Partitioning a 2tb hd for Windows 7 64 bit

[Daniel Prince]

What is the best way to partition a 2tb hard drive for Windows 7 64
bit? I am thinking of a small "C" drive for Windows and programs
and a big "D" for all my data. Another possibility is a small "C"
drive for Windows. A medium sized "D" for my programs and a big "E"
for all my data.

Which do you think is better? What size do you think I should make
each logical drive? Thank you in advance for all replies.

 

[Lynn McGuire]

What is the best way to partition a 2tb hard drive for Windows 7 64
bit? I am thinking of a small "C" drive for Windows and programs
and a big "D" for all my data. Another possibility is a small "C"
drive for Windows. A medium sized "D" for my programs and a big "E"
for all my data.

Which do you think is better? What size do you think I should make
each logical drive? Thank you in advance for all replies.

Why partition ?

One drive = one partition in my book.

Lynn

 

[Ken Blake]

What is the best way to partition a 2tb hard drive for Windows 7 64
bit? I am thinking of a small "C" drive for Windows and programs
and a big "D" for all my data. Another possibility is a small "C"
drive for Windows. A medium sized "D" for my programs and a big "E"
for all my data.

Which do you think is better? What size do you think I should make
each logical drive? Thank you in advance for all replies.

You might want to read this article I've written: "Understanding Disk
Partitioning" at
http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=326

It can give you some guidance on what to do.

 

[Paul]

What is the best way to partition a 2tb hard drive for Windows 7 64
bit? I am thinking of a small "C" drive for Windows and programs
and a big "D" for all my data. Another possibility is a small "C"
drive for Windows. A medium sized "D" for my programs and a big "E"
for all my data.

Which do you think is better? What size do you think I should make
each logical drive? Thank you in advance for all replies.

Depending on what backup strategies you've got, you might let
that affect how you partition. If it wasn't for that, you could do
a single big partition.

I keep my C: relatively small (40GB right now), and it doesn't
really affect my backup method. I continue to use the "System Image"
capability built into Windows 7, which effectively only backs up
the "used" space on the partition. So if I made C: 2TB in size say,
the System Image function would still only be doing a roughly
26GB copy (the amount of space actually used currently).

But, if I ever needed to copy C: verbatim for some reason, it's a
40GB copy operation.

I'm not encouraging 40GB as the "right size". To make that possible,
I turned off System Restore. The "right size" would be a partition
larger than that. For most people, they'd find the space restrictions
annoying with that size choice. But that size does allow sector by
sector backups to be done more quickly (if, say, the NTFS file system
was damaged, and I needed to transport the partition somewhere).

My "data" partition doesn't have too much on it right now, but that
would be another 250GB+ or so. And because the contents are mostly
garbage, I don't even back that up. It's basically a "scratch" partition.

If you have indexing enabled, it might mean less stuff to index
as well. You could have C: indexed, and leave the data partition
un-indexed to save computing time. My experience here is, if you
restore the computer from a backup image, it resets indexing as
well, and then I have to put up with well over three hours
total compute time just to index.

If I had Windows 7 on my main computer, then a couple things would
change. I tend to preserve primary partitions on the main computer,
as it is set up for multi-booting. I'd probably make a single
partition for Windows 7 (no System Reserved), and give Windows 7
no more than the one partition. I don't like creating Extended/Logical
partitions, because they're just a nuisance to manage. (I tried
that in the past, and didn't like it.)

And no matter what you do, a 2TB drive is going to be both an
asset (never run out of space) and a nuisance (partition management
operations, copy operations, backup operations, could take forever).

I tend to buy drives in pairs, as a means of encouraging backups.
So when you have the 2TB drive, you should also buy space to store
its backup copy.

Paul

 

[John Williamson]

I agree, at least for Windows. For Linux, it's a different story.

I always partition a drive with a few dozen Gig for the system drive,
and the rest for data. It makes life a lot less risky when Windows
suffers a brainfart and dies. Your data is still safe. If you don't
partition the drive, when Windows barfs, your data, which is on the same
drive, will normally be deleted when you restore windows unless you're
very careful. I also keep all the install programs and licence
information in a directory on the data drive to make it quicker to
restore the system.

