1TB Hard drive showing up as 130GB !?!?!

[Lunaryn]

Re: 1TB Hard drive showing up as 130GB !?!?!

Again, your easiest bet is just to partition the rest of it as another 'drive'. This is useful for a number of reasons, particularly that you can store your data on the other 'drive' and not lose it if/when you have a need to reinstall Windows (being prepared to reinstall Windows from time to time can really help in terms of dealing with stubborn system problems or general performance issues that occur over the life of a system). The only con is having to remember what's on C: and what's on F: (or whatever letter you give the new drive). In particular I'd recommend configuring the My Documents directory to be on F: if you store things there. Generally you'd want to keep only programs on C: and put data on F:.

[KingOfZeal]

Re: 1TB Hard drive showing up as 130GB !?!?!

Well, with 1 TB, I'd even shrink the existing partition to maybe 50 gig and stretch the second out. That's more than enough room for temp files, virtual memory, and other such things, and then put everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) except for Windows on the second drive. If you can make a backup of the registry periodically to that second partition (I'm not even sure if that's possible), then when Windows does eventually blow up, you can restore the registry and not have to reinstall all the programs, which (especially considering FFXI) can take a very long time, and be a large headache.

[Lunaryn]

Re: 1TB Hard drive showing up as 130GB !?!?!

You can export and import registry keys. That's how people copy FFXI between computers without reinstalling (that and regsvr32 on the dlls).

The main thing is how much of that backup would actually be useful in the case of any serious problem arising.

[KingOfZeal]

Re: 1TB Hard drive showing up as 130GB !?!?!

Well, in my case, it would at least allow me to run programs that depends on registry values being there, like for registration keys for games (I'm looking at you, Starcraft).

As long as the drive letter stays the same across installations (which, with computer management being able to change drive letters, there's no reason it can't), it could help with setting and things which are stored in the registry.

[Spazz]

Re: 1TB Hard drive showing up as 130GB !?!?!

I really appreciate all your help guys!!!

Now as for partitioning out the HDD... My buddy told me that I could partition it out to like 5 things: MUSIC, MY DOCUMENTS, GAMES, DESIGN (because I do alot of graphics and game design), and then a primary that would hold all of my Windows files (basically your standard C drive). He said, "Keep all of your programs in your C:\ and then just redirect everything to their individual partitions for their respected save files. The only hard part is setting it all up! But once you make all the folders for each program and such, its smooth sailing!"

He also said that by keeping only my program files on C:\ that it would cut down in load times.

SOOOOO.... is all this true and if so how hard is it to setup?

[Feba]

Re: 1TB Hard drive showing up as 130GB !?!?!

There's not much of a reason to have separate partitions for all that. It would just cause hassle later when you realize you need more space for one thing or such. The only real benefit to having many partitions is minimizing data loss-- so that if one partition gets corrupted, your others will remain intact.

[Spazz]

Re: 1TB Hard drive showing up as 130GB !?!?!

Ok, well I went ahead and partitioned the other 800+ GBs and I will be using all of that for storage purposes! Atleast now I know where to go and how to use all the HDD space =)

Thanks alot everyone! Yall rock, as usual!

[KingOfZeal]

Re: 1TB Hard drive showing up as 130GB !?!?!

I'm not sure if access time would be reduced, as your friend suggested -- I certainly haven't seen it with my set up... heck, I can't even see a reduced access time on the second disk. But, both are SATA, so that may have something to do with it.

But, yeah, feba is right -- multiple partitions only really help against corruption, but I still like have Drives A-Z and knowing what every single drive has on what.

I'm curious -- if you enable compression on the partition, how much extra space would you get?

[Mhurron]

Re: 1TB Hard drive showing up as 130GB !?!?!

I'm curious -- if you enable compression on the partition, how much extra space would you get?

Each file type compresses differently so it depends. Something that is a lot of text will compress well, whereas binary files do not.

You don't usually get much, and the file needs to be uncompressed each time it's accessed so there is a decent amount of overhead.

[Lunaryn]

Re: 1TB Hard drive showing up as 130GB !?!?!

The only reason there would be a load-time issue is if part of a program was on one drive, and another part was on another, and it was causing excessive seek issues. It's not inconceivable that this could happen due to needing libraries in standard locations like C:\WINDOWS\system32 and C:\Program Files\Common Files, but I have a hard time imagining it could be enough of a problem to actually be noticeable.

Again, the main thing you should be considering in terms of what goes on C: and what goes on F: is: if I had to wipe the system and start over, what would I need to discard and what would I need to keep? Installed programs usually need to be reinstalled, so they might as well be on C:, whereas if you were hanging onto the installer for the program, installers for drivers, etc., those should be on F:. Important data files should be on F:, temporary files may as well be on C:. Programs that are truly standalone, that don't need to be installed, are a judgement call as to whether you'd rather have them on C: or F:.