Can someone explain to me about partitions?

It's a LIE that they are inaccessible. if your os doesn't work, you have to get some os working and accessing the hdd again, else you can't access your data. and then, you can access c:\users\ just as well as d:. exactly as well.

i'm on the go with my notebook all the time, and have no need for the second partition. c: and d: have the same accessibility in case of failure.

if i need to recover my mbr or what ever on the go, i have to do that anyways, else i can not access d:
if i need to recover my os what ever on the go, i have to do that anyways, else i can not access d:

when ever i get access to d:, i have full access to c:, too.

and to get that access (and even reinstall a full working os) have my bootstick with my, a full vista setup on the go, if i need it.

so again, explain me the gain when being on the go? i'm on the go nearly daily. sometimes the laptop isn't on the home-net for days.

 

obviously it was not meant for the corporate environment. but it looks like, step by step, even there it will come in (recent plans of microsoft show a tendency in that direction. i'd love it ).

 

Not so. The one time it happened, it was on a computer with a recovery partition. I ran the recovery function, which couldn't do a repair installation, and ended up having to do a full recovery from the recovery partition. That, of course, entailed formatting the entire system partition. If I had stayed with only one partition, I would have formatted over all of my documents; as it was, my documents stayed safe and sound in my separate Data partition, and the recovery installation was done soon enough and, even though it reverted the OS back to factory original, it gave me unimpeded access to the documents I had saved on the separate Data partition.

If I had had only one partition, I would have had only two options: (i) do a recovery format and regain use of the computer at the cost of losing access to all of the documents (which would have made the whole exercise pointless until I got back home) or (ii) wait until I got home to stick the drive in an external enclosure, pull off documents, and then do a complete reinstallation.

In either event, I would have been utterly SOL at the time had I not had a separate Data partition.

 

So do all my clients, without need for a second partition. but the nice thing is, i teach them how to do it by themselves. no need to call me and breathe down my neck and all that. no need for them to spend more money on support calls.

btw, big corporate environments are a different topic. i talk about smallest businesses and home users. in big corporations, different rules have to be set up, like no important data on the clients, ever.

and yes, i told that rule, and the big boss of a 300 man company lost some files on his laptop, and he got my answer: sir, it's gone. and we told you to not do it that way, it's your fault. he learned it.. (and i now work for another company, but that's for other reasons )

and now with directaccess from win7, the need for local data gets even less than before.

 

you know there are tools that can repair your broken partition? and they're right on the vista boot disk? and for completely lost partitions (could be your d: just as well), you need something like recuva to restore anyways. it can happen that some partition gets "lost" (but mostly only when having more than one and resizing them with the wrong app or so). then, some real recovery tool is needed.

but i bet i could have fixed your problem easily without the need to rely on the second partition.

so you could recover your data? nice, what if the hdd died? you couldn't resque it then? so why have it on an insecure medium right from the start. yuo had LUCK you could save it that time. if my notebook gets under the train right now, i lose NO data. and that's why i don't care about partitions anymore. as i don't even care about my hw at all anymore.

 

Ok, at the risk of being obtuse, I have to agree with a number of other folk who have pointed out that this conversation is degenerating into inanity. The bottom line is, you do what fits best with the way you (and your clients, if you have them) work, and in the absence of a reproducible trial experiment under controlled conditions, with proper recording of all relevant data, there simply is no way either of you is going to convince the other that the "best" solution is your way or the highway.

So, how about this, can we all just agree to disagree? Dave hates partitions and thinks making more than the default is a waste of time; for him, the only useful safety mechanism is an external backup server. Gary thinks having a separate partition for one's data/documents is a useful safety device that helps in certain situations and that complements, not replaces, the need/usefulness of an external backup server.

Does that sufficiently sum up the only conclusion this conversation will ever reach?

 

That would have been really, really great - if I'd been running on _Vista instead of XP - so, no, your solution would have been utterly irrelevant.

Yes, I quite agree, that if the drive had physically died, that would have been the end of it. But then an external backup would have been equally as useless, so that circumstance is utterly irrelevant to determining if a separate partition is, or is not, useful, or if an external backup alone would do. Also, physical death occurs less frequently than file system problems, so I'd rather worry first and foremost about file system problems, not physical death.

