How best to partition dual HDDs

Hi, I'm looking for a bit of advice on how best to set up & partition the HDDs on my PC. Lenovo M90p 5864


The original drive has Windows 7 64bit os pre installed & is Western Digital 150GB. I then have an additional Seagate 500GB which I fitted in place of the DVD drive using the power source & Sata cables. I bought an external DVD drive which is connected via USB.


I will mainly use the PC for business with design software like Photoshop / Illustrator CS / FlexiSign Pro. Also Office software for accounting etc.


I will also use it for storing photos & music files.


My intention is to keep the PC offline if at all possible & to do all program updates via pendrive (32GB Kingston Data Traveler) I have wsus but not sure how realistic this actually is.


I had downloaded Macrium Reflect initially as I had just intended to swap the original HD for the larger one until I decided to use both. I am not sure if it may still be a good idea to make a copy of the os as a backup on a bootable disk.


I am also not sure of what order I need to approach this all in, i.e. after partitioning, do I install antivirus first or windows updates etc.


All advice greatly appreciated as have never done anything like this.

 

You do realize that Windows 7 still gets security patches until January 2020. And Office 2007 and above is still being patched. (I have an XP computer with Office 2007 installed so I update that every Patch Tuesday as well as keeping MS Security Essentials and Malwarebytes updated).
Keeping it off line and missing more than 4 years of security patches doesn't seem like the best idea to me.

We have 4 computers in the house and I keep them patched, including flash which also gets updated every Patch Tuesday and sometimes in between if a bad security hole is discovered.

 

Hi Plodr,
Could I not just download the necessary patches say monthly onto my other PC which is online & transfer them via the pen-drive?
The other PC is XP 32bit by the way. Would that be an issue?

 

A big issue, as I see it.
Keep the XP computer off the internet and put the 7 computer on the internet to get the correct patches.

 

Why do you want to partition the drive(s)?
Do you understand that partitioning is used to make a physical drive into smaller logical drives? Was the 150 getting filled? I'd swap the drives and make the 500 the main and use the 150 as a backup.

You could do the offline updates via the USB, but I have used several of those offline updater to cut down on downloading the same patches over and over, but the first time I use the actual Windows site there seem to be more updates they missed. I yes I update those tools regularly.

I thought all adobe software had to be able to get online when you ran it.

 

Because the new PC will be used for business software I want to limit the chances of infection as much as is realistically possible. The old PC is about 7 yrs old & struggles unbelievably with processing just about anything these days. I would much rather keep the old one for browsing & emails etc & keep the new one for design software & storage.

 

I have never yet used it so it's not a case of having filled the 150. The reason I was going to use the 150 as main drive is that it came with that drive with Windows 7 ready installed & I don't have it on a disc. Therefore would have to make a copy to re install on the 500 & I'm not familiar with doing that. Also I thought it may be better to keep the os on that drive & have all programs & storage on the other drive, that way if I ever need to reinstall the os I don't need to mess with the programs.

Not sure quite what your saying about the updates via USB other than windows misses some?

 

I use wsus offline update myself. It provides the updates you specify (Service Packs, Visual C++, Silverlight, etc.) and the Security updates it has access to at the time wsus is put out. I just recently had to re-install Windows 8.1 because of a mistake I made when re-partitioning my internal 500GB hard drive (HINT, HINT), and used wsus offline 10 to update. It installed 49 Security updates but, when I went to Windows Update, there were 91 further updates to install.

I'm in agreement about putting the 500GB (un-partitioned) drive in as the main drive and I'd get a 1TB (for $50 or less) or larger drive for storage. The files you're going to be keeping on it are rather large and will fill up the 500GB drive rather quickly.

You say you want to keep your computer offline. But, if you want to conduct business with it, don't you need to be able to accept Credit/Debit cards and need to be online for such transactions?

 

My current PC has only 140 & although it is now full to capacity has done me for the last 7 years So I don't think it necessary to use the 500 as main & 1TB as backup. It's more the processing speed of the new PC that I need rather than storage although the extra storage will be a benefit.

I do not take credit card payments, so that is not an issue & even if it was then I could use the old pc for that. Once the new pc is up & running, the old one will be freed up of a lot of programs & clutter so will more than likely be a little more responsive, along with the fact that if it then goes T*** Up it won't be a major dilemma as all my work will be safe on the new one (& backed up!!)

I know of many similar businesses that have had major issues & down time due to infection that they have also had to keep their "Design" PC offline.

I was just hoping that someone may be able to help advise on a the best/most effective way to partition the drives to maximise speed (I gather keeping page file on a different drive to os for example is better) & storage.

 

Page file is relevant to the System drive only and is used when you bring the computer out of sleep/hibernation. The only System files on the other drives are System Volume Information and Recycler. If you change folder options to show hidden files and unhide protected system files, you'll see this (you can always change things back).

About the only way you'll get the speed increase you want is to get an SSD to replace your System hard drive. Hard drives are hard drives no matter what the size, interface or rotational speed — they're mechanical which inherently limits them.