Setting Up Windows

What is the best way to set up windows (xp,vista, 7).

Fairly often I have hard drive failures - once every year or so.

Is it best to install 'Windows Only' on a drive and then install all programs on a seperate physical drive?

It is a pain when you have to reinstall ALL programs when hard drives crash.

My thought is to put Windows only on a smaller drive and then install programs like office, firefox, etc. on a separte drive. Thus negating the issues of having to reinstall everything.

Does this work in practice, or is it only in theory? Or maybe not theory at all.

Thanks.

 

A failure a year! Time to change brand I think

Your idea doesn't work I'm afraid, as every installed program makes many entries in the registry and system folders. Programs can be installed to a different partition from Windows itself, but none of them would work if Windows was reinstalled.

The real answer to your question is to use a backup program such as Acronis to image your system regularly. When a hard drive fails you can restore your image to the new drive and be up again in no time at all.

 

Sounds good to me....

I have tried many different hard drive brands.

Seagate, WD, anything!

I am not sure why there are failures in them. Some of them get very loud (ticking) as the disk spins. Maybe it is a power issue? We have been known to go through a few Power supplies as well.

 

Is it common to lose sectors in hard drives? Anything I can do to extend the life of the drive? Does partitioning make a difference?

 

Apart from ensuring that temperatures are normal, by keeping cooling fans and vents dust free, there isn't anything you can do to affect disk life that I'm aware of.

 

I think it is the luck of the draw whether you get a good or bad HD. I had 3 Maxtors fail on me after about a year. I switched to WD and have had much better luck. I'm sure others could say the exact reverse about their experience.

I've found the manufacturer's diagnostic utility (SeaTools or WD Diagnostic) can often fix bad sectors and extend the life of a drive. Once the ticking starts don't bother since it is a mechanical problem that can't be fixed with software.

I don't think partitioning makes much of a difference. I do keep my OS on a small 25gb partition and everything else on a larger one. That way my personal files are less likely to be lost if I have to format the OS partition. Of course, they wouldn't be safe if the whole HD failed mechanically.

 

Maxtor went through a very bad patch prior to being taken over by Seagate. I think many ppl will echo your experience, me included.

 

Guess I better get another hard drive to plug in to the external, and keep a back up.

Thanks for the info.

 

Download the diagnostic program for your drive. It only takes a few minutes to run the LONG test and it will tell you if it can repair the bad sectors. I've had drives I was ready to throw away that have run for a couple of years after running the test. I don't use them for my OS but for temporary storage of large files they seem to work OK.