How do YOU partition your drives Pre and Post OS Install?

[Convicted1]

Hey all,

Starting my build this weekend, just waiting on a few more parts to come in.

My question to all of you is this...

What do YOU use to partition your drives before the OS Install? How about if you've already got your OS Installed and decide you want to adjust some of your partition sizes?

I'm asking for personal opinions on differing solutions...

I've only had clean install experience with Windows XP, and Prior to that 98 Where you could use Fdisk to partition your drives. XP would allow you to partition however you wanted before installing the OS. Afterwards though you were stuck with the arrangements you made.

So what I'm wanting to do PRIOR to OS install is partition my 120GB SSD into two drives... Probably 50-60GB (think thats enough) for the Win7 OS, drivers, MSE, and hardware management utilities, and 60-70 for my most played or used games and applications. I will not want to change this partition table again after the OS Install.

Then.. I'd like to be able to adjust the partitions of my 2TB WD Black on the fly inside the operating system if at all possible. Mostly because I can't make up my mind right now HOW I want to partition the 2TB drive. I don't want to use some kind of software thats always sitting down there in the tray or background hogging system resources or anything... Some kind of use it when you need it, and you're done software.

I'm very anal about organization when it comes to my file systems... I've always had seperate partitions for my music, another for videos, another for pictures, and a partition that I just install programs to such as older games that I just keep around for when I feel nostalgic, or AutoCAD and photoshop which I don't use very often.

I'd like to hear how you guys handle these situations. Does Win7 still allow you to adjust your partition tables BEFORE installation of the OS? Whats this about some hidden 100MB "System" partition I've read?

Even just simple links with ideas would be great guys!

Thanks again!... I hope to start contributing to the forum soon... As of right now all I seem to be doing is asking for help! Once I get caught up on all the new advancements... I'll be more helpful.

-David

 

[TiZakit]

I'm going to be concise, as I need to leave in 3 min...

You can partition prior to install of windows 7. Or you can go into recovery and use diskpart.
I think you are over doing it on the partitions. 1 big 2tb partition, use FOLDERS to organize data. Flexible size, don't need to think about it. Don't run into the issue of running out of room on the music partition, but have 200gb left on the video.

 

[neo668]

I don't think you should partion your SSD into 2 drives because this won't be efficient use of space. 120GB is not that big really. You might however need some unpartitioned space as Overprovisioning (OP) space to help your SSD with garbage collection (recovery). If I'm not mistaken most new SSDs on the market have GC. You might need to check this. If your SSD does have GC then leave around 20 - 30 GB of unpartitioned space. Then put the OS, apps and your games onto that 1 partition.

You can create the partition when you install Win 7. Win 7 will automatically create the 100MB System partition (it will notify you first though). It uses this partition to boot your system.

You can also expand or shrink a partition within Windows 7 after installation. Go to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management. Right click the partition (on any disk) you want and you have a choice to "Extend Volume" or "Shrink Volume".

I agree with TiZakit that you should use folders, instead of partitions, as this is more flexible and provides maximum utilization of available space.

Finally, you might want to use a cloning program like Acronis to clone your SSD. Or you could use Win 7's own Create Image tool. This way you can always go back to the best state of your SSD drive. I make an image at various stages of the OS installation so that if an update or program installation goes bad I can always revert back to the last best state.

My 2 cents.

 

[Convicted1]

OK... Actually that was something I was thinking of doing anyway...

The only thing I hate is when you end up with a bunch of different folders OUTSIDE of the Programs directory because of some software installs, such as some Adobe programs create a temp directory, ATI seems to create it's own directory for the catalyst software... Etc.

I'm still a little confused on the Garbage Collection space... Any way you could point me to a link to understand that a little better?

What I'll plan to do now then is create a 100GB Partition for the Primary OS drive and certain games and applications, and a second with the remaining space (should be 18 or so GB) to use as GC. Then I'll just leave the 2TB as a single partition and arrange it with directories instead of partitions.

Another question... Are there any software programs out there that I can create a bit for bit clone of a drive? Once I've got my OS installed, and all my drivers and such, I'd like to pull the drive back out of the computer, take it to my laptop and use a cable and dock that I've got to clone it to a another (as close as possible) identical sized standard platter drive, so I always have a quick way of doing a full restore incase something ever happens...

The biggest thing is I want to do this from ANOTHER computer... I don't want the cloning softare installed on the drive I'm attempting to clone.

I was thinking of using this... http://www.drive-image.com/

Will that allow me to do what I'm looking to accomplish? Any other suggestions?

 

[TiZakit]

Arcronis and Norton Ghost can do what you want, more or less. Arcronis has a bootable disk you can use and copy the drive with. It can even compress the image. http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

 

[Convicted1]

Any chance Acronis will automatically create the seperate partitions also? Or will I need to do that myself?

 

[TiZakit]

Its been a bit and a few versions of the software since I messed with it. As far as I remember you would need to create the partitions for your data to expand back into.

 

[neo668]

I'm still a little confused on the Garbage Collection space... Any way you could point me to a link to understand that a little better?

