach, as using another drive would be more ideal, but it sure has come in handy for me in the case of my laptop experiments. I strongly disagree. A second drive is a very bad choice for backups and a second partition is even worse. Doing that leaves you susceptible to simultaneous loss of the original and backup to many of the most common dangers: severe power glitches, nearby lightning strikes, virus attacks, even theft of the computer (and especially with a laptop, if you travel with it, theft of the computer is almost always a real possibility). In my view, secure backup needs to be on removable media, and not kept in the computer. For really secure backup (needed, for example, if the life of your business depends on your data) you should have multiple generations of backup, and at least one of those generations should be stored off-site. Second, if you have stuff that takes an enormous amount of disk space, like a large collection of audio or video files, it might make more sense to have a separate partition for those, since you may not need to back those up as frequently. This approach keeps the system drive backup images much more reasonably sized and quick to restore. Yes, I agree. Your partitioning scheme should generally be based on your backup scheme. To me the most critical thing to protect is the system, especially if you like experimenting with it, like I seem to do. Again, I strongly disagree, although I grant you that not everybody is the same. For the great majority of people, the most important thing to protect is data (including photos, videos, etc.). It make take considerable effort, but you can always recreate the system if need be. You generally can *not* recreate most data, especially photos and videos. When I said a second drive above, that includes the option of using an external hard disk drive enclosure (preferably eSATA), and didn't necessarily mean a second internal drive. Granted, an external drive is more ideal than a second internal one. As for data backups, I just assumed you keep a backup of your personal data, and was really trying to stress the importance of the system backup (especially since I've been doing all these experiments on this Win7 laptop!). (Maybe I assume too many things. :-) I've just seen how often in here or elsewhere people "lose" their system and need help, and don't even have a image or clone backup of their system. But in my case, if I lost the C: partition, and the collection of programs I have on it (in the order of several hundred, dating back to antiquity!), it would be almost impossible to recreate it from scratch. |
#51
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Universal Folder Access?
On Tue, 28 Aug 2018 13:01:10 -0600, "Bill in Co"
wrote: Ken Blake wrote: On Tue, 28 Aug 2018 11:56:09 -0600, "Bill in Co" wrote: Ken Blake wrote: On Tue, 28 Aug 2018 05:27:55 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote: Agreed: AFAIAC, most prog.s become part of the OS, in effect. (At one point I could see the advantage of OS on C, progs on another, and data on a third, and admired people disciplined enough to do that; but now, since I consider prog.s - and their configuration - to be part of the "system" I want to be able to restore after any disaster, I'd see that as an unnecessary extra complication.) Yes, but It's not just a matter of what you consider. Since almost all programs have components within Windows, in the registry and elsewhere, keeping them on a separate drive or partition is useless. If you lose Windows, you lose the programs too. If you reinstall Windows, you have to reinstall the programs too, so the benefit that many people imagine of having them on a separate drive or partition doesn't exist. I think many people overpartition because they use partitions as an organizational structure. They have a strong sense of order and want to separate apples from oranges on their drives. Yes, separating different kinds of files on partitions is an organizational technique, but so is separating different kinds of files in folders. The difference is that partitions are static and fixed in size, while folders are dynamic, changing size automatically as necessary to meet your changing needs. That generally makes folders a much better way to organize, in my view. True, partitions can be resized when necessary, but except for newer versions of Windows, doing so requires third-party software (and the ability to do it in Windows is primitive, compared to the third-party solutions). Such third-party software normally costs money, and, no matter how good and how stable it is, affects the entire drive, entailing a risk of losing everything. Plan your partitions well in the first place, and no repartitioning should be necessary. The need to repartition usually comes about as a result of overpartitioning in the first place. What frequently happens when people organize with partitions instead of folders is that they miscalculate how much room they need on each such partition, and then when they run out of room on the partition where a file logically belongs, while