dumb computer ?

[jann1033]

my computer has the hard drive gbs sectioned down as 2 hard drives, one with programs on it ( duh) one with nothing on it yet..am i better to use both drives or just one till it's full then use the other. i was considering moving pse, as well as putting lightroom and my new photos on the empty one and using the other one for non photo stuff...good or bad or doesn't make any difference whatsoever? i might save my jpgs or my raw files (once i am done editing them)on an external drive so i can get to them but they won't take up space so i would basically be keeping what i am working with or what i have on zen on the hard drive( the now empty one)

 

[seashoreCM]

Makes no difference.

Years ago, it was more space efficient not to have sections (partitions) too big thus several sections (FAT16 partitions) on one hard drive. Nowadays (FAT32, NTFS partitions) this is not a problem so only one drive letter is needed for each hard drive except for some esoteric operating system installations or for hiding stuff (hidden partitions).

Disney hints: http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/disney.htm

 

[DueyDooDah]

About the only reason to partition these days would be to place your operating system and/or applications on the first (primary) partition and everything else (specifically data) on the second. This allows you to rebuild the computer with a minimal chance of affecting the data. This option is most useful for people that "play" with their computers alot, such as beta testing software, installing/uninstalling operating systems, "tweaking" the OS, and such. There is no real advantage to having two partitions on the same drive other than keeping things tidy (which has it's own issues, such as when applications determine where the data is stored.) From my experience, I find it to be more of a nuisance than helpful. I'd rather have another device which I use as a backup.

One thing I hate about partitions is that people get a false sense of security with them. They think that if something goes wrong, only the drive with the applications is likely to fail - that their data will be safe. This is not normally the case.

 

[dr_zero]

Some pc's have a second partition that shows up as another drive letter but its where the backup files are stored incase you have to do a restore at some point its not really for normal storage.

I dont know if that is your case but on my pc that is what the D drive is.

 

[JR6ooo4]

DWs laptop does have two physical drives! we were surprised...
Since we chose that one simply by the price that filled most of the store credit that we had...

Mikeeee

 

[Groucho]

About the only reason to partition these days would be to place your operating system and/or applications on the first (primary) partition and everything else (specifically data) on the second. This allows you to rebuild the computer with a minimal chance of affecting the data.

That's exactly what I do... I install only the OS to the C: drive, and install all apps to d:\apps. (I used to do d:\apps, d:\internet, and d:\utils, but this time, just threw 'em all in one.) I think I just like doing things in ways that MS doesn't want me to.

DWs laptop does have two physical drives! we were surprised...
Since we chose that one simply by the price that filled most of the store credit that we had...

Mikeeee

Are you sure? I've never seen a laptop that has two physical drives inside, except for ones where you can swap out the optical drive and swap in a hard drive in there. But two permanent internal hard drives... I'd be quite surprised to see such a thing.

Back to Jann's question, it's really an organizational thing (until you start to run out of hard drive space). I find it easier to use a drive that isn't full of system folders (like windows, docs & settings, etc) to organize my stuff. In your situation, I would lean towards using the second partition for things like photos.

 

[drcandon]

The only real good reason to partition any drive these days is to store an image of the clean OS on it to restore the full machine...often computer packages that you buy from Dell or HP come that way...

Partitioning a drive is hang over from the fat table days when you had to to avoid wasting space..Also , as I have noticed old Unix boys and girsl seem to like to partition the crap out of things as well - who knows why...

Many programs get really messed up when you try to install the program on another drive letter ( physical or virtual) other then C:. Heck, they even get confused when you don't want to dump everything into "program files".

If you want to do something smart - get a reliable external drive and store or at least back up all your photos, videos, etc etc on that drive...Even the most expensive Seagate externals are way under $150.00 for a 500G these days...

And no drive lasts forever...always always always have at least two different ways of backing up your files...HDD and DVD storage are good options today...in a few months as writers come down in price and the media also drops... bluray will be the way to go...

 

[thomas998]

I think I'll have to take the flip side to what some are saying... partitioning was done in the old days because it was required. different file systems have different limitations on the size of a hard drive they can access... a fat16 couldn't use all of a 500GB drive, the only way to use it was to parce it down into smaller drives... Likewise you'll find that a FAT32 limits you to files around 4GB a piece (which really starts to matter when you start down loading video)... NTFS allows larger files...

