until you go here link

It's not a question of volumes vs partitions, it's dynamic vs basic, but the whole topic is confusing. You may want to look into getting the program Partition Magic, it makes this sort thing very easy.

This link may help as well.

Partitioning your drive is a throwback to older technology and used to help with disk access times.

There is no reason to do this anymore unless you are creating a system that can boot with different operating systems.

Gary

Gary,

You can also partition your drive to make it easier to manage backups.

Say you have two drives. You can put your OS on one partition or OS+video apps on one partition. All your less important programs can go on another partition. So you might have the following configuration

C drive disk1partition1 OS
D drive disk1partition2 Vegas, Photoshop, Sound Forge, Acid,
E drive disk1partition3 Office, email, saved files, Unreal Tournament, etc,
F drive disk2partition1 video files

It becomes easier to manage your backups. Say, Windows release a new service pack, you install it to the C drive and if you want to back it up, you don't have to back up a whole 60 gig drive, you back up the C partition which might only be a few gig and can fit on a single CD-RW.

buster,

I see your point, but doesn't current backup software have selectable directories, etc.?

Gary

I suppose you're right. Something about that method I just don't trust. I think separate partitions are just cleaner.

I keep a 700MB partition on my computer for important files that can be backed up to CD. The partition with organization.

If you use Norton Ghost then it's better to have a small partiton for your OS so you can back it up to a smaller ghost image (it shouldn't back up extraneous programs like games or large data files like DV video).

Holy, I didn't know I'd open such a Pandora's box... My system now is, hum, quite mixed up so to say.

I got: (I changed drives letters but I don't htink it's an issue)

C: partition,basic, NTFS, sane (? word to word from french...)/ system, 30Go, 90% free

P: (for Programs...) single, dynamic, NTFS, sane (...), 80Go, 99% free (nothing there already; planning to put programs/applications like Vegas,Photoshop,etc.)

W: partition, basic, NTFS, sane (...), 80Go, 1% free (video / photos / audio files and my recovered files from former P: drive setup)

X: partition, basic, NTFS, sane (again...), 80Go, 4% free (same scenario as W: drive...)

Y: partition, basic, NTFS, sane (...)/ ACTIVE, 80Go, 7% free (same scenario again...)

Z: partition, basic, NTFS, sane (...), 80Go, 0% free (508Mo) (same scenario again...)



I also got two 160Go drives mounted in external enclosures with both the same "specs" :

U: partition, basic, NTFS, sane, 17% free (again with recovered files...)

V: partition, basic, NTFS, sane, 8% free (recovered files too...)

NOW:

-Do I have to get Partition Magic to change that ACTIVE Y: drive to be the C: drive so I don't have problems booting with CD-Rom again ?(NOW, I learned that!)

-Any simple, "on the spot" (but solid) suggestions to sort this mess out puh-lease ? I just want to finish this project then I'll probably get a new mobo-CPU-memory setup and re-install everything ***the right way*** (hopefully!) this time !

God, am I baaaad at installing OSes... : (

PS 1: I'll save these links to a floppy for further reference, thanks for the tip!
PS 2: yes, you're allowed to laugh your guts out !

Thanks a LOT for your time gentlemen...

uh, wow. Are those all current? Or is that repeated attempts at fixing the problem?

If you are using so many partititons, you probably should look into Partition Magic, it makes resizing and combining partitions very easy. I believe it has tools to help you change drive letters smartly--I think it will find the shortcuts that point to those drive letters and update them.

It's all different single drives with only one partition ("principal", not "extended"...) on each drive so far. Everything is plugged and working.

What I'm aiming at is:
- having C: drive for OS. I will always use only one OS.
-having a different drive for Programs (such as Vegas and others)
-All the rest of the drives is purely and simply storage space, mobile and not.

I could make partitions for Music/Photos/Video/Misc. but then I'd have the whole alphabet and since I always use Explorer to locate files, that would be tedious most of the time. Unless you tell me I'm (again) off the track and I could benefit from this method (for security purposes, etc... ?)