If you can, it's also worth having a small, very fast drive reserved for
the swapfile. And *always* have a backup somewhere else, with an image
of the working OS as installed on it.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

What is the best way to partition a 2tb hard drive for Windows 7 64
bit? I am thinking of a small "C" drive for Windows and programs
and a big "D" for all my data. Another possibility is a small "C"
drive for Windows. A medium sized "D" for my programs and a big "E"
for all my data.

Which do you think is better? What size do you think I should make
each logical drive? Thank you in advance for all replies.

I would say leave it at 2 partitions rather than 3. At one time, for
simplicity's sake I used to say 1 partition even. However, I do now
backup my data, especially the boot drive, so in order to quickly backup
a boot drive, you should keep as small as possible. But you can't make
it ludicrously small, there has to be some room for applications to be
installed and for them to keep some of their data in there too. So I
keep a 200GB boot partition, and the remainder for other data.

Also I would suggest that you give the larger partition 32K clusters
rather than the default, as you're likely going to have much larger
files in the larger partition.

Yousuf Khan

 

[GreyCloud]

I don't keep large amounts of data on my Windows machines. I use Linux
for that.

Are you using ext4? You could lose data then.
Data loss occurs due to memory errors, data chip errors, cable drop
outs, and hard drive data drops. Unless you have ECC memory and other
hardware that detects these errors and corrects them, then you won't
have any guarantees.

 

[John Williamson]

I don't keep large amounts of data on my Windows machines. I use Linux
for that.

As the OP was asking about partitioning for Windows 7, is it really
relevant to talk about Linux and partitioning for it?

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

You will encounter people who object almost religiously to the whole
concept of partitioning. While I can follow some of their arguments
about it not being _necessary_ or even advantageous, I can't see that it
does any _harm_.

FWIW I have a C: for OS-and-software, and a D: for everything else (on
this XP machine with 160G drive, it's 30G C: (17G full after several
years) 113G D: (61.5G full). I would I think prefer your OS/apps/data
arrangement, but I suspect there are sufficient softwares (especially on
XP) that won't "play nice" unless installed on C: that it isn't viable.
I'm trying to remember how I set up a W7 machine with a 500G drive for a
friend; I can't remember, but think it might have been 50G C: rest D:.
But she is highly unlikely to install any more software than I left her
with, so is probably not representative of your use.

I always partition a drive with a few dozen Gig for the system drive,
and the rest for data. It makes life a lot less risky when Windows
suffers a brainfart and dies. Your data is still safe. If you don't
partition the drive, when Windows barfs, your data, which is on the
same drive, will normally be deleted when you restore windows unless

That's probably what's behind my thinking. Of course, there are those
who say - correctly, of course - that it is irrelevant if you do proper
imaging/backuping/ghosting/whatever.

you're very careful. I also keep all the install programs and licence
information in a directory on the data drive to make it quicker to
restore the system.

I dump to CDs occasionally (-:.

If you can, it's also worth having a small, very fast drive reserved
for the swapfile. And *always* have a backup somewhere else, with an
image of the working OS as installed on it.

Hmm. Updated frequently if it's not to be a pain to use.

 

[Rod Speed]

What is the best way to partition a 2tb hard drive for Windows 7 64 bit?

Depends on what you have on the drive.

If it's the only drive in the system, there is something
to be said for a partition for the OS and apps, but not
the data. That's a lot simpler to do an OS and apps
image with the cruder backup systems like the one
that's built into Win7.

If its just a large drive for data like in a PVR, just a single
partition is fine.

I am thinking of a small "C" drive for Windows
and programs and a big "D" for all my data.

That's a pretty common config and can be useful like I said.

BUT it can be a bit tricky to get the size of it OS and apps
partition right so you don't have to change it later. No that
that's too hard with a 2TB drive, because unless that machine
is a PVR, its unlikely to run out of space very soon with the
entire physical drive, so you can be generous with the OS and
app partition.

It's a bit tricky to safely change the size of the OS and app partition
if you do get it wrong, because strictly speaking you should have
a full image of the entire physical drive before adjusting the size
of the OS and apps partition in case it all goes pear shaped and
you may not have a spare 2TB drive to image it to.

Another possibility is a small "C" drive for Windows. A medium
sized "D" for my programs and a big "E" for all my data.

There isnt any real point in that config. If you do need to do a
clean OS install because the restore point didn't fix the problem,
you have to reinstall almost all the apps anyway so they might
as well all be in the one OS and apps partition.

Which do you think is better?

The first.

What size do you think I should make each logical drive?

