Hard Drive Partitioning for Vista Install

[Secret Agent Man]

I currently have two hard drives. As of right now, they are both fully partitioned and in use. I am currently running Windows XP Media Center Edition. I just downloaded Windows Vista (Business Edition) via the MSDN AA and wish to install it. However, I want to keep all of my WinXP settings and all of my other files. I currently have over 200 GB of free space on a hard drive, and want to partition a portion of that drive to install Windows Vista on. This drive has 63 GB of files on that won't fit on the other drive and I don't have DVD/CD-Rs to make backups to.

How do I partition the drive while maintaining the files that already exist on it? Assuming that I actually do get through that step, how much space would you recommend for Vista?

[starla]

You'll have to use a tool such as Partition Magic to resize the existing partition and create a new one - but I strongly recommend against doing this WITHOUT backing up first. If it crashes in the middle, you're screwed.

[Majin GeoDooD]

RIP PartitonMagic. Symantec bought it and hasn't updated it once, it doesn't work on Vista. Lame.

You can use it with XP before you install Vista though.

[Secret Agent Man]

You'll have to use a tool such as Partition Magic to resize the existing partition and create a new one - but I strongly recommend against doing this WITHOUT backing up first. If it crashes in the middle, you're screwed.

I was hoping to not have to spend money on this venture. I do agree on the backing up point, however. How would you recommend backing up 63 GB of data?

[BlueMage]

Onto another 80GB hard-drive

Now, assuming PartionMagic isn't working for you, you can also look into this. Runs as a LiveCD, and should allow you to resize your partitions without destroying data on there (I've resized several partitions using it without losing data, however, they were ext3 and resierfs partitions, so you may have issues on an NTFS partition)

[kitty]

I was hoping to not have to spend money on this venture. I do agree on the backing up point, however. How would you recommend backing up 63 GB of data?

Find a friend with an external. I lent out my 200GB external to a friend installing Windows Media Edition or whatever.

[Pyrion]

How do I partition the drive while maintaining the files that already exist on it? Assuming that I actually do get through that step, how much space would you recommend for Vista?

This would actually be a non-issue if you already had Vista installed. You'd just convert your drive from basic to dynamic and then resize the volumes as necessary. Can't do that within XP though.

GPartEd works. I've used it before, with NTFS, no problems from what I could tell, it doesn't actually commit the changes until you're satisfied with your choices.

[Secret Agent Man]

Find a friend with an external. I lent out my 200GB external to a friend installing Windows Media Edition or whatever.

Well, my roommate has an external, but it's on the fritz at the moment. I'll check around.

This would actually be a non-issue if you already had Vista installed. You'd just convert your drive from basic to dynamic and then resize the volumes as necessary. Can't do that within XP though.

That's great that they actually put something like this in Windows finally.

GPartEd works. I've used it before, with NTFS, no problems from what I could tell, it doesn't actually commit the changes until you're satisfied with your choices.

How exactly would I go about using this program on a Windows machine?

[phill]

How exactly would I go about using this program on a Windows machine?

I would start by downloading the ubuntu live cd and use that to run it.

[starla]

I have two identical drives in my system and I constantly back up to the second one manually. I don't trust software simply because I've heard horror stories about them not working.

I also get new drives in my system yearly. The warranty on a drive is usually about 3-5 years, this is also about a hard drives life expectancy, etc etc i'm going to preach some more about backing up

Lets put it this way. Would you pay $50 to have your data back? Pictures, WIPs, stuff that can't be recreated? Good, then pay $50 for a new drive and prevent that from being necessary.

i MEAN it guys

[Secret Agent Man]

I have two identical drives in my system and I constantly back up to the second one manually. I don't trust software simply because I've heard horror stories about them not working.

I also get new drives in my system yearly. The warranty on a drive is usually about 3-5 years, this is also about a hard drives life expectancy, etc etc i'm going to preach some more about backing up

Lets put it this way. Would you pay $50 to have your data back? Pictures, WIPs, stuff that can't be recreated? Good, then pay $50 for a new drive and prevent that from being necessary.

i MEAN it guys

While I couldn't afford to annually replace my drives, getting a plump external hard drive does not sound like a bad idea. Any recommendations (I like shopping for this kind of stuff at Newegg).

EDIT: After a quick search I found a few possibilities. Suggestions? (1 2 3)

As for GPartEd, I don't have a single clue what you're talking about when it comes to Live CDs or whatever. Is there a good freeware alternative for Windows by any chance? If not, then I'll struggle to go the Ubuntu route.