That said you could certainly setup a drive to have only one partition... but if you wanted to keepthings going as fast as possible you should setup one area that will only hold your programs and nothing more... use the other partition or drive for things that will change from time to time (temp files, jpegs, docs, music, whatever). The reason for this is fragmentation of the hard disk. An unfragmented disk is quicker than one that is fragmented. The best way of keeping it quick is to keep your programs and operating system on a partition that isn't going to change... if it is clean and unfragmented when you start it will pretty much stay that way if you don't ever put files on it that will ever be removed, deleted or edited...The other partition with the files you'll access and temp files will become fragmented over time but having a file on a fragmented disk wont slow you down like having the program or operating system on a fragmented disk.

 

[jann1033]

another question...i have an open expansion bay, it has usb ports in it so rather than getting an external drive can i just slide another hard drive in there when i want more space?( i would hope it would be that easy ) would that kind of drive be faster than an external? is there a limit to how much i can add before it's to much for the computer to handle ?( amd phenom, have 3gb mem but can expand to 8 have 640 hard drive now) the hard drive now is two roughly 300 gb "drives" (have different serial numbers so guessing it's two drives and has 2 drives listed when it tests if every thing is working) plus some thing called factory image drive that has the rest on it, no idea what that is guessing junk from hp

 

[dr_zero]

another question...i have an open expansion bay, it has usb ports in it so rather than getting an external drive can i just slide another hard drive in there when i want more space?( i would hope it would be that easy ) would that kind of drive be faster than an external? is there a limit to how much i can add before it's to much for the computer to handle ?( amd phenom, have 3gb mem but can expand to 8 have 640 hard drive now) the hard drive now is two roughly 300 gb "drives" (have different serial numbers so guessing it's two drives and has 2 drives listed when it tests if every thing is working) plus some thing called factory image drive that has the rest on it, no idea what that is guessing junk from hp

It depends on how many ports there are on your board and how many are being used. Most PC's have had 2 ports that would let you plug in 2 devices on each cable there are some that have more ports though.

If it wouldnt be to intrusive could we have the model # of the PC HP is pretty good about posting what kind of boards and layout information on them.

 

[thomas998]

another question...i have an open expansion bay, it has usb ports in it so rather than getting an external drive can i just slide another hard drive in there when i want more space?( i would hope it would be that easy ) would that kind of drive be faster than an external? is there a limit to how much i can add before it's to much for the computer to handle ?( amd phenom, have 3gb mem but can expand to 8 have 640 hard drive now) the hard drive now is two roughly 300 gb "drives" (have different serial numbers so guessing it's two drives and has 2 drives listed when it tests if every thing is working) plus some thing called factory image drive that has the rest on it, no idea what that is guessing junk from hp

I'm assuming you mean that in one of the expansion bays you have a panel with USB ports on it... you probably can remove that panel and put in a hard drive... if you are talking about a hot swapable bay where you just slide a hard drive in and remove it when you want, I wouldn't recommend those they are more of a pain in the backside than just getting a USB or firewire connected external drive.

Most all desk tops have the capability of holding 4 mass media storage devices. Your DVD burner would be 1, your 2 hard drives would be the 2 more so you would or should have 1 more available.

Frankly I don't see a lot of difference in read/write speed between internal or USB external drives.... unless you have an older USB 1.0 port (doubtful)... the benefit of a USB drive is portability and you don't have to open your computer to hook it up.

As for the limit to storage space... I doubt you'll ever reach it. I have been hooking up various drive to a computer used for video editing for a few years now and its currently up to 10 hard drives 2 internal and 8 external with about 6 terabytes of storage... I'm sure there is a limit but I have yet to bump into it.

 

[11290]

The only real good reason to partition any drive these days is to store an image of the clean OS on it to restore the full machine

While that is true and it is a reason I partition my drive, I also create multiple additions to my main drive, in my case, 3 additional partitions.

I have a "G" that is only my wife's stuff, an "H" that is a "catchall" for miscellaneous and temporary stuff and an "I" that is MINE.

The two additional drives that I have in the case are one single partition each and are used for backup purposes in addition to the external drives used.

Makes it easy for us to have these and just simplifies how we arrange our stuff and further makes her happy that she has her very own place in the system.

 

[jann1033]

It depends on how many ports there are on your board and how many are being used. Most PC's have had 2 ports that would let you plug in 2 devices on each cable there are some that have more ports though.

If it wouldnt be to intrusive could we have the model # of the PC HP is pretty good about posting what kind of boards and layout information on them.

a6430f, where would that info be?

 

[thomas998]

a6430f, where would that info be?

