Topic: Use multiple partitions!!!

[RAQ_Attack]

When I was in networking school I got the best tip ever.  The guy who taught me this actually wrote a bunch of the drivers for Unix for the military in the late 60's and 70's.  Now he does multi-media.

Start from scratch always.  Run windows on its own partition.  If you use 4 gigs for XP & 2k that would be plenty.  Set another partition up and intall all of your programs on that.  The final partition will be for all your files and/or downloads.  

This is for a few reasons.  

Windows should hardly ever need to be defragged.  It works alone!

If a program you install skrews with anything, it will only skrew with other programs.  Windows should be fine.

If you download or get a virus, it might corrupt your files, but windows will be intact as well as your programs.  Personally, my hard drive have 5 partitions.  I download into a smaller one and once I am sure there is no virus, then I move it over.  I also have DOS on a very small partition (C:).  Hackers and Viruses look for C: sometimes.  

Windows rarely crashes for me.  Every once and awhile I have a program crash, but I don't have to reboot.

I hope this helps everyone

[Chris K]

this is a good tip, and something i learned a while back

i actually have a small 8 gig drive that holds only my os

another larger 40gig drive partioned in half, one side for programs and basic storage and the other side (20gig) that I call "current project" in which i use on the current transfer and editing

after the project is finalized, and stored (used to be on dat, now on cd-r) i erase the drive, and use a disk verification and optimization program (norton utilities) on the disk

this friend of mine told me the more junk you have on the disk that you use while working on a project, the more likely you may have problems...he used the metaphor of a chalkboard in a classroom, where a teacher rights down a fact or an equation, then another then another, etc until the chalkboard is about full, and scrambling to find space...as the chalkboard gets more and more full, it gets harder and harder to find the information and interpret the information on the blackboard.

conversely, if you write a few facts on the blackboard, then store the facts, you can then erase the board and go onto the next topic, or project

this is ever so important the more tracks you use. most of use will only be using 2 tracks, dat/jbs transfer, but some of us use multitracking using 8, 16, 24 48 etc tracks AT ONE TIME...this is where is is critical to make sure your drive is operating at peak performance, and having that clean slate everytime you start makes things alot easier.

always back up your data of course, or face the reality that you will someday lose data...it is inevitable as computers are not without flaws.

brought to you by a recording junkie

have a grateful day
chris k

[mirth]

I think the concept described here is 'defragmentation'.

Don't know if I subscribe to the idea of a partition for everything... Separate drives, maybe. Possibly just two... One for OS & Apps, another for data.