I personally have a 100GB OS and apps partition with
Win7 Ultimate 64bit. I have lots of large apps.

Havent been using it for decades tho, so it remains to be
seen if it needs to be bigger later. The previous XP Pro
system did end up having the OS and apps partition too
small, but wasn't that big.

Thank you in advance for all replies.

Don't forget those dead bears.

 

[Rod Speed]

Daniel Prince wrote

Depending on what backup strategies you've got, you might let
that affect how you partition. If it wasn't for that, you could do
a single big partition.

I keep my C: relatively small (40GB right now), and it doesn't
really affect my backup method. I continue to use the "System Image"
capability built into Windows 7, which effectively only backs up
the "used" space on the partition. So if I made C: 2TB in size say,
the System Image function would still only be doing a roughly
26GB copy (the amount of space actually used currently).

But, if I ever needed to copy C: verbatim for some reason, it's a
40GB copy operation.

I'm not encouraging 40GB as the "right size". To make that possible,
I turned off System Restore. The "right size" would be a partition
larger than that. For most people, they'd find the space restrictions
annoying with that size choice. But that size does allow sector by
sector backups to be done more quickly (if, say, the NTFS file system
was damaged, and I needed to transport the partition somewhere).

My "data" partition doesn't have too much on it right now, but that
would be another 250GB+ or so. And because the contents are mostly
garbage, I don't even back that up. It's basically a "scratch" partition.

If you have indexing enabled, it might mean less stuff to index
as well. You could have C: indexed, and leave the data partition
un-indexed to save computing time. My experience here is, if you
restore the computer from a backup image, it resets indexing as
well, and then I have to put up with well over three hours
total compute time just to index.

If I had Windows 7 on my main computer, then a couple things would
change. I tend to preserve primary partitions on the main computer,
as it is set up for multi-booting. I'd probably make a single
partition for Windows 7 (no System Reserved), and give Windows 7
no more than the one partition. I don't like creating Extended/Logical
partitions, because they're just a nuisance to manage. (I tried
that in the past, and didn't like it.)

And no matter what you do, a 2TB drive is going to be both an asset (never
run out of space)

You will if it's a PVR. And with capture cards so
cheap, you'd be mad to have a separate PVR IMO.

and a nuisance (partition management operations, copy operations, backup
operations, could take forever).

Not if you use a decent backup system that does incremental backups.

I tend to buy drives in pairs, as a means of encouraging backups.
So when you have the 2TB drive, you should also buy space to store
its backup copy.

You may choose to only backup part of the primary, particularly with a PVR.

And if you have more than one PC, you may choose to put the backups
on the other PC etc too.

 

[Rod Speed]

Alias wrote

Because it can make some ops easier, particularly for those
who arent as fluent as they might be with the complexitys.

I always partition a drive with a few dozen Gig for the system drive,
and the rest for data. It makes life a lot less risky when Windows
suffers a brainfart and dies. Your data is still safe. If you don't
partition the drive, when Windows barfs, your data, which is on the same
drive, will normally be deleted when you restore windows unless you're
very careful.

I also keep all the install programs and licence information in a
directory on the data drive to make it quicker to restore the system.

You don't normally do that enough for the speed to
matter and an image of the OS and apps partition is
generally a better way to do that, particularly if you
do a new image whenever you install or tweak the
settings much.

If you can, it's also worth having a small,
very fast drive reserved for the swapfile.

Its generally better to spend that money on more physical
ram instead, so the swap file is only used at boot time.

And *always* have a backup somewhere else,
with an image of the working OS as installed on it.

That's less necessary now with restore points.

Still worth having, but not as vital.

 

[Rod Speed]

Daniel Prince wrote

I would say leave it at 2 partitions rather than 3. At one time, for
simplicity's sake I used to say 1 partition even. However, I do now backup
my data, especially the boot drive, so in order to quickly backup a boot
drive, you should keep as small as possible.

There isnt any point in making it as small as possible. Just
makes sense to keep as much data out of it as feasible.

There are real downsides with having the OS and apps partition
too small. You really should image the entire drive before making
it larger later and with a 2TB drive, many wont have anywhere to
image it to for safety before increasing its size and with a 2TB drive
you wont normally be short of space unless it's a PVR, so you should
make it a decent size to minimise the risk of having to make it bigger.

But you can't make it ludicrously small, there has to be some room for
applications to be installed and for them to keep some of their data in
there too.