I just looked up your computer.. ignore most of what was said about you being able to put more hard drives into it. That motherboard only has one SATA controller so unless you use a port multiplier your pretty much forced to use the USB or firewire ports for additional hard drives.

 

[dr_zero]

I just looked up your computer.. ignore most of what was said about you being able to put more hard drives into it. That motherboard only has one SATA controller so unless you use a port multiplier your pretty much forced to use the USB or firewire ports for additional hard drives.

Ummm not sure about that when I looked up the board it has four SATA ports and a IDE port so you could have six devices

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/prodinfoCategory?lc=en&cc=us&lang=en&dlc=en&product=3686674

Supports two PATA disk drives on one PATA ribbon cable (two drives total)
Four SATA connectors:
SATA1 = Black
SATA2 = White
SATA3 = Blue
SATA4 = Yellow
Supports 1 SATA-150 or SATA-300 disk drive on each SATA connector

So if you have 2 HDD and 1 DVD you can put 3 more devices in the case either DVD or HDD your choice.

 

[dr_zero]

another question...i have an open expansion bay, it has usb ports in it so rather than getting an external drive can i just slide another hard drive in there when i want more space?( i would hope it would be that easy ) would that kind of drive be faster than an external? is there a limit to how much i can add before it's to much for the computer to handle ?( amd phenom, have 3gb mem but can expand to 8 have 640 hard drive now) the hard drive now is two roughly 300 gb "drives" (have different serial numbers so guessing it's two drives and has 2 drives listed when it tests if every thing is working) plus some thing called factory image drive that has the rest on it, no idea what that is guessing junk from hp

The web site shows only one 600gb HDD installed so you probably have one physical drive that has been partioned into two sections. If you can pull off the side and verify that might be a good idea to verify this.
If this is correct then if the drive was to fail both partions would be gone.

So Yes you can add another HDD internal in the open bay or maybe in the drive cage depending on the layout.

 

[thomas998]

Ummm not sure about that when I looked up the board it has four SATA ports and a IDE port so you could have six devices

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/prodinfoCategory?lc=en&cc=us&lang=en&dlc=en&product=3686674

Supports two PATA disk drives on one PATA ribbon cable (two drives total)
Four SATA connectors:
SATA1 = Black
SATA2 = White
SATA3 = Blue
SATA4 = Yellow
Supports 1 SATA-150 or SATA-300 disk drive on each SATA connector

So if you have 2 HDD and 1 DVD you can put 3 more devices in the case either DVD or HDD your choice.

I was using info from:
http://review.zdnet.com/desktops/hp-pavilion-a6430f-phenom/4507-3118_16-32909869.html?tag=ut
which also listed the DVD/CD as a SATA drive... I suspect the only way for the OP to know for sure will be to open the box.

 

[Groucho]

No need to crack the PC open to see how many physical drives there are. Right-click My Computer (oh wait - you're using Vista, so right-click "Computer" - that's one thing that I do really like about Vista, I can't stand the patronizing "My" prefix before every darn thing)... whoops, there I go on another rant. Darn me and my opinionated ways!

Anyway, as I was saying, right-click Computer and then click Manage. In here, you can find how many physical drives you have in either Device Manager or Disk Management. In Device Manager, look for "Disk Drives" and expand it, that'll show them all. In Disk Management, it'll show your physical drives and will also show what partitions are on each one.

If you're curious if your DVD drive is SATA or IDE, you can either look up the model (found in Device Manager) or, in Device Manager, view by connection. From here, you can drill down to your SATA and IDE connections separately and see what is connected to what.

 

[jann1033]

it is 2 actual drives ( can't find the sata stuff but i think i have that someplace else as well, maybe via the hp stuff..) however, the first one is partioned and has the factory image stuff on it which is recovery stuff. the second isn't. the next question is why i paid for 640 gb and, according to that have 2 299 drives so only have 600 on the drives????? i could see a little discrepancy but 40gb?

 

[thomas998]

it is 2 actual drives ( can't find the sata stuff but i think i have that someplace else as well, maybe via the hp stuff..) however, the first one is partioned and has the factory image stuff on it which is recovery stuff. the second isn't. the next question is why i paid for 640 gb and, according to that have 2 299 drives so only have 600 on the drives????? i could see a little discrepancy but 40gb?

As a rule the advertised size is never the actual physical size because of differences in binary and decimal system... the binary is what is there but the marketers use the decimal so in general just multiply the marketed size by .925 and you'll have a good idea of how much actual size you will have. So 299 is about right for a supposed 320gb drive