still having lots of space left on the other, they simply store the file in the "wrong" partition. Paradoxically, therefore, that kind of partition structure results in less organization rather than more. I think this is a good philosophy too, with a couple of caveats: Sorry, but I disagree with your caveats. See below. You at least should have a second partition (or preferably a second drive) to store image backups of your system. A second partition is especially handy for a laptop, which may have only one hard drive. I'd call this a minimalist approach, as using another drive would be more ideal, but it sure has come in handy for me in the case of my laptop experiments. I strongly disagree. A second drive is a very bad choice for backups and a second partition is even worse. Doing that leaves you susceptible to simultaneous loss of the original and backup to many of the most common dangers: severe power glitches, nearby lightning strikes, virus attacks, even theft of the computer (and especially with a laptop, if you travel with it, theft of the computer is almost always a real possibility). In my view, secure backup needs to be on removable media, and not kept in the computer. For really secure backup (needed, for example, if the life of your business depends on your data) you should have multiple generations of backup, and at least one of those generations should be stored off-site. Second, if you have stuff that takes an enormous amount of disk space, like a large collection of audio or video files, it might make more sense to have a separate partition for those, since you may not need to back those up as frequently. This approach keeps the system drive backup images much more reasonably sized and quick to restore. Yes, I agree. Your partitioning scheme should generally be based on your backup scheme. To me the most critical thing to protect is the system, especially if you like experimenting with it, like I seem to do. Again, I strongly disagree, although I grant you that not everybody is the same. For the great majority of people, the most important thing to protect is data (including photos, videos, etc.). It make take considerable effort, but you can always recreate the system if need be. You generally can *not* recreate most data, especially photos and videos. When I said a second drive above, that includes the option of using an external hard disk drive enclosure (preferably eSATA), and didn't necessarily mean a second internal drive. OK, but you began that caveat with "You at least should have a second partition." That's the statement I most strongly disagree with. Granted, an external drive is more ideal than a second internal one. You say "more ideal," and although I don't disagree, I'd be much stronger than that. As far as I'm concerned, a second internal one used for backups is better than no backup at all, but just barely. Unfortunately what a lot of people do is back up to a second internal drive or worse, a second partition on their only drive. Because most of them think that's adequate protection, I feel the need to be strong on recommending that they do not do that. As for data backups, I just assumed you keep a backup of your personal data, and was really trying to stress the importance of the system backup (especially since I've been doing all these experiments on this Win7 laptop!). (Maybe I assume too many things. :-) I've just seen how often in here or elsewhere people "lose" their system and need help, and don't even have a image or clone backup of their system. But in my case, if I lost the C: partition, and the collection of programs I have on it (in the order of several hundred, dating back to antiquity!), it would be almost impossible to recreate it from scratch. OK, in that case, we basically agree. But in that case I caution you not to say "the most critical thing to protect is the system," which you said, since that gives the wrong idea to most people. |
#52
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Universal Folder Access?
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#53
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Universal Folder Access?
"Ken Blake" wrote
| | I strongly disagree. A second drive is a very bad choice for backups | and a second partition is even worse. | | Doing that leaves you susceptible to simultaneous loss of the original | and backup to many of the most common dangers: severe power glitches, | nearby lightning strikes, virus attacks, even theft of the computer | (and especially with a laptop, if you travel with it, theft of the | computer is almost always a real possibility). Those are all true, but it's something one does in context. A second drive is just one aspect of good backup. It gives you extra copies in case the first drive dies suddenly. You can then boot from #2 and copy it over to a new disk that replaces #1. Maybe you've never had a drive go. I haven't, either. But I know many people who have. It costs them a lot of money to get the data off the disks. |
#54
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Universal Folder Access?