And there is no real downside with say having it half used, that
wont affect how quickly it can be imaged with modern imagers.

And the speed of imaging the OS and apps partition isnt really
that important anyway, because you wouldn't normally image
it that often, except if you are really paranoid and always image
it before changing anything settings wise, before all installs and
all updates etc.

So I keep a 200GB boot partition,

That's nothing like as small as possible.

and the remainder for other data.

But Win7 is a bit messy to reconfigure so there isnt any data
that matters in the OS and apps partition, particularly for the
less fluent users.

Also I would suggest that you give the larger partition 32K clusters
rather than the default, as you're likely going to have much larger iles
in the larger partition.

Really depends on the sort of files you have. That's
true of a PVR, but not with say music files etc.

And with a 2TB drive, the difference free space wise is pretty
small anyway and with modern drives you arent likely to notice
anything much speed wise in a proper double blind trial without
being allowed to use a benchmark.

 

[Char Jackson]

You will if it's a PVR. And with capture cards so
cheap, you'd be mad to have a separate PVR IMO.

No kidding. There's no such thing as enough space or never running
out. My Win 7 media server has two volumes: C: is 75GB and D: is
27.2TB, (80GB and 30TB unformatted), and it's a struggle to keep some
free space available on D:.

On my Win 7 desktop, C: is 465GB and D: is 13TB, (500GB and 15TB
unformatted), and I'm down to about 2TB free.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

Its generally better to spend that money on more physical ram instead,
so the swap file is only used at boot time.

[]
Tell me more about this swap file being used at boot time thing. What
special happens at boot time that necessitates the swap file?

 

[Ed Light]

Definitely, a small C: drive with the system and programs is the way to
go. It's on the fastest part of the disk, and "short stroked". And this
is a big one for me: you can image it separately from all the data, and
restore it without back-dating your data.
Also, you can do thinks like having My Documents on the data partition,
and in such a program as Thunderbird Mail, you can have the "profile"
folder with the settings and e-mail store in it, on the data partition.

I like to put a smallish partition right after C: for heavily used data,
so the heads will be short-stroking and not have to reach deep into the
disk. Then, the next one after that, would be a large multimedia
partition, and I put one for partition images at the end.

I actually use the portable versions of several programs
(portableapps.com), so that they are totally independent from C:; I do
restore C: whenever it crashes, to keep it pristine. One kink in that is
that portable firefox and portable thunderbird have to both be running
if you're going to call one from the other, or there are issues.

If you use Boot It Bare Metal as your partition manager, imager, and
boot manager, you can have more than 4 partitions. You can only have 4
in any one boot menu item, of course. That's why to make the data
partitions volumes in an extended partition.

All those data partitions are volumes in an extended partition.

Another thing you can do with BIBM is boot from a 2nd or 3rd hard drive,
with the SWAP option. There is an issue with that, though. Once in
awhile something just thinks it's not where it's supposed to be. For
instance, .NET 4 would not update. Actually, that was on the same disk
but moved to another position on it. To update .NET 4 I had to copy the
partition back to its original position, update it, then copy it back.

Hope that gives you some ideas.
--
Ed Light

Better World News TV Channel:
http://realnews.com

Iraq Veterans Against the War and Related:
http://ivaw.org
http://couragetoresist.org
http://antiwar.com

Send spam to the FTC at
(e-mail address removed)
Thanks, robots.

 

[John Williamson]

You don't normally do that enough for the speed to matter and an image
of the OS and apps partition is generally a better way to do that,
particularly if you do a new image whenever you install or tweak the
settings much.

I do it my way because when (About once a year on average), not if,
Windows barfs big style, It's usually something that can't be cured by
restoring last week's image. I install Windows, do all the updates,
check it's working as expected, *then* record the clean Windows image.
Then, when I need to restore it, I can install the programs one at a
time, omitting the ones that I no longer use, after updating the old
image to the current state of Windows as it should be.

Its generally better to spend that money on more physical ram instead,
so the swap file is only used at boot time.

I have 2 Gig of RAM on this netbook, and even though Windows 7 very
rarely uses more than a Gig of that, it seems to run more smoothly with
a swapfile enabled. It takes more or less the same time to boot, either

That's less necessary now with restore points.
Still worth having, but not as vital.

