Noob at Setting up Partitions

[LowGlide]

Hello, I am overhauling a machine and want to reinstall the OS. I have legit copies of XP Pro SP2 and Vista. I have always in the past went with the C drive as the main and data backed up to secondary drives. But I am tired of always reinstalling the apps. IS there a better way by partitioning the drives? I have two WD 320GC SATA II's (plan RAID 1), two Maxtor250 GB SATA 1's, a EIDE 160GB (plus three opticals, two of which are SATA). PS is 550W and MB is D975XBX-304 P4 D640 with 2Gig DDR2 800MHZ and a GT7650OC Video Card. Do not do gaming, but have a lot of data files, pics and video to store. Work from home quite often. Any suggestions?

TIA
LowG

 

[phios]

Well, the problem with reinstalling is that you clear your registry, which holds all of the data for your applications. What you can do is reinstall everything that you use on a fresh drive, then ghost that drive onto DVDs. That way, if you do have to reformat back to scratch, you can just reload your hard drive from your backedup DVDs and not have to worry about reloading all of your apps.

 

[LowGlide]

I probably should ahve been more specific. I have seen some topics where people are loading a OS into one partion, loading another OS in another partion, and last their applications in another partition, all on the same drive. This is supposed to allow, in some cases the different OS's to have access to the same applications. It also is supposed to allow you to reformat and reinstall a OS without having to re-do everything (in case you pick up a nasty or something really buggers up the OS). I have worked with MS and they admit it is possible, but their methods seem pretty heavy handed.

Thanks

 

[DetroitSportsFan]

I'm one of the guys who keeps a spare XP install on another partition specifically for the purpose of fixing windows problems if they should arise. I also use imaging software. I use Acronis, but Ghost will give you the same results. The nice thing about using an image is that once you set up your system and have it running the way you want it to, you make an image. Now, next time you have a serious problem that would require you to reinstall windows ... use your image. In about 10 minutes, you'll be back in business. All your favorite programs already installed.

I don't bother with installing my apps to a different drive. Imaging makes that unnecessary.

P.S. If you're a gamer, you may want to back up your saved game files.

 

[Navid]

There is some information in this thread that may be relevant.
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...hreadid=1464643&enterthread=y&arctab=y

If you install your programs on another partition, many of them run even after a restore of the OS partition. But, some won't. But, if you create the image of the OS partition after you install the apps on another partition, all your apps will run even after a restore.