Disk Partitioning

On Sun, 15 Sep 2013 11:17:38 -0500, wrote:

I'm, by some quirk (anal retentive, obsessive compulsive, other ???)
of my mentality, an organizational freak. I, by nature, want things well
structured and organized logically.
So, in XP-Pro I have the hard drive partitioned into multiple
partitions _- Office Apps, Internet Apps, Accessories, Utilities,
etc.
I've been told that this "slows" the machine down -- but I don't do
anything (except 1 or 2 CPU-intensive math things I've programmed)
where the slow-down , if it exists, is noticeable.
So, my question --- what's the downside of doing the same thing
on a new Win 7 64 bit computer?

There's another problem not yet mentioned about excessive partitioning.

Windows can only have 26 named partitions, since it uses single letters
to name them - and A:, B:, and C: are pre-assigned[1].

If you never plug in a memory stick or a flash card, or (heavens
forfend!) a backup drive, that might not matter to you.

I agree with all of the caveats expressed in this thread.

[1] A: and B: can be preempted, but that is not a great idea, since they
have a standard meaning. C: can vary too, but there must be a boot
drive, of course.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On 9/15/2013 3:45 PM, Paladin wrote:
On 2013-09-15, Juan Wei wrote:
has written on 9/15/2013 12:17 PM:
I'm, by some quirk (anal retentive, obsessive compulsive, other ???)
of my mentality, an organizational freak. I, by nature, want things well
structured and organized logically.
So, in XP-Pro I have the hard drive partitioned into multiple
partitions _- Office Apps, Internet Apps, Accessories, Utilities,
etc.

Why not just use a directory structure? What do you gain by all those
partitions?

Alphabet soup.
Some people get off on a P:/ drive.



You can "name" any folder as a drive letter. Simply r-click it, select
Properties, Sharing, Share, Select Everyone from the pull down and set
R/W. Then in the Tools menu in Windows Explorer, select "Map network
drive" to give the letter of choice to the shared folder.

On 2013-09-16, Bob I wrote:


On 9/15/2013 3:45 PM, Paladin wrote:
On 2013-09-15, Juan Wei wrote:
has written on 9/15/2013 12:17 PM:
I'm, by some quirk (anal retentive, obsessive compulsive, other ???)
of my mentality, an organizational freak. I, by nature, want things well
structured and organized logically.
So, in XP-Pro I have the hard drive partitioned into multiple
partitions _- Office Apps, Internet Apps, Accessories, Utilities,
etc.

Why not just use a directory structure? What do you gain by all those
partitions?

Alphabet soup.
Some people get off on a P:/ drive.



You can "name" any folder as a drive letter. Simply r-click it, select
Properties, Sharing, Share, Select Everyone from the pull down and set
R/W. Then in the Tools menu in Windows Explorer, select "Map network
drive" to give the letter of choice to the shared folder.

You can name your foot a hand.
It serves no real purpose.
Just use folders.

Or, create partitions, if it helps you sleep at night.

--
IBM Pollyanna Principle:
Machines should work. People should think.

On Sun, 15 Sep 2013 11:43:39 -0500, Bob I wrote:



On 9/15/2013 11:17 AM, wrote:
I'm, by some quirk (anal retentive, obsessive compulsive, other ???)
of my mentality, an organizational freak. I, by nature, want things well
structured and organized logically.
So, in XP-Pro I have the hard drive partitioned into multiple
partitions _- Office Apps, Internet Apps, Accessories, Utilities,
etc.
I've been told that this "slows" the machine down -- but I don't do
anything (except 1 or 2 CPU-intensive math things I've programmed)
where the slow-down , if it exists, is noticeable.
So, my question --- what's the downside of doing the same thing
on a new Win 7 64 bit computer?



Primarily a waste of time and effort. Makes successful restoration from
backups less likely. All the registry and user info for the
installations remains on the C: drive anyway.

I generally agree but sometimes partitioning makes sense.

Back in 1999 I bought a new computer and the biggest hard disk available was 8
Gig.

When bigger drives became available I got a 40 Gig one, and partioned it into
D, E, F, and G drives -- back then it was Fat 32, and making it all one
partition would have wasted a bit of space because it would have required a
bigger cluster size. My plan was to use D to back up C, E for programs, F for
games (I didn't want the kids installing them in my working disk space) and G
for data.

I installed programs on E because there wasn't enough space on C.