[HalcyonSpirit]

From my own experience, having a single backup drive is not sufficient. Why? Because it was the backup that died first, and then my main drive soon followed before I could replace the backup. Probably just a freak occurrence, but I lost almost everything I had.

So my advice is to get two extra drives for backing up data. The chances of all three dying at about the same time is really small, especially if you only use the backups for backing up data, and it doesn't become absolutely necessary to spend more money constantly replacing the drives like starla suggests. Cheaper in the long run, I think, and more secure.

[Necrotic]

While I couldn't afford to annually replace my drives, getting a plump external hard drive does not sound like a bad idea. Any recommendations (I like shopping for this kind of stuff at Newegg).

As for GPartEd, I don't have a single clue what you're talking about when it comes to Live CDs or whatever. Is there a good freeware alternative for Windows by any chance? If not, then I'll struggle to go the Ubuntu route.

It's basically an .iso file you download and burn onto a disc. When you restart your computer and set the computer to boot from the CD-ROM drive, the disc loads up a temporary Linux desktop environment.

When Ubuntu loads up, you can run the GParted program and partition your drive. Resize the drives you want to free up the extra space for, then create a new partition from that extra space.

It's pretty simple. The LiveCD is basically used by people who don't want to keep Linux installed but might need some of its features, test Linux out, or use its recovery tools.

[BlueMage]

If you're not download-quota-limited, go for Ubububu - it's easy enough to understand, just slow as dog shit. If you are download-quota-limited, get the version I posted, which is a small linux environment built entirely around providing GPartEd functionality.

[Necrotic]

If you're not download-quota-limited, go for Ubububu - it's easy enough to understand, just slow as dog shit. If you are download-quota-limited, get the version I posted, which is a small linux environment built entirely around providing GPartEd functionality.

Yes, what he said.^

If you're curious to try out Linux and never touched it before, you might be more interested in getting a full distro if you can, whatever it might be. Ubuntu (or the KDE alternative Kubuntu which I tend to prefer) is pretty easy to figure out so I suggest that but you have lots of options otherwise.

[phill]

I have two identical drives in my system and I constantly back up to the second one manually. I don't trust software simply because I've heard horror stories about them not working.

I also get new drives in my system yearly. The warranty on a drive is usually about 3-5 years, this is also about a hard drives life expectancy, etc etc i'm going to preach some more about backing up

Lets put it this way. Would you pay $50 to have your data back? Pictures, WIPs, stuff that can't be recreated? Good, then pay $50 for a new drive and prevent that from being necessary.

i MEAN it guys

You know, I have heard horror stories about flying, so I don't fly because all the airlines must suck........score one for a waste of money and not knowing what the hell you are talking about...

There are a lot of good and bad backup programs out there, so do a little research on them and don't be a f*cking moron. Personally, I use ntbackup.exe because its free (well..you pay for it when you buy windows) its simple, and it does what I want when I want without fault.

The life span of a hard drive is either between 5-10 years, or 3-6 months. Hard drive warranties end at around 5 years because manufactures know that if the drive lasts longer then 3-6 months(factory defects show up within this period during regular usage...usually), it will likely fail after 5 years. This could mean it fails 5 years 2 month or after 10 years. Buying a drive every year puts you in between the two high risk areas and because of that is a huge waste of money.

I would still suggest Linux to do the drive partitions, its free and fairly simple to understand. If you don't understand it right off the bat, you can ask for help or read the man pages. Also the dd command is an awesome way to do complete back ups of system drives or other important drive/partitions/folders.

[Pyrion]

I don't trust software simply because I've heard horror stories about them not working.

They're not really "horror stories" insofar that they make things worse. Typically things are already so bad that software won't help any. Software can't magically fix a fried control board or readwrite heads dancing on the platter.

[starla]

I'm talking about software that is used to back up.

Scenario 1: You tell your computer to back up nightly, but you leave Outlook open constantly. Your Outlook data has everything in it, sent emails, contacts, tasks, calendars, inbox - everything you use to run your business smoothly. Your software sees the file is in use and never copies it to your backup. Your drive fails, and you don't have a copy of your Outlook.pst. Granted this is something that could be prevented by closing Outlook, however most automated backup software won't pop up with an error if a file is missed. You'll see it in the logs, sure, but that doesn't help you after a hard drive crashes.

Scenario 2: You're smart and set up a hardware RAID 1 with two identical mirrored drives. You expect that if drive 0 fails, you can pop drive 1 in its place and get the data off right away. 99% of the time this will work just fine. But what happens when drive 0 doesn't instantly fail? Instead it fails over time with constant read errors and bad sectors? This data is then mirrored to drive 1 as 0'ed out data. Then drive 0 gives out. Now you have one mechanically failed drive, and one partially zeroed out drive.

