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Need help reinstalling windows * 1
    #2131281 -

I am about to format my hard drive and reinstall Windows XP professional. 

What is the best way of going about this?

Should I make a separate partition on the C: drive for all Windows files?  Would there be any advantage to it?  What would the easiest way to that be?

Please help ASAP, I want to finish this within the next hour or so. :laugh: 


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I keep it real because I think it is important that a highly esteemed individual such as myself keep it real lest they experience the dreaded spontaneous non-existance of no longer keeping it real. - Hagbard Celine

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Re: Need help reinstalling windows [Re: HagbardCeline] * 1
    #2131286 -

I think there is an advantage to having your windows directory on a seperate partition..i'm just not exactly sure what it is..I'm guessing it helps organization, thus speeding up process' abit, thinks wouldnt be fragmented as much...

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Re: Need help reinstalling windows [Re: HagbardCeline] * 1
    #2131308 -

yeah i have a seperate partition for program files and windows itself....i keep everything that i don't want to lose (ie mp3's, movies, games) on the other partition...


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Re: Need help reinstalling windows [Re: Geordi_La_Forge] * 1
    #2131328 -

what file system? hard drive size?

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Re: Need help reinstalling windows [Re: funkymonk] * 1
    #2131331 -

You asking me or him?


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I keep it real because I think it is important that a highly esteemed individual such as myself keep it real lest they experience the dreaded spontaneous non-existance of no longer keeping it real. - Hagbard Celine

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Re: Need help reinstalling windows [Re: HagbardCeline] * 1
    #2131483 -

About the partitioning, I don't think it offers any better performance if you have 1 hard drive and make partitions to put the OS only on 1 partition and all other data on the other partition. Its all the same hard drive.

Now for backing up, the easiest would be get another hard drive, back up everything to your slave hard drive. Then low level format the master drive. Reinstall the OS, install all the drivers, get all the updates, reinstall all the programs, and move everything back over. I guess you could also burn the data onto disks, but depending on how much data you have, it might be a waste. Like for me, I'll have about 50-100 gigs of stuff worth keeping, so I have another hard drive.

As for partitioning, partition magic is a good program. I believe 8.0 is the latest version. I've never had problems with it.


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Make your own beer!
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Re: Need help reinstalling windows [Re: HagbardCeline] * 1
    #2131519 -

to do a clean install, your computer needs to be able to boot from the install CD or a floppy that will load the install CD. Its best to check this *before* you wipe out your harddrive.

I do mulitple paritions when space allows, as mentioned above you can keep the stuff you want to save on one and then your installed applications on another. That way, if your installation gets hosed, you wipe the application partition and reinstall with minimal fuss. However it sucks to run out of room on one of the paritions, so if you have a small drive that doesn't work well. Look at what you currently have installed to determine how big your application partition should be- then double that because you'll want room to grow. For myself, 20 gigs is sufficient for the partition that I install the OS and applications on. But you may as well make it bigger if you have enough harddrive space.

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Re: Need help reinstalling windows [Re: djfrog] * 1
    #2131916 -

you dont necessarily need to do a clean install(format c:). i recommend it though, but its not necessary.

how do you want to install the os? do you have anything backedup or on another partition for later retrieval? if you dont, then you might wanna back everything up to cds or another harddrive or another partition if you have one other than c:.

heres how it goes when you do a clean install.

>boot up your pc with the os-cd in cdrom drive. (if you cant then check your bios setup for this option and set 1st boot device to cdrom)

>windows os install will startup and you will be presented with instructions on how to install. once you get through some bs you will be presented with where to install your os. now if you gor more than one partition simply choose the c: partition. go through some more bs and let it run.

>from there its all self explainetory.

if you need any help doing any of this msg me or email me at i.need.a.job@operamail.com i can also help with other problems, though i dont like tech support. it doesnt bother me much though. help your fellow man right?

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Re: Need help reinstalling windows [Re: daussaulit] * 1
    #2133114 -

Quote:
About the partitioning, I don't think it offers any better performance if you have 1 hard drive and make partitions to put the OS only on 1 partition and all other data on the other partition. Its all the same hard drive.


If you have one Harddrive, it is better to have two partitions. One partition holding the O.S. and the other holding everything else. The partition for the O.S. should be as small as possible. The reason for this is when your computer reads and writes to the Harddrive the information on that Harddrive, or partition, becomes defragmented. The larger a partition is the more fragmented it may become. When a Harddrive becomes extremely fragmented it takes longer to access the drive because all the infomation is scattered all over the partition.

Now if you have a smaller partition that is near capacity the Harddrive has less space to throw information around in it. Thus it takes the Harddrive less time to access the information and increase system performance. Now in the real life increases in system performace may not be noticable to HUMANS!