And I've carried the same configuration over ever since, because I don't like
reinstalling programs -- much too time-consuming.

When I bought a new computer, I bought it without an OS. I just backed up each
partition on Acronis, and restored it on the new computer's 500 Gig drives.
Everything worked.




--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

On Sun, 15 Sep 2013 20:43:18 +0100, choro wrote:

And incidentally, in preference to W7's Xcopy I always XXcopy my
data/user files to an external HD. That way they are immediately
accessible. I have the necessary XXcopy commands ready on a Word
document with its own shortcut on the desktop. Nice and neat!

The only files XXcopy cannot deal with (at least the freebie version) is
filenames with more than 256 characters including the path. And that is
no problem for me.

Please tell more.

I once had DR DOS, which had some useful variants like XDel, which don't seem
to work in Windows XP or 7.

I still use a useful utility that dates back to 1984 or so, called bac.com.

It copies files, but only when the size or date differ. I would have expected
that M$ would long ago have included such a command in their operating system,
but they haven't. Unfortunately bac doesn't work with long file names, so I
try to keep filenames to the 8.3 pattern.


--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

On 15/09/2013 21:08, Jabberwocky wrote:
On Sun, 15 Sep 2013 20:43:18 +0100, choro wrote:

On 15/09/2013 20:34, choro wrote:
On 15/09/2013 19:28, wrote:
"Ken Blake" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 15 Sep 2013 11:17:38 -0500, wrote:

I'm, by some quirk (anal retentive, obsessive compulsive, other ???)
of my mentality, an organizational freak. I, by nature, want things
well
structured and organized logically.


Yes, separating different kinds of files on partitions is an
organizational technique, but so is separating different kinds of
files into 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.


So, in XP-Pro I have the hard drive partitioned into multiple
partitions _- Office Apps, Internet Apps, Accessories, Utilities,
etc.


In my opinion, that's *way* overpartitioned.

Please don't misinterpret here, I don't mean
to be argumentative at all, but if one is partitioning
what becomes "too much" ??

I've been told that this "slows" the machine down -- but I don't do
anything (except 1 or 2 CPU-intensive math things I've programmed)
where the slow-down , if it exists, is noticeable.


With modern computers, the slowdown is very slight if it exists at
all.



You might want to read this article I've written:
http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=326

Nice sensible advice. Thx!

Everybody should tick to go to your article and read it carefully.
Personally I put backups on a 2nd internal HD. But just to be on the
safe side I also copy them to an external HD. With HDs so cheap these
days, I see no reason to try and economize on HDs.

+1 fully earned.

And incidentally, in preference to W7's Xcopy I always XXcopy my
data/user files to an external HD. That way they are immediately
accessible. I have the necessary XXcopy commands ready on a Word
document with its own shortcut on the desktop. Nice and neat!

The only files XXcopy cannot deal with (at least the freebie version) is
filenames with more than 256 characters including the path. And that is
no problem for me.


Can I suggest that you have a look at Microsoft's SyncToy 2.1?

Read about it on the Internet. Saw some user comments about it being
dead slow at times. Just grinding on and on all night long, as someone said.

Besides, XXcopy is a DOS program and as such very rapid. And not only
that it has got so many options/parameters that it is to all extent and
purpose more or less *limitless* in its choices. However, one has to
write one's own command/s which scares many people. But if you are
conversant with how old DOS commands worked, it is in fact very easy to
tailor to your needs. --
choro
*****

On 16/09/2013 00:41, Gene E. Bloch wrote:
AllWay Sync

I will look into this AllWaySync and see if it will serve me better than
XXcopy. I've commented on XXcopy, its ease of use and speed of action,
to say nothing of its tailorability, once you have written the simple
DOS commands. But anything is worth trying once. Who knows, I might
discard XXcopy! This would be like going into a new relationship while
having a long standing steady relationship with all the dangers that it
entails.
--
choro
*****

On 16/09/2013 02:37, Steve Hayes wrote:
On Sun, 15 Sep 2013 20:43:18 +0100, choro wrote:

And incidentally, in preference to W7's Xcopy I always XXcopy my
data/user files to an external HD. That way they are immediately
accessible. I have the necessary XXcopy commands ready on a Word
document with its own shortcut on the desktop. Nice and neat!

The only files XXcopy cannot deal with (at least the freebie version) is
filenames with more than 256 characters including the path. And that is
no problem for me.

Please tell more.

