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View Full Version : HDD drives, partitions, FAT32 vs NTFS and stuff...


Diablo's Mage
01-10-05, 11:48 AM
Well, after about a week of odd PC problems, then my WD 120gb HDD decided to destroy some clusters (killing XP). But the good thing is that I purchased a new 120gb drive to be added anyways.

So, I tore down my PC, cleaned, and rebuilt it.

Now, for the setup:

Before, I was using the WD 120gb, and a maxtor 40gb. Now, I should be using both 120gb's.

I moved the WD drive to IDE2 (master), with a Sony DVDRD as it's slave.
On IDE1 (stand alone) will be me new Seagate drive.

Boot from CD, XP setup sees both drives fine, however, the partitions on the WD drive did not change. (still C:, E:, and F [somehow the DVDRW pickup the D: ] and manualy changing drive leters within XP didn't go well when i tried 2 years ago. So anyways, I just plowed thru it and created a 30gb FAT32 partition and a 80gb NTFS partition on the Seagate (IDE1 standalone). The partitions are J: and K: [I have 4 removable devices]

installed XP on J: no problem. I dont like it, but it works.

* currently moving files over from the WD to the Seagate]

* After I take everything i need off of WD I plan on rebooting with XP CD and remove all 3 partitions, and create 3 new ones. [and im sure i'd use the same letters (being available)

Question #1 : Is it a bad thing to have XP installed on J: (are programs going to try to force install on C:\Program Files\ ?

Question #2 : Is it a bad thing to have both FAT32 and NTFS partitions on one drive? [would it be better if everything was NTFS] [[[I chose Fat32 to be able to mess around in Dos from Win98 boot disks.]]]

Question #3: is it a really bad thing to use a drive with bad clusters [can a HDD get RMA'ed from this]?



My setup goal:

C: = IDE1 Seagate 30gb partition (begining) [used as O.S.]
D: = IDE1 Seagate 80gb partition (end) [used as storage]
E: = IDE2 WD 5gb partition (begining) [used as swapfile]
F: = IDE2 WD 55gb partition (middle) [used as games/programs]
G: = IDE2 WD 60gb partition (end) [used as storage]
h: = IDE2 Sony DVDRW
I, J, K, L = removable devices.

craigiz1
01-10-05, 12:03 PM
I would delete all partions and re-create and format them.

The operating system has to be on the "C:" drive. Go with NTFS on this partition.

Go FAT 32 as you need on other partitions. Otherwise stay NTFS.

XP will detect bad clusters and ignore them during the re-creation. Hopefully there are just a few.

Airbornederekc
01-10-05, 04:08 PM
i dont see the point of partitions. maby help organize better but id rather just have no partitions main drive c and all other drives as d e f and so on and ntfs is the way to go better compression and more secure

dark_15
01-10-05, 04:16 PM
Also, put both drives on the same IDE channel. That Sony Drive will kill performance of the other drive that is connected to it.