Scenario 3: You have a proprietary external enclosure with its own built in software. The software compresses and encrypts the backups, and then creates a table of contents "key" that will allow access to the backup. In the middle of creating the backup, it gets 98% of the way through and the original drive fails. You are left with a backup that is essentially "bricked" and the company that made it (iirc this was an iomega) says that due to the encryption, you cannot access any of the data without the table of contents "key" which was never made due to the failure at 98%.

These are all true stories.

I prefer to back up data using Windows Explorer. I have every right to be paranoid and change my drives yearly, and stay away from the super new drives (750-1TB) considering that I work in data recovery and see these failed drives daily.

[phill]

I'm talking about software that is used to back up.

Scenario 1:

Scenario 2:

Scenario 3:

more

Scenario 1: Windows has a wonderful thing called shadow copy, most good back-up programs will hook into this or use there own version. It allows you to back up files that are in use (system files included). So scenario 1 is bull shit

Scenario 2: Not really how RAID 1 works, you don't write the data to disk 0 then copy that to disk 1. I'm sure there are implementations of RAID 1 that do this...but god why? Your RAID controller is more likely to write data to the drive independently of the other because what you are suggesting could happen.

Scenario 3: The fact backups were not done on a regular basis maybe a bit more of a concern then the fact you lost this one.

Who would have though that a person working in data recovery would see failed drives....oh oh me? I have the same thoughts about high capacity drives, but for different reasons.

[Pyrion]

Scenario 1: Windows has a wonderful thing called shadow copy, most good back-up programs will hook into this or use there own version. It allows you to back up files that are in use (system files included). So scenario 1 is bull shit

Shadow copy creates local backups. Not at all useful if the drive itself fails. Shadow copies are only useful for reversion to earlier versions of files if they're accidentally deleted or modified.

Scenario 2: Not really how RAID 1 works, you don't write the data to disk 0 then copy that to disk 1. I'm sure there are implementations of RAID 1 that do this...but god why? Your RAID controller is more likely to write data to the drive independently of the other because what you are suggesting could happen.

Yeah I was leery of this description too cuz it doesn't make sense. If this were the case then RAID 1 would put unnecessary strain on drive 0 to re-read the data it just wrote simply to put it on drive 1. It makes more sense for the controller to write to both drives more-or-less simultaneously.

Scenario 3: The fact backups were not done on a regular basis maybe a bit more of a concern then the fact you lost this one.

Well this is generally due to the people making backups not actually making backups until they suspect the drive is about to die. Too little too late at that point.

[phill]

Shadow copy creates local backups. Not at all useful if the drive itself fails. Shadow copies are only useful for reversion to earlier versions of files if they're accidentally deleted or modified.

It may be the fact I just spent 3 hours in a CCNA class looking at packets.... but I seem to be missing something. The shadow copy service can be implemented by hardware or software to maintain a complete clone of a disk, or to monitor changes and maintain a record of those to be rolled back at a later time. All of which can be stored on the local machine, attached media or across the network and archived to tapes, dvds, etc.

Granted shadow copy doesn't monitor the structure of the disk (MBR and related things) like ghost would do, but the data itself is where the money is. You may have to go through the process of partitioning and formating a drive, but you have your files, you have your file structure, and you have your file security, and thats what is important.

sorry if I missed what you were aiming for...all I'm thinking right now is f*cking packets.

[starla]

You'd think a RAID 1 would be smart and the controller would write to both drives at once, but unfortunately that's not how it works normally. There's a hardware 0 and 1 and 0 is the main drive, 1 mirrors it. So data is written to 0 normally, and the hardware RAID keeps 1 constantly copying drive 0's data.

There's always a wave of new drives that fail when newer technology is released. This is pretty common knowledge of just about any hardware. i.e. Xbox 360, I love mine to death but how many first gen ones are red ringed?

[Pyrion]

Shadow copy documents the changes to files though (they're incremental snapshots, so only the changes are documented). Backing up an entire volume's worth of changes will generally take up a lot less space than backing up an entire volume's worth of duplicate files minus a few bits modified here and there.

[phill]

Volume Shadow Copy (VSC) can be set up to do either Copy-on-Write (as MS call it) for differential backups or it can be set up to do a Clone/Mirror backup to maintain a complete backup of the data on the disk. When you set up a program like NTBackup.exe to do a full backup, it will use VSC to make a clone and then use that clone to make the backup.