I once had DR DOS, which had some useful variants like XDel, which don't seem
to work in Windows XP or 7.

I still use a useful utility that dates back to 1984 or so, called bac.com.

It copies files, but only when the size or date differ. I would have expected
that M$ would long ago have included such a command in their operating system,
but they haven't. Unfortunately bac doesn't work with long file names, so I
try to keep filenames to the 8.3 pattern.

You can doctor XXcopy to copy all the files OR to copy only new files or
updated files that have the A attribute set. What is more you can change
the A attribute of any file that you might not want copied beforehand
and it will skip those files. I did this the other day with some huge
video files that I didn't want copied. It just went ahead and copied
only the other new files.

And because I have the commands on a Word doc file with a shortcut on my
desktop, all I have to do is open the Word document, click in the margin
of the command line to select and copy the command and then paste the
command at the Command prompt. The possibilities are more or less
limitless. It is all done by choosing your parameters.
--
choro
*****

On 16/09/2013 00:48, Gene E. Bloch wrote:
On Sun, 15 Sep 2013 11:17:38 -0500, wrote:

I'm, by some quirk (anal retentive, obsessive compulsive, other ???)
of my mentality, an organizational freak. I, by nature, want things well
structured and organized logically.
So, in XP-Pro I have the hard drive partitioned into multiple
partitions _- Office Apps, Internet Apps, Accessories, Utilities,
etc.
I've been told that this "slows" the machine down -- but I don't do
anything (except 1 or 2 CPU-intensive math things I've programmed)
where the slow-down , if it exists, is noticeable.
So, my question --- what's the downside of doing the same thing
on a new Win 7 64 bit computer?

There's another problem not yet mentioned about excessive partitioning.

Windows can only have 26 named partitions, since it uses single letters
to name them - and A:, B:, and C: are pre-assigned[1].

Now if only they used the Chinese character set instead of the English
alphabet! I gather there are 20,000 characters in the Chinese alphabet.
--
choro
*****


If you never plug in a memory stick or a flash card, or (heavens
forfend!) a backup drive, that might not matter to you.

I agree with all of the caveats expressed in this thread.

[1] A: and B: can be preempted, but that is not a great idea, since they
have a standard meaning. C: can vary too, but there must be a boot
drive, of course.

On 15 Sep 2013, choro wrote in
alt.windows7.general:

I will look into this AllWaySync and see if it will serve me
better than XXcopy. I've commented on XXcopy, its ease of use and
speed of action, to say nothing of its tailorability, once you
have written the simple DOS commands. But anything is worth trying
once. Who knows, I might discard XXcopy! This would be like going
into a new relationship while having a long standing steady
relationship with all the dangers that it entails.

Another possibility, and the one I use, is Microsoft's Robocopy, which
is included with Windows Vista and later.

On Mon, 16 Sep 2013 03:00:44 +0100, choro wrote:

On 16/09/2013 02:37, Steve Hayes wrote:
On Sun, 15 Sep 2013 20:43:18 +0100, choro wrote:

And incidentally, in preference to W7's Xcopy I always XXcopy my
data/user files to an external HD. That way they are immediately
accessible. I have the necessary XXcopy commands ready on a Word
document with its own shortcut on the desktop. Nice and neat!

The only files XXcopy cannot deal with (at least the freebie version) is
filenames with more than 256 characters including the path. And that is
no problem for me.

Please tell more.

I once had DR DOS, which had some useful variants like XDel, which don't seem
to work in Windows XP or 7.

I still use a useful utility that dates back to 1984 or so, called bac.com.

It copies files, but only when the size or date differ. I would have expected
that M$ would long ago have included such a command in their operating system,
but they haven't. Unfortunately bac doesn't work with long file names, so I
try to keep filenames to the 8.3 pattern.

You can doctor XXcopy to copy all the files OR to copy only new files or
updated files that have the A attribute set. What is more you can change
the A attribute of any file that you might not want copied beforehand
and it will skip those files. I did this the other day with some huge
video files that I didn't want copied. It just went ahead and copied
only the other new files.

And because I have the commands on a Word doc file with a shortcut on my
desktop, all I have to do is open the Word document, click in the margin
of the command line to select and copy the command and then paste the
command at the Command prompt. The possibilities are more or less
limitless. It is all done by choosing your parameters.

I don't seem to have it on my XP system, is it only in Win 7?

Does it do deletions?


