Partition Setup and Backup Software Advice

[trolley]

I have just purchased a bare-bones system from TigerDirect with a 1 TB harddrive. I looked on the internet and this forum for what is the best configuration for Windows XP Pro. I did not find anything concrete.

My current system is using just one partition for the whole system.

The reason I am looking at this is to optimize performance. I am a programmer and would like to make sure I keep some of my information safe and make recovery quicker and easier.

I have a NAS device with a raid 1 on my network that I plan to backup to. Any advice on software to backup instead of using NTBackup?

Any help or advice will be greatly appreciated!

 

[linney]

Because you are tied (at the moment) to one hard drive on the XP machine you will miss out on the advantages of having two hard drives controlled by separate controllers.
Still there would be some advantages from splitting your hard drive in to several Partitions. Mainly these will be the separation of data, and not having to perform various maintenance, or Imaging backups, on a 1TB Partition but having several smaller ones to spread the load as it were.

When it comes to backup programs, I just use Imaging software, this does the whole Partition in one go, but allows for restoring of individual files if necessary.

I use software from Terabyte, but a lot of people here like Acronis.

Terabyte Unlimited

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/prodgrid.html

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-windows.htm

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit-next-generation.htm

Acronis True Image 10 Home

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

Freeware imaging solution? ie something like ghost?
thread779-1556894

 

[MasterRacker]

As linney said, you won't necessarily get a performance boost but it's still a good idea to have at least 2 partitions to separate your data from the OS/Programs. That way you could do a full reinstall if it became necessary without touching your data.

With XP 20-30 GB should be more than enough for a system partition depending on your program load. Use your own judgement based on what you are installing.

After setting up your data partition, redirect your My Documents to a folder there so you don't accidentally store data on the C: drive.

On my own system, I don't even bother with backups of system - only data. Right now I'm happy with occasional file copies to a USB hard drive although I will be experimenting with Synctoy when I find the time. Personally I don't like backup programs for home use since they tend to package your files in their own proprietary format and I don't need point in time restore capability. If you want to save space on your NAS you could look at something like ZipBackup.

One hint: under XP in a non-domain environment make sure to enable Simple File Sharing, especially if you are using more than one login on the machine.

Jeff
[small][purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day
"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]

 

[trolley]

Thank you for the information.

Does it makes sense to break it up into four partitions of 250gb? Then take the boot partition and clone it to another partition after it is all set up?

 

[linney]

What do you mean by "clone"? From my point of view, having an image of the XP Partition, and saving that image would be the way to go. Of course if the whole drive goes bad then so does everything on it.

If clone means an exact copy, then you might has well go the whole way and set up a dual boot, but to be legal you would need a new Product Key for the second XP.

 

[goombawaho]

I don't know why you would break it up into 4 partitions at all. I could only logically see 1 partition or 2. If you go with 2, I'd leave 50GB for the O.S. (plenty of space).

What are you goals in backup?? You have to decide that first.

Data protection - should be an obivous goal
An image of the operating system. Only useful if you update it periodically and that depends on how static it stays. More changes, more images - ideally.

I would personally do something like this.

1. Use Robocopy or similar to copy your data to the NAS drive on a scheduled task basis. It will make a copy of a folder you decide on.

2. Periodically, take an image of your O.S. partition (choose your software) and it store it on the NAS server

With one hard drive, you have no redundancy, so anything on the main hard drive (O.S. and data) is not "backed up" if it's stored on the same drive in another partition. That's why I say the ultimate destination for the backup should be the NAS device, an external hard drive, online backup, etc.

 

[edfair]

You might also want to relocate some of the storage locations from the OS defaults. Makes the backups easier to program and avoids a lot of redundent files.

one example: the email folders set up with outlook express default settings are about 8 levels deep in a 1gb folder while changing the mail store location ends up with a 100mb file. YMMV.

I move as much data to folders at the root of the drive and burn the contents to CDR. All of the programs can be reloaded if required.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[goombawaho]

That's a good idea. Same for Outlook PST file - normally in C:\documents and settings.........

Can get large.

 

[trolley]

Thank you all for your suggestions and information. It has got me thinking.

I might put the 1TB drive aside and put in two 250gb drives. Creating two partitions, 50gb for the OS and the rest for data. Then image the disk to the other disk. Then periodically doing a image backup as a fail safe along with backing up data to the NAS device. Does that seem like a good plan?

Right now, I have two 80gb drives in a Raid on the NAS device I built. Maybe next month getting another 1TB drive and make the two 1TBs as the raid.