How Best To Partition/Use New Disk?
Hi Fred, When I tried to boot my system one recent morning nothing happened. I got a flash of the start screen, not windows but the mother board manufacturer. I knew the power supply had to be working and the fan was blowing. I couldn't even get it to boot from the cd. After a few attempts I was able to get into the bios and change the boot order to make the cd first to boot.
I tried the recovery disk but nothing happened. Somewhere in my attempts to get it going I gave up and ordered a new hard drive. Then the light bulb went off and I remembered burning a BartPE cd ( http://www.google.com/search?as_q=bartpe&as_sitesearch=langa.com ). I dug thru my collection and found it. Uh huh you guessed it! Within minutes I had been able to repair the MBR and my computer was up and running.
The new hard drive arrived today and is formatting as we speak. Now my question is how to best use the new drive? I have a home network with 4 computers connected and a laptop on occasion. Do you have any suggestions?
I'm on my second subscription of the plus version and it's some of the best money I've ever spent. Thanks, Al Smith
Glad the BartPE reference helped you; it's a pretty slick tool, and can even be made to boot from a USB flash drive. Very cool! (See http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=177102101 )
As for using the new hard drive, my standard advice applies: Size your partitions to fit your means of backup, so said backups will be manageable and easy to do. For example, even on my terabyte system ( http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=183702383 ), I kept my most heavily-used partitions--- the ones that will need the most frequent backup--- sized to fit on two DVDs or so. That way, I can back them up conveniently and quickly.
On the other hand, I also have some very large partitions which contain stuff that's easily recreated or restored from other sources. Those partitions need backup only rarely, so the larger size doesn't get in the way.
And here's something that may fit your circumstances very well: If you find yourself with a ton of disk space and several networked PCs or laptops, use some of that surplus disk space to store "live" images and backup files from all the PCs on your LAN. For example, if you run a backup on your laptop, burn a copy to CD, but also store a copy on the new hard drive. That way, the CD copy (which can be stored away from the laptop in a safe location) is your fail-safe backup; but the "live" copy on a networked hard drive is your fast-access, always-ready copy.
That's what I do: I have a large partition that contains almost nothing but images and backup files. I also burn the images and backups to CD or DVD for total data safety (the CDs and DVDs will survive even if something bad happens to the hard drive or PC itself). But also having a month or so of daily backups right at hand on a hard drive means I can very quickly and easily get back to any reasonably recent file in very short order.
Once you start thinking about it, you'll come up with *lots* of ways to fill that new hard drive! <g>
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