--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

On 16/09/2013 11:35, Steve Hayes wrote:


I don't seem to have it on my XP system, is it only in Win 7?


XXCOPY is not in either system as standard - you have to download it
from xxcopy.com and install it.


Does it do deletions?


It can do, if you use the Clone command. That makes a copy of Source in
Destination - including deleting any existing files in Destination which
are not in Source.
--
Cheers,
Roger
____________
Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom
checked.

On 15/09/2013 20:43, choro wrote:


And incidentally, in preference to W7's Xcopy I always XXcopy my
data/user files to an external HD. That way they are immediately
accessible. I have the necessary XXcopy commands ready on a Word
document with its own shortcut on the desktop. Nice and neat!

I do the same, except that I have a batch file which contains all the
commands, and which is scheduled to run automatically each day.

The only files XXcopy cannot deal with (at least the freebie version) is
filenames with more than 256 characters including the path. And that is
no problem for me.

Another thing the freebie version can't cope with is copying files to a
network drive rather than to a directly connected external drive. To be
more accurate, it *can* do it - but not without producing a 'nag'
message which suggests that you ought to be using the 'paid for'
version. You have to "press any key to continue" to get rid of the
message, which means that you can't automate the process. This is
annoying because the T&C's *do* allow copying to network drives as long
as they're your personal property.

In order to overcome this problem, I've taken to using Robocopy. There's
a bit of a learning curve, but it enables me to achieve everything I
want to do, without any nag messages.
--
Cheers,
Roger
____________
Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom
checked.

On 16/09/2013 11:35, Steve Hayes wrote:
On Mon, 16 Sep 2013 03:00:44 +0100, choro wrote:

On 16/09/2013 02:37, Steve Hayes wrote:
On Sun, 15 Sep 2013 20:43:18 +0100, choro wrote:

And incidentally, in preference to W7's Xcopy I always XXcopy my
data/user files to an external HD. That way they are immediately
accessible. I have the necessary XXcopy commands ready on a Word
document with its own shortcut on the desktop. Nice and neat!

The only files XXcopy cannot deal with (at least the freebie version) is
filenames with more than 256 characters including the path. And that is
no problem for me.

Please tell more.

I once had DR DOS, which had some useful variants like XDel, which don't seem
to work in Windows XP or 7.

I still use a useful utility that dates back to 1984 or so, called bac.com.

It copies files, but only when the size or date differ. I would have expected
that M$ would long ago have included such a command in their operating system,
but they haven't. Unfortunately bac doesn't work with long file names, so I
try to keep filenames to the 8.3 pattern.

You can doctor XXcopy to copy all the files OR to copy only new files or
updated files that have the A attribute set. What is more you can change
the A attribute of any file that you might not want copied beforehand
and it will skip those files. I did this the other day with some huge
video files that I didn't want copied. It just went ahead and copied
only the other new files.

And because I have the commands on a Word doc file with a shortcut on my
desktop, all I have to do is open the Word document, click in the margin
of the command line to select and copy the command and then paste the
command at the Command prompt. The possibilities are more or less
limitless. It is all done by choosing your parameters.

I don't seem to have it on my XP system, is it only in Win 7?

Does it do deletions?

XXcopy is not part of Windows though Windows does, I believe, still
include a similar command called Xcopy accessible from the Command Prompt.

XXcopy on the other hand is a 3rd party program which you've got to
download and install first before you can use it. The two are very
similar with similar commands, though XXcopy is reckoned to be superior
to Xcopy. The free version is more than capable of serving your home
needs. The paid version is more for commercial use to run on servers and
is fairly pricey.

You can find the command parameters on the Internet. the /m parameter
for example will only copy previously uncopied files, i.e. files with
the A attribute set AND also change the A attribute to N once copied so
the same file will not be copied over and over, again and again. There
are attributes that will do almost anything except make the coffee!

It helps if you allocate a fixed unchanging letter to your external HD.
Then you can just copy and paste the command from a line in your Word
doc directly to your Command Prompt.

Will it delete files? Yes and No! How come? Well this depends on whether
you include a parameter in your XXcopy command to delete files under
certain conditions. Read their Help files. Personally I don't use this
option/parameter which will delete files on the xternal HD IF you have
deleted them on your computer. In other words this option Syncs the
original and the XXcopy folders. Not for me! Me no like it!

