Hardware upgrade

[Guest Dean]

I'm getting ready to do a major hardware upgrade and I thought I'd ask the group if there is any REAL advantage to partitioning my HD into multiple drives. I'm going to be using an IBM 41GB ATA100 drive with Win 98 SE as an OS. I've read posts where people have setup a small partition just for the OS in case of having to do a Windows reinstall but it seems to me if I have to reinstall the OS, I'm going to have to reinstall the applications anyway. So what is the advantage of partitioning a drive this "small"?

[Guest Josve]

Then I will recommende a ghost program for you!! Then you just have to load the ghost file and you are back up in 5 mins after a formatting of your harddrive.Then you don't have to install all your programs again.The advantage of making smaller partitions of a large drive is that the slack is less.But today when the drives are so cheap and HD space not that important,I think I would make the 41 gig disk into two partitions.One on 10gb and the other the rest.Then you can have all your important systemfiles on C: such as the OS and other system apps,and have the other partition for other programs and games.Myselves I have 4 disks of total over 80GB and all of them in two partitions.Then I have one disk for the Winxp and other system apps,two disk for Games,one disk for flightsims,one disk for programs,one for backup,one for misc.It becomes a large amount of drive letters this way,but the advantage is that you can arrange a nice system for all your files.Johnny"I'LL BE BACK"[div align=center]http://www.avsim.com/hangar/fly/josve/fly2/vas.gif][/div

[Guest Dean]

Thanks for the reply Johnny. So I assume the only real advantage is one of "housekeeping"? I guess I'll make the decision on how many drives to go with when I'm staring at the fdisk screen. :-lol

[Guest Hagar]

Its not only housekeeping. One big advantage is this: Lets say you have only one partition, and have installed most addons in Program Files, like those dumb installers always suggest. Then your system goes down, maybe you have to re-format and the you also loose everything installed in Program Files...If you have at least two partitions, system on C: and Fly II on D: you can start flying again straight after the OS install, and you do not have to re-install the sim and perform all those adjustments again. In other words a very time & labour-saving setup :)

[michal 44]

Yes. Plus it is much easier to keep your "FLY" drive defragged. If you have just one drive any internet activity, cache, spurious tmp files add a lot of overhead to keeping your system defragged.Michael J.

[Guest Josve]

That is if you have a ghost program....if not you have to install Fly2 again,or add the program to the registry yourselves......not recommended :) Every program that needs a reference in the registry,you have to reinstall.I'm suddenly not sure if Fly2 need reinstall......LOL It might be a standalone program that not interferes with windows.....Now I have to quit this nonsens and get off to work!!! I have sandpaper on my eyes......Did this make sence at all??Johnny"I'LL BE BACK"[div align=center]http://www.avsim.com/hangar/fly/josve/fly2/vas.gif][/div

[Guest Hagar]

Johnny Fly II works like a charm without needing to reinstall. I`ve done that lotsa times now :) Seems to me that Fly II is not dependant on registry entries, even if there is a couple of Terminal Reality entries present.

[Guest Josve]

LOL so it was right of me to doubt myselves then.....Johnny"I'LL BE BACK"[div align=center]http://www.avsim.com/hangar/fly/josve/fly2/vas.gif][/div

[Guest Hagar]

I am not dead shure this would work for all, just my positive experience :)Hope somebody else could explain the registry entries, I know it was mentioned here some time ago.

[Guest Dean]

Actually it is reinstalling all the other applications I was concerned with. I assume I would have to reinstall them just to have them registered with Windows properly as Johnny suggests. Only reinstalling Fly is no big deal but everything else is. Especially MS Office and Outlook Express. Johnny has mentioned a ghost program. Does this ghost have a name? Does anyone else have anything good or bad to say about this approach?Dean

[Guest Hagar]

Dean,It is certainly a good approach to backup your system anyway. I use WinXP`s System Restore, but would prefer to back my system up on CD`s, or DVD.I also would like to know more about Ghost, and if it is capable of doing this.

[Guest Josve]

There are several ghost programs out there.Norton Ghost are one of the best.The ghost programs makes an image of your drive,and stores it as a file.That file you can burn on a cd.Then you create a startup disk(the ghost program does).So when something goes wrong and you dont have anything else to do that format your drive.You format your drive,start up on the floppy/cd-rom and within 5 minutes you are back running.Thye best way to do this is of course of a clean install.This takes some time to do,but you only needs to do it once :) So lets say you formats your drives,makes a clean install of windows,internet programs,system utilities,games and so on,and you are sure that everything works as it should,and you have installed all your main programs.Then you make a ghost backup!!So when something goes wrong later on,as it does sooner or later,you just formats your drives and loads the ghost file,and everything is fresh again.Johnny"I'LL BE BACK"[div align=center]http://www.avsim.com/hangar/fly/josve/fly2/vas.gif][/div