 

physical death occurs much more than file system problems in my experience on several big and small environments, from companies to home-uses. physical death is no real problem for me, but was several times. i've learned my lesson.

and the tools exist just as well on xp btw.

and yes, in xp days (i stated it), file corruption happened quite often (not really often, but it did happen for non-reasons sometimes).

and i never stated to do one partition for xp. did i? no.

i stated for nowadays systems, with modern operating systems and environemnts, a.k.a. the 2.5year old vista, or soon win7, there is no need for multiple partitions. file corruptions that are not fixable are so rare, i'd say they're inexistent. full dying disks are much more common than non-recoverable problems.

and that's why i say, f.e. to scuderia, to maybe rethink again, in the new environment, if the old habit of multipartitions just got useless today.

and you know what? it does.


and i will support this statement in every topic that may pop up. i do agree that everyone can do it's own way, they all work. but i don't accept to teach to new people, maybe not technical knowledgeable people that partitions are the way to go today. because that is not true anymore. not for the arbitary sister, or mom, or dad, or friend, or whoever you want to help with it. not for the ordinary computer user.

scuderia is a special case, as he is involved in a big company, there all changes, obviously. but for home-use, there are better tools and solutions today. get used to them.

 

Dave,

You're not convincing anyone who doesn't already do it your way, and you (and Gary as well, BTW) gave all the useful information you've provided many, many posts earlier, so why don't we all just let this thread die a graceful, well-deserved death?

 

Ok we're good. If you misunderstood what I was saying I understand the reaction.

In a year I might HAVE to use the image of the C: drive maybe once or twice at most, some years never at all. But because it is so easy to do, I might use it three or four other times after trying out some software that I didn't trust to fully uninstall itself. Because this laptop is my development system, I often try out new tools and apps and if I have a "bad feeling" about something I am about to try, I will image the C: drive before the install and restore after I am done trying it out. I have a third partition on my hard drive just to keep my most recent image. It is used for this purpose and so I have a backup of my C: drive when I am on the road.

I have in five years only needed to use that backup while I was on the road, but being 1500 miles away from my external drive, I would have been in a real bind with a client waiting for me to recover. But because I have the that image I just booted from a image app cd and restored the C: drive. 18 minutes latter, I was ready to go. For me it is not about how often I need to use my image, it is about WHEN and WHY I might need to do so. Even if I never had to use it, I would still create the image because I need to be prepared for the eventuality while I am at a customers site. My customers expect that of me. But the bottom line is that one time saved my butt.

Also even if I were not on the road, the ability to restore an image in 18 minutes allows me to be back under way quickly without having to even think about it and not losing ANY of my "in process" data that was not on my last backup if I had everything in one partition. (We have discussed that point before, keeping everything in one partition POTENTIALLY exposes one to losing any "in process" data changed since the last backup.) The two partition method, while still having an exposure to that if the entire hard drive is hosed, has a smaller exposure footprint, in that the data partition might be unaffected in some catastrophic events.

In ten years of using partitioning, I have only had to resize them twice. And it was no hassle to do that at all, given that I have a tool that makes that very simple. So you are right, I disagree that there is any hassle with partitions.

I understand what you are saying about restoring old images. I make a new image on a regular schedule. Well not a schedule, per se, but whenever I make any significant changes to the C: drive. Adding new programs, service packs, big number of updates etc. And even when none of those events occur, I will do one every three months or so just to alleviate the issue you rightly bring up. But again, that is part of my "information management strategy". Because the C: partition has a change life cycle that is significantly longer than my data, I have the two on different strategies. The data changes daily, so it gets backed up on a file by file basis every day. But the C: drive (OS and apps) change so little from one day to the next, I needn't bother to back them up every day. Even if I go two months without creating a new image of C:, I can restore from my last image, and then run windows update to get back in shape.

Gary

 

Partitioning - are we talking about when Pakistan was carved off from India?

 

Full dying disks are NOT more frequent than file corruption, without any regard to whether those are data files or executables.

You continue with your dogma that only you are correct and that partitions have no use. I am sorry, but you just are not as smart as you think you are. Just because you don't think there is any need for them does not make it so. I have and will continue to successfully set up partition schemes for friends, family and clients. Schemes that the user can easily use to recover all by themselves from any event without any need for me to be involved.

Let me clarify one thing, I am NOT involved in a big company. I am involved in a three partner company, with me as the sole developer. I said I was a corporate developer, because that is what Microsoft considers me in their licensing scheme. I have Fortune 100 companies as clients.

Gary

 

Well, see, one of your problems seems to be that you tend to over-generalize sometimes. For the average user, yes, a re-install may sometimes be the best solution. But then there are some users, such as yours truly, who have a very large set of highly customized software packages they work with. In my case, a complete re-install would literally cost me one week of full-time work. Believe me, if you're in that situation, you absolutely do not want to reinstall from scratch...

However, I should say that I agree with you that the average PC user, with limited competence, might often, not always but often, mind you, be best served by just leaving well enough alone, and not bother with partitions.

 

If not being assisted by someone with the understanding and toolsets required, partitioning can be a VERY daunting task. I think all of us, including Dave, can agree on that. It is not a solution for the average user, without some serious guidance.

Gary