Copied from OCZ Forums.

Over Provisioning

45.
SSD Over-Provisioning (OP) is a technique used at the design end of all OCZ SSDs.
Provides extra nand flash memory capacity (which the user can't access).
The SSD can create pre-erased blocks - ready to be used in the virtual pool.

46.
Over-Provisioning increases overall write IOPS and reliability over time.
All the SSD controllers do is map/register the pages/blocks.
They have no knowledge of what is in the pages/blocks.
Just whether they contain valid or invalid data.
Different controllers may deal with the pages/blocks in slightly different ways.
Some even rotate valid data around to improve Wear Leveling and longevity.
Some even merge/combine at the page level to improve matters further.

47.
Manual OP would free up more pages/blocks over time.
This provides a much larger pool of free blocks for the controller to manage.
This is best achieved before/during Operating System installation.
By creating a smaller formatted (quick only) Volume size.

Also: http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f....(vertex-2e-120gb)&highlight=overprovisioning

These discuss Sandforce drives but the GC principles are the same for SSDs that use it.

Any chance Acronis will automatically create the seperate partitions also? Or will I need to do that myself?

Acronis will not automatically create the separate partitions. You need to create the partitions first and then put the clones on them. If you do need to create the partitions make sure the alignment is OK. Maybe you can play around with the Acronis free trial version first to see if it suits you.

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

On the other hand, Win 7's own "Create Image" and "Re-Image" tools will create the partitions for you and Win 7 always gets the alignments right.

 

[Convicted1]

Copied from OCZ Forums.

Over Provisioning

45.
SSD Over-Provisioning (OP) is a technique used at the design end of all OCZ SSDs.
Provides extra nand flash memory capacity (which the user can't access).
The SSD can create pre-erased blocks - ready to be used in the virtual pool.

46.
Over-Provisioning increases overall write IOPS and reliability over time.
All the SSD controllers do is map/register the pages/blocks.
They have no knowledge of what is in the pages/blocks.
Just whether they contain valid or invalid data.
Different controllers may deal with the pages/blocks in slightly different ways.
Some even rotate valid data around to improve Wear Leveling and longevity.
Some even merge/combine at the page level to improve matters further.

47.
Manual OP would free up more pages/blocks over time.
This provides a much larger pool of free blocks for the controller to manage.
This is best achieved before/during Operating System installation.
By creating a smaller formatted (quick only) Volume size.

Also: http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f....(vertex-2e-120gb)&highlight=overprovisioning

These discuss Sandforce drives but the GC principles are the same for SSDs that use it.



Acronis will not automatically create the separate partitions. You need to create the partitions first and then put the clones on them. If you do need to create the partitions make sure the alignment is OK. Maybe you can play around with the Acronis free trial version first to see if it suits you.

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

On the other hand, Win 7's own "Create Image" and "Re-Image" tools will create the partitions for you and Win 7 always gets the alignments right.

Thank you very much for that!

I checked that link... and it seems that since I purchased the MaxIOPS version of the drive, that OCZ has already increased the size of the GC Space to optimum size for me.

That is if I'm reading everything correctly... Can anybody verify I'm on the right track?

 

[neo668]

There is no optimum size for GC space. It's, the more the better. If you have more Manual OP space your drive will have more to work with in cleaning out your drive which helps with recovery time and drive longevity. What you could do is set Manual OP space to the maximum you can set now. Or just set it at 20GB - 30GB and see what happens. Then if you need more space (like when installing a new game or app) you can reclaim back from the unpartitioned space through Win 7's Disk Management tool (Extend Voume & Shrink Volume).

 

[Convicted1]

There is no optimum size for GC space. It's, the more the better. If you have more Manual OP space your drive will have more to work with in cleaning out your drive which helps with recovery time and drive longevity. What you could do is set Manual OP space to the maximum you can set now. Or just set it at 20GB - 30GB and see what happens. Then if you need more space (like when installing a new game or app) you can reclaim back from the unpartitioned space through Win 7's Disk Management tool (Extend Voume & Shrink Volume).

Well... I guess what I should have said was optimum BALANCE... Between usable storage space, and enough OP GC space to account for something.

I'll do some more reading on it for sure... But I think what I'll do is partition the maximum space at first, leaving the factory GC space to handle its duties, then once I figure out exactly how much of the drive I'll actually need for storage I'll go back and adjust in Windows DMT.

On another note... I just bought Acronis... and it WILL "clone" a physical drive, partition for partition.

I just took a drive out of one of my laptops, and opened a new similar sized, but not identical drive and am currently copying both the C: partition and the D: partiton (OEM System Recovery Location) to the new drive! Using the automatic mode it automatically resizes the partitions based on if the new drive is smaller or larger by percentage. So basically, if the new drive is larger... It will make each partition just a bit larger to have the same ratio of partitioned space as before. It even clones the unpartitioned space!

WORKS BEAUTIFULLY! Thanks for that guys!

-David

 

[neo668]

Glad you've got it all sorted out now.