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BigUpRadio
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Re: Need help reinstalling windows [Re: Its Pat] * 1
    #2133298 -

Thanks to everyone for the help.

I partitioned it and installed Windows, but after I logged onto the Microsoft web site, I find I had made the partition too small.

How big should the partition for the OS be if I am installing Windows XP professional? 2.5 gigs was fine to install the os, but when I went to get the service packs and updates it was too small.
I don't want to make any larger than needed right?


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I keep it real because I think it is important that a highly esteemed individual such as myself keep it real lest they experience the dreaded spontaneous non-existance of no longer keeping it real. - Hagbard Celine

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Re: Need help reinstalling windows [Re: Its Pat] * 1
    #2134266 -

> If you have one Harddrive, it is better to have two partitions.

Sometimes, not always.

> The partition for the O.S. should be as small as possible.

This makes it difficult to add patches and updates as you tend to run out of room.  Also, any log files that the OS generates take up space.  This is not good advice.

> The larger a partition is the more fragmented it may become.

Fragementation is a function of the filesystem more than of the hard drive size.  Worthless filesystems, such as FAT (microsoft DOS) filesystems, are going to fragment badly regardless of disk size.  A good file system, such as UFS (unix file system) or even NTFS (microsoft NT/XP filesystem) have very low fragmentation rates.

> When a Harddrive becomes extremely fragmented it takes longer to access the drive because all the infomation is scattered all over the partition.

Hard drive access time is not effected by fragmentation.  File access times are effected by fragmentation.  This is a fine point, but could cost points on a test... :grin:

A few points you forgot to make... large partitions take a longer time to backup and restore.  If a large partition becomes corrupted, you loose the entire thing.

Finally... in some cases a small partition will actually fragment worse than a large partition.  Fragementation typically occurs when the filesystem cannot find a free chunk of space large enough to hold the file.  A large partition with lots of free space will seldom see this problem.


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Just another spore in the wind.

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Re: Need help reinstalling windows [Re: Seuss] * 1
    #2134274 -

> How big should the partition for the OS be if I am installing Windows XP professional?

It depends upon the size of your disk. Unless you have something like 120GB I would probably just put everything on a single large partition. It is easier to manage and use.

> 2.5 gigs was fine to install the os, but when I went to get the service packs and updates it was too small.

Hehe... I replied to the previous post before reading this. That was my first argument against small partitions for the OS.

> I don't want to make any larger than needed right?

I have been setting up and maintaining computer systems for medium to large sized companies for close to 15 years now. When I first started, disks were very small and expensive. We would partition the space for the OS to be as small as possible so that we could give more disk space to userland. This was always a problem when patches and logs outgrew the small available space we had allocated at install time. As I learned more, I realized that small partitions suck... you _always_ run out of room in the future. It is much easier to give the OS a lot of breathing room up front rather than having to fix a 'out of disk space' problem later.


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Just another spore in the wind.

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Re: Need help reinstalling windows [Re: Seuss] * 1
    #2134413 -

this is how my disk is partitioned.

80 gigs in all, but really is only 76 or so.
(i usually give my os a partition of 15-20 gigs)

16 = os
60 = other

like seuss mentioned above, "It is much easier to give the OS a lot of breathing room up front rather than having to fix a 'out of disk space' problem later."

Edited by energy_ball_within (11/25/03 07:58 AM)

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Re: Need help reinstalling windows [Re: energy_ball_within] * 1
    #2134492 -

> 80 gigs in all, but really is only 76 or so.

I read about some class action lawsuit against the various computer makers for lying about hard drive sizes. The lawsuit is messed up, not the computer makers:

Well before computers were even an abstract concept, physics had adopted the use of prefixes to define orders of magnitude in base 10. Centi=100, kilo=1.000, mega=1.000.000, giga=1.000.000.000, etc.

When the hard drive makers came along, they made a hard drive that holds a certain number of bytes. If you have an 80GB hard drive, it hold 80 billion bytes, base 10.

However, computers don't work in base 10, they work in base 2 (binary 1 and 0). The closest base 2 number to 1000 is 1024, so computer science calls a quantity of 1024 a kilo, 1024*1024 is a mega, etc.

When your operating system reports how many bytes you have free on the hard drive, it reports the number in base-2 MB, or base-2 GB not in base-10 MB.

The operating system writers/computer science folks changed the definition of a kilo, a mega, or a giga to meet their needs. The hard drive makers stick with the original meanings... they are engineers after all, not computer scientists.

This is why an 80-GB (in base 10) hard drive only reports 76 GB (in base 2) of free space.


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Just another spore in the wind.

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