PS: the "active" drive not being the C: drive... is that a big problem?
And about that "dynamic" empty drive I want to put my programs on, since all my other drives are "basic" drives, is it better to convert it to a "basic" one prior to installing programs?

futz,

so long as you are in the process of messing up your pc =) here are more ideas.

if your OS is not on C:\ drive- the one with the letter C specifically, it's only a matter of time when you'll have problems later installing programs and even your current programs which were "designed" to point to C:\ drive for whatever purpose. Is this what you mean with C not being active?

If I were you I'd definitely choose to install fresh like so... Suppose I have four physical hard disks...

1. Make up my mind that OS will be on drive C.
2. Physically check that drive C is master (look at the jumpers)
3. Remove all other drives on PC except physical drive C.
4. Reinstall WinXP or Win2000 on that single drive, standard NTFS format.
5. Windows has no choice but to make this single drive as C
6. Get WinXP/2000 working.
7. Rebbot and check that bios will boot into this drive as first priority.
8. Turn pc off and physically install one drive as slave in the same EIDE channel as the master.
9. On the other EIDE channel, install one master and one slave.
10. A total of four physical drives.
11. Reboot, bios will detect new drives but Windows will not be able to use the three new drives yet (unless they've been previously formatted)

From here it is quite easy whatever you want to do with the three new drives. Reformat them, delete their partitions, create partitions, change their drive letters... Right-click My Computer, Manage, Disk Management.

As for "active, extended, basic, primary..." settings of the partitions I wouldn't worry about it since I will just accept Windows default.

The main thing I would remember, is to get WinXP/2000 properly installed on a single drive first and only then I would add drives. Of course the additional drives could be CD/DVD drives. I got 2 HDDs and 2CD drives and installed them as described. No problems.

Good luck!.

thanks..!

My OS drive is and will always be the **C: drive**.

It's the only drive that never got any other letter.

I will install Vegas on a partitionned P: drive (while OS -win2k- being on C: drive), finish these two projects, then re-do the whole system from the gound up...
I'll decide *before* what I'll be using ("basic" or "dynamic") as a base for this system, ALL drives being taken care of in the decision (and partitons planned in advance).
I'll put the RIGHT drive as "Active" drive so if I have to boot from CD-Rom I won't have any problem...

then build another one for chrissakes.

I will then use this one for internet and the other will never get in TOUCH with that 'til it becomes, on it's turn, the "internet/communication/contact with the outer world machine"!

Every time I had to re-install, it was after a virus or trojan or poppers or "name it" got on my machine.

..."code 18" constantly taken in consideration of course... : )

fUtZ,

I have a similar setup:
EIDE Channel 1:
+DISK 1 (Master): 40gb broken up into 2 partitions (NTFS Basic):
- C: for OS and program files (10gb)
- F: for miscellaneous data files and software installation files (30 gb)

+DISK 2 (Slave): R: DVD-ROM

EIDE Channel 2:
+DISK 3/4: (Master) 2 120GB A/V drives in swappable caddies for video files (NTFS Basic; no partition)
- D:
- E:

+DISK 5: (Slave) 40gb Drive for Stock footage, Video previews, page file and temp file directories (NTFS Basic; no partition)

The Video Guys Windows tweaks guides for NLE
recommend putting page files, preview files and temp files on a separate drive to decrease drive access time and (supposedly) speeding up rendering and system response.

I DO NOT recommend using Partition Magic. It has practically destroyed two of my hard drives in the past, and one just recently.

A MUCH better program is Acronis PartitionExpert. Not only will it allow creation of partitions on any part of a drive, but it literally performs these tasks 100 times faster than Partition Magic, and leaves my hard drive in perfect condition.

I recently used Partition Magic to repartition a drive from within Win XP, so that I could install Lindows OS 4.5. A task that was taking hours. Eventually I had to stop the procedure manually, because the program reported that it could not perfom the repartitioning in that location of the drive. On reboot,the system had to do a scan disk, and needed to repair 100's of files. Once that was done, I used the system restore to get my system back. I them found the Acronis product, and it didn't balk once at allowing me to repartition and format for Linux. AND, it did this all in about 3 minutes. The system now has a dual boot with Win XP and Lindows. Both are running perfectly.