Is there advantage of seperating OS & Documents on seperate partitions?

Is there any advantage of separating OS(XP) & Document files on separate partitions? I'm doing a clean install! Anyt5hing else I should separate?

Thanks

 

The way I do it is install XP on a relatively small partition 20GB and go ahead and add new programs as usual to C:\Program Files.

I don't use My Documents as the standard place to save personal files but put them on a data partition. I also put all my downloads on the data partiton (I set my browser to use a Downloads folder on the data partition rather than anywhere on my C: drive). I save any Word/Office documents on the data partition. Basically use the data partition for everything.

This way if I want to reload fresh I don't lose anything but my OS and Programs. And I can pick and choose what I want to reinstall without worrying about losing my personal data files. (Of course before reformatting C:\ I still have to backup FF bookmarks and look around to see if any programs have inadvertently saved things to C:\ but I know the bulk of things I care about are safe on the other partition). This works for me.

Even though I am really bad about making backups of my OS partition, this system would allow the actual OS backup file to take up a fairly small amount of space. My OS partition rarely gets more than half full keeping things running smoothly.

 

Where I have a choice, I have 2 Folders other than C:\Program Files.

I have c:\Keepers and c:\Testing

Names are pretty obvious. Some idiot (lazy, too) programmers force you to use C:\Program Files as they assume everybody installs programs in C:\Program Files.

If I am testing out a program I use C:\Testing. When I am happy with using it I re-install under C:\Keepers. That way I don't add to C:\Program Files and have a visual reminder of programs that I may have tested and no longer use, or have not transferred them to my C:\keepers Folder.

Just a bit easier for me than lumping everything under c:\Program Files.

Bazza

 

I absolutely agree with both sach2 and Halo. I went one step further and installed all my non MS programs to a separate partition too so I don't have to reload. I also used a 20GB partitition but then I also don't use things like Office etc, which take a lot of room so you might want to think of increasing the 20GB partition if you have those. Also, alot of games go straight into the C drive. I haven't ever lost a thing, except for hard drive failure but then that's what backups are for.

 

I've never understood how this works :confused You would choose a folder like E:\Programs for the install. And all would work fine. But when you loaded Windows fresh on C:\ how would you start a program on the newly installed OS. [Wouldn't there be registry keys missing? Licenses in particular? How would Nero know it had been registered if the Windows registry was brand new?]. Or are you talking about reloading from a backup?

Thanks!

 

sach2, I think you're quite right. Unless you're using programs designed to be run without being installed, such as portableapps that can be run from a flash drive, the program would have to be reinstalled to get the registry properly updated. So, installing programs on another partition will probably be of no benefit to most users.

 

My thoughts, too. That is why I have them in different Folders, but on the same (C drive, to overcome the Registry problem. Bazza

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Thanks, for all your input(Very Good) ideas for us limited tech newbies (NOT REALLY NEW) let's say not the sharpest knife in the drawer!
Portable apps seem a good solution to HD clutter I have downloaded a few but,never been sure how to use them. OK,let's say I just purchased some software. How can I install boxed( IE purchased software ) as portable?

 

I think there is a great deal more to the issue than simply separating Windows from Applications from Data.

Firstly the question of multiple drives.

If you have IDE drives you cannot have two devices operational at the same time on the same IDE cable. So if you put your data on one drive and your programs on another, on the same cable you will slow things down considerably as each drive has to wait for the other.

So programs and their data are better placed on different partitions on the same drive or different drives on different cables.

Secondly the paging file is best given a partition all to itself.

Thirdly with a clean install you have the opportunity to 'place' the applications on the partition to avoid fragementation and for best speed of access.

There are speed advantages to placing heavily used items toward the beginning of a drive.

Windows and some applications need a great deal of temporary disk space for working. This working chops up (fragments) the space and the folders allocated to the applications, gradually reducing performance over time.

Data is not subject to such heavy fragmentation, partly because it is not being constantly fetched and put back and partly because it is built up in a more orderly fashion.

I also advocate the use of another partition I usually designate 'workspace' . Work in progress comes here and goes to the data partition or DVD when finished. this is particularly beneficial for video editing as editing swings a lot of large files about and works most smoothly on defragmented partition. The great thing is that you can defrag totally and quickly by simply reformatting such a partition, after moving off anywanted data.

So ideally you need at least 4 partitions, suitably distributed about your drives.
If this is too much for you I find that combining the Windows and programs is the best compromise.

Backup is also facilitated by this sort of scheme as you need to backup your data more frequently than anything else. With a separate data partition you can go for a simple brute force and ingnorance method of copying the whole partition regularly, rather than running a clever incremental backup program that looses your data at the critical time.

 

Sorry for omitting a couple of key points, and forgive the vagueness as I only had to reinstall once. I used a registry backup using erunt some 4 years ago, executed the app reinstalls from the hard drive, settings and keys were automatically recreated, this was a free option for me ATT though now I use Acronis. I hope this clears it up.

 

Thanks augiedoggie for the clarification and Studiot for the tips.

I'm happy enough with my two partition system as it eliminates the panic which a non-booting system might cause and makes a yearly reinstall fairly simple. I only have about 5 programs which I must install from disk, the others are already in a Executables folder on my data partition or so easy/fast to download I can get the newest version whenever I need them.

I keep my data separate because I lost several hundred scanned receipts/documents back on Win98. XP is so much less troublesome but I just like that small buffer between OS and data.