You've obviously never had a computer stolen or fail unexpectedly, then.
I have, which is why the laptop is the backup for the home PC and vice
versa. It takes a few minutes each time they see each other on the
network to synchronise all the data files, and they have almost the same
set of software installed. Then there's the USB HD which gets connected
and synchronised once a week or so, or whenever I remember. So far, I've
not accidentally lost a byte of data since about 1984.

 

[Ken Blake]

I always partition a drive with a few dozen Gig for the system drive,
and the rest for data. It makes life a lot less risky when Windows
suffers a brainfart and dies. Your data is still safe. If you don't
partition the drive, when Windows barfs, your data, which is on the same
drive, will normally be deleted when you restore windows unless you're
very careful.

Three points:

1. Windows almost *never* "barfs and dies." If you need to reinstall
Windows, it is almost invariably because you screwed something up.
I've run Windows 3.0, 3.1, WFWG 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows
2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and now Windows 7, each for the
period of time before the next version came out, and each on two or
more machines here. I never reinstalled any of them (with a single
exception--a problem that I worked on for weeks unsuccessfully), and I
have never had anything more than an occasional minor problem.

2. If you need to reinstall Windows, the most likely reasons are a
hard drive crash, user error, nearby lightning strike, virus attack,
even theft of the computer, and all those reason scan cause the loss
of everything on your drive, regardless of how many partitions you
have.

3. What is most important is that if you rely on your partitioning
scheme to protect your data, that suggests that you do not regularly
back your data up to external media. That's playing with fire.

I also keep all the install programs and licence
information in a directory on the data drive to make it quicker to
restore the system.

That's an excellent thing to do. Have it there, but *also* have it on
your backup media.

If you can, it's also worth having a small, very fast drive reserved for
the swapfile.

If you swap enough that that makes a significant difference, you don't
have enough RAM. And if you don't have enough RAM, your money is
better spent on more RAM than on "a small, very fast drive reserved
for the swapfile."

And *always* have a backup somewhere else, with an image
of the working OS as installed on it.

Although that's good to do, what is *far* more important is having a
backup of your *data* on external media.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

On Fri, 25 May 2012 18:06:05 +0100, John Williamson
3. What is most important is that if you rely on your partitioning
scheme to protect your data, that suggests that you do not regularly
back your data up to external media. That's playing with fire.

True. But some people seem to assume that just _because_ you have
partitions, you _are_ relying on them for data protection, which does
not follow.
[]

If you swap enough that that makes a significant difference, you don't
have enough RAM. And if you don't have enough RAM, your money is
better spent on more RAM than on "a small, very fast drive reserved
for the swapfile."
That is certainly my opinion.




Although that's good to do, what is *far* more important is having a
backup of your *data* on external media.

For most people, yes, since at least some data is irreplaceable.
However, for some, having a quickly-restorable working system is also
pretty important.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"... four Oscars, and two further nominations ... On these criteria, he's
Britain's most successful film director." Powell or Pressburger? no; Richard
Attenborough? no; Nick Park!

 

[dweebken]

For most people, yes, since at least some data is irreplaceable.
However, for some, having a quickly-restorable working system is also
pretty important.

I just have one partition nowadays. And 8 GB ram on a Win 7 x64 system.
Swap file has been set to the same as the RAM, but it never gets used (I
monitor it). The 4 GB extra memory over my base system cost me something
like $40. Also I replaced the 720 RPM HDD with an SSD. Sure lots more
expensive per GB, but it simply flies like a rocket. I have a 64 GB
SanDisk USB backup stick plugged in all the time backing up my daily
data. Once a week or so I image the whole dataset to a USB3 External HDD
using AllwaySync which easliy lets me set up different data locations
and allows me to back up data from different places with one click (the
Sync All button). And once a month or so I clone the SSD to an external
USB3 disk which I can use to re-create my system any time in no time
flat. I have an older copy of the clone drive just in case I screw up
when making a new clone, and every now and then I do a duplicate of my
full data backup too. These duplicate clones and backup disks are kept
in separate buildings 99% of the time in case of theft or house fire.
And for good measure, all my family photos are on Skydrive in the cloud.

Think I'm reasonably safe. And with the RAM and SSD, the PC is just so
very very fast (and will never get a head crash with vibration & shock).

My experience with separate partitions was it's a nuisance trying to
separate the data from the system, it ends up with wasted space on the
HDD too, and achieves nothing I can't do better with AllwaySync. But
each to their own. I'm not preaching one solution over another. Just saying.

YMMV