Both the built-in Xcopy in Windows and XXcopy which you've got to
download and install are powerful DOS commands, as I said, and you need
to know your DOS from DOMESTOS to run them. But both are extremely
flexible because of scores of parameters you can pick and choose from.

Once, for example, my Xternal HD went kaput so I re-copied and pasted my
own command line from my Word document to a brand new Xternal HD but
deleted the /m parameter just before pressing ENTER, using the back
arrow key to get to and then delete the /m parameter from the command
line so that it would copy ALL files willy nilly whether they had the A
attribute set or not. Otherwise I would have got copies of just the new
or altered files.

You get exact immediately working copies of all your files and folders
on the Xternal HD too. And I mean working copies just as if they were on
your internal HD or partition. Naturally you need a different command
line for each partition but this saves you time in the long run as you
can just copy and paste the particular command line for each individual
partition.

XXcopy D:\*.* for example will copy all files and folders on your D
partition. You need to change this to XXopy E:\*.* for your E partition,
for example. *You can of course specify a particular folder to copy
rather than the whole partition*. You specify which drive it will copy
to and which folder. You can sensibly call this destination folder
G:\XXcopies of TOSHIBA D Drive and it will create this directory on your
Xternal HD G:\ for example. If your computer has itself assigned a Drive
letter to your Xternal HD and it is not G:\ it will tell you no such
destination HD exists. That is why it is important to allocate a fixed
letter to your Xternal HD. Of course this saves you time in the long run
as you don't have to run around like a beheaded chicken searching for
what letter your computer has assigned to your Xternal HD this time. In
fact this is a very simple operation but you've got to know your DOS
from your DOMESTOS, as I said earlier.

Both Xcopy and XXcopy are lightning fast, with teh XXcopy being the more
capable of the two. No messing around! They get the job done in no time
and it is easy to make the move from the built in Xcopy DOS command to
the 3rd party XXcopy because their commands are more or less identical.
And you don't really need the more powerful PRO or Paid Version of
XXcopy unless you run a server for a corporation. Incidentally, the
Freebie version is only allowed for Home Use and NOT for Corporate or
Business/Commercial use for which a fairly hefty fee is payable. The PRO
version will also do file paths+names of longer than 256 chacaters,
which the Freebie version will skip! But I doubt that a home user will
have such lengthy filenames.

And because XXcopy will create its own destination folders and
subfolders on your Xternal HD, you can use the same Xternal HD to XXcopy
different computers just by pre-specifying different destination folders
which it will then create on your Xternal HD. No need to pre-create the
destination folder!

So you see, XXcopy is superbly flexible. As flexible in fact as this
beautiful Chinese contortionist girl.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=600AHGHwllU

Unfortunately it has no parameter/option to include in your command line
that will make you a cuppa or something on the rocks!
--
choro
*****

On 16/09/2013 14:32, Roger Mills wrote:
On 15/09/2013 20:43, choro wrote:


And incidentally, in preference to W7's Xcopy I always XXcopy my
data/user files to an external HD. That way they are immediately
accessible. I have the necessary XXcopy commands ready on a Word
document with its own shortcut on the desktop. Nice and neat!

I do the same, except that I have a batch file which contains all the
commands, and which is scheduled to run automatically each day.

The only files XXcopy cannot deal with (at least the freebie version) is
filenames with more than 256 characters including the path. And that is
no problem for me.

Another thing the freebie version can't cope with is copying files to a
network drive rather than to a directly connected external drive. To be
more accurate, it *can* do it - but not without producing a 'nag'
message which suggests that you ought to be using the 'paid for'
version. You have to "press any key to continue" to get rid of the
message, which means that you can't automate the process. This is
annoying because the T&C's *do* allow copying to network drives as long
as they're your personal property.

In order to overcome this problem, I've taken to using Robocopy. There's
a bit of a learning curve, but it enables me to achieve everything I
want to do, without any nag messages.

Well, yes, I agree with you that preparing a batch file to run the
commands is the more elegant solution though quite frankly I don't mind
copying and pasting my commands to the Command Prompt.

My solution is to create a desktop folder showing up as a large red tick
mark, which includes shortcuts to my constantly used or updated files.
And my XXcopy commands .doc file has a shortcut there. The large red tic
it makes this desktop folder very easy to find.

But maybe I should give *Robocopy* a try. If it's got a learning curve,
so be it, if it is worth the effort. You are the second person
recommending this program.

Anybody to +1 it?--
choro
*****