Seagate 250 Gig External Hard-drive

[chevykanteve]

Hello Everyone,

I'm using this harddrive almost solely for video downloads. I have five partitions at 50 gigs each. Is there some minimum of free space I should leave per-partition? Example: can I store, let's say, 49.5 gigs of video per partition without problem? Or does some percentage of minimum free space apply?

Thanks in advance for your input!

[monty]

You can fill them up completely!

Windows defragmenter likes to have 15% of free space to defragment a hard drive, but as long as you're not deleting files and adding others all the time, the drive won't fragment anyway!

[chevykanteve]

You can fill them up completely!

Windows defragmenter likes to have 15% of free space to defragment a hard drive, but as long as you're not deleting files and adding others all the time, the drive won't fragment anyway!

Thanks Monty; that's great news! Now, just one more question for you or whosoever wants to answer: Must I click on the "safely remove hardware" icon and stop and turn off the external drive prior to doing the main computer shut down?

[mac.wheeler]

You can fill them up completely!

Windows defragmenter likes to have 15% of free space to defragment a hard drive, but as long as you're not deleting files and adding others all the time, the drive won't fragment anyway!

There really is no real reason to use multiple partitions per drive under windows these days, is there some special reason you need to chop that nice big disk into little chunks?

[sabajja]

Thanks Monty; that's great news! Now, just one more question for you or whosoever wants to answer: Must I click on the "safely remove hardware" icon and stop and turn off the external drive prior to doing the main computer shut down?

No

[chevykanteve]

You can fill them up completely!

Windows defragmenter likes to have 15% of free space to defragment a hard drive, but as long as you're not deleting files and adding others all the time, the drive won't fragment anyway!

There really is no real reason to use multiple partitions per drive under windows these days, is there some special reason you need to chop that nice big disk into little chunks?

I thought it would be kind of neat to have, say, 2 partitions for regular movies, 1 for documentaries, 1 for cartoons and similar stuff for my kids and maybe the last one for music. Also, I was told that copying files into individual partitions would be quicker than copying the same into one big disk (But is that true? I really don't know!.

[sabajja]

I think some partitioning is always good to do on these mega disks.

If a partition gets corrupted, you don't loose all your data.

Defrag goes quicker also.

Perhaps making a smaller "work area" partition, where data gets written/read often is good. (Here defrag makes sense)

And for storage, the rest.(Defrag not so important)

[monty]

No speed issues when partitioning...

Separating different video's can be done just as well with creating folders!

The safely remove hardware is not necessary, but you do have to be very carefull no writing/reading actions are taking place when you pull out the USB plug!!!

[chevykanteve]

I think some partitioning is always good to do on these mega disks.

If a partition gets corrupted, you don't loose all your data.

Defrag goes quicker also.

Perhaps making a smaller "work area" partition, where data gets written/read often is good. (Here defrag makes sense)

And for storage, the rest.(Defrag not so important)

"Work area" parition: I LIKE that. Super idea!!

[mac.wheeler]

I thought it would be kind of neat to have, say, 2 partitions for regular movies, 1 for documentaries, 1 for cartoons and similar stuff for my kids and maybe the last one for music. Also, I was told that copying files into individual partitions would be quicker than copying the same into one big disk (But is that true? I really don't know!.

We used to partition large drives way back when to get over some restrictions in disk size imposed by a certain M$ OS.

Apart from that it's just personal preference I guess.

Copying from partition to partition on the same physical disk will be slower (although hardly noticeably, and fully dependant upon your HDD controller and the seek time of your HDD) than copying to the same partition on the same physical disk.

The corrupt partition is an interesting point, I can't remember the last time I had a partition die on me that wasn't caused by the entire disk frying, usually the heads sticking (gotta love that click click click sound). Of course, when the entire disk dies then no amount of partitions will ensure you retain your data.

I'm certainly of the opinion that one large partition is easier to manage, backup and maintain than multiple smaller ones, just one backup and defrag to do. If you want to segregate your data, well that's what folders are for.

I can just about see the point of creating an OS partition on your boot drive, but even that has some drawbacks and I no longer recommend it to people.

Defrag will not run quicker on smaller partitions, you are moving the exact amount of data, a smaller partition will be more likely to need a defrag as it fills up because it will have less free contiguous space for new files. Additionally, a defrag on a small partition with a small amount of free space will run slower as you have much less free space for Windows to use as temporary storage during the defrag process.

Put it this way, if you could fit all of your documents into one draw of one filling cabinet then why on earth would you want to spread it around multiple draws in several cabinets? It just confuses things.

Edited March 24, 2007 by mac.wheeler

[briley]

mac.cheeler - I couldn't agree with you more, but so many people have got stuck in this stupid rut of "I must partition my Hard Disc" that no amount of common sense will stop them.

[opalhort]

The safely remove hardware is not necessary, but you do have to be very carefull no writing/reading actions are taking place when you pull out the USB plug!!!

YES! do not pull the plug if the (usually) red light on your external drive is active! It could kill the drive!

To make removal somewhat safer, set your external drive to - see screenshot:

To utilize all the space on your external drive go to the properties of your recycle bin and make sure you allocate reserved space for each drive rather than the default global 10%. Set it to 0 or 1% for the external drive (for each partition).

opalhort

[withnail]

My old hard drive got corrupted. Having a separate partition from the C drive saved a lot of stuff. Now I have 2 200Gb drives which are both split into 2. One is 100/100 and the other 50(Windows)/150.

When I get round to it I will buy a separate drive altogether for my operating system to run on but as far as I'm concerned however small the chance one partition will get corrupted it's still worth doing this. I do think that splitting up into 50GB partitions is overkill though.

One question I do have though is this, If I add another internal drive so say I have an 80 and 2 200s will this likely create heat or power problems?

Edited March 24, 2007 by withnail

[sabajja]

With a decent PS I don't think power should be an issue.

I think the worst problem you'll face is finding space, for that third

disk for the air to properly circulate.

(Some comp cases have terrible design)

Just pancaking e'm in the CD bays, without sufficient distance to each other,

could make them very hot.

As the CD bays are wider than the HD, you'll need spacers as well.

Make sure you have at least one inblowing and one outgoing fan to keep

good air circulation.

If you have a mini tower, forget this post

Edited March 25, 2007 by sabajja

[mac.wheeler]

As the CD bays are wider than the HD, you'll need spacers as well.

You can buy CD bay mounts for hard drives that have a fan on the front to cool the drive, you won't need spacers if you use one of these either. The cheaper ones don't do a fantastic job of cooling the drive but they do help, the more expensive ones are very good.

If you are worried about heat then additional cooling for your CPU and you video card will cut the internal temperature of your case several degrees, especially if you are running a beefy video card, some models are rated up to over 100 degrees fahrenheit safe operating temperature and they raise the internal temperature significantly.

Case cooling is quite a complicated matter, the one fan in and one fan out suggestion is a good start, but you need to look at the airflow, if both of those fans were mounted at the bottom of the case then chances are a huge area of the motherboard and components is not going to get cooled by them at the top of the case. If you do have a hot system then mounting multiple fans at the front and creating vents at the back works pretty well. The hands down best way to remove warm air is to have a top mounted extraction fan, doubles as a nice hand warmer in cooler climates

[astral]

You would be better with just one partition and folders to help sort the files for easy access.

That way the FS will take care of the space and I suggest investing in Diskeeper to

manage the fragmentation. The latest version runs automatically in the background.