On 28/08/2018 15:50, Ken Blake wrote:
Yes, but It's not just a matter of what you consider. Since almost all programs have components within Windows, in the registry and elsewhere, keeping them on a separate drive or partition is useless. If you lose Windows, you lose the programs too. If you reinstall Windows, you have to reinstall the programs too, so the benefit that many people imagine of having them on a separate drive or partition doesn't exist. Agreed in Windows for OS and software, because ... 1) Most Windows software keeps setting in the registry, and that is a monolithic structure which can't realistically be subdivided 2) Entries in the Start Menu to launch software could more easily kept apart but it's still a hassle. .... and so in Windows it makes little sense to try and keep the OS and software apart. It makes somewhat more sense in Linux, because the absence of the dead-weight of a monolithic got-to-have-control-of-everything registry makes it simpler. In Ubuntu I do keep a handful of programs on the data drive, and if I need to reinstall, a script I run after installation automates the entire process and these programs are there and ready to use afterwards, without any need to reinstall them. I think many people overpartition because they use partitions as an organizational structure. They have a strong sense of order and want to separate apples from oranges on their drives. Yes, separating different kinds of files on partitions is an organizational technique, but so is separating different kinds of files in folders. The difference is that partitions are static and fixed in size, while folders are dynamic, changing size automatically as necessary to meet your changing needs. That generally makes folders a much better way to organize, in my view. That is a perfectly valid point of view in general terms, but in the particular case of OS/software vs data, it fails to take account of various truths of computing life. In particular, there are two major overarching reasons to keep OS/software separate from data: + If you keep OS/software and data all on one partition, there is an ever-present danger of you downloading something like a video or a large OS update which consumes almost the last bit of disk-space and when this happens, the entire system grinds to a near halt, because there aren't enough resources even to load a warning message about low disk space, let alone display the directories or files which are taking up the most space so that you can delete something! I've seen this countless times, the last when a neighbour brought round his PC for me to fix within the last year or so, it turning out to be this exact problem. Putting OS/software and data on separate partitions means that this problem should never occur, because even if the data drive is chock-a-block full, the system drive will still have enough space to allow the system to function, and thereby you can solve the problem by deleting files, perhaps after backing them up, etc. + The nature of the files concerned, their inter-relatedness, and how often they change is entirely different in the two cases - OS/software files change little over long periods of time, but when they do change, many of them change at once, for example after a system update, anti-virus update, new software installation, etc; by contrast data files change often but mostly in small numbers at once. Further, data files are mostly standalone, whereas OS files are linked to things like the disk boot sector, other OS files, and of course the registry, while software files are linked to OS files, the registry, and perhaps other software. OS/software needs to be backed up only occasionally and usually needs to be restored as a unit, while data mostly needs to be both backed up and restored file by file, most probably daily. Thus to use one back-up regime for the two types of file is at best almost certainly going to be inefficient for one type of file or the other, or else a messy compromise that does neither very well. True, partitions can be resized when necessary, but except for newer versions of Windows, doing so requires third-party software (and the ability to do it in Windows is primitive, compared to the third-party solutions). Such third-party software normally costs money, and, no matter how good and how stable it is, affects the entire drive, entailing a risk of losing everything. Plan your partitions well in the first place, and no repartitioning should be necessary. The need to repartition usually comes about as a result of overpartitioning in the first place. I agree with every thing in that paragraph until the last statement. OSs, most especially Windows, fill up the system disk with bloat, often in the form of backup files for uninstalling updates that are never going to be uninstalled. Also, data accrues daily because few people delete as much as they acquire. Thus it would be more accurate to say that the need to repartition is most probably a sign that a disk upgrade is needed. What frequently happens when people organize with partitions instead of folders is that they miscalculate how much room they need on each such partition, and then when they run out of room on the partition where a file logically belongs, while still having lots of space left on the other, they simply store the file in the "wrong" partition. Paradoxically, therefore, that kind of partition structure results in less organization rather than more. That might very well be true in some cases, but if you also have a NAS, this reduces the need to keep large amounts of data on your PC, and makes the above very unlikely to happen. I can't remember the last time I needed to do that. |
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