Linda Proulx,

04-Nov-99 13:39:21, Linda Proulx wrote to Jack Stein
     -=>> Jack Stein wrote to Linda Proulx <=-
          Subject: Re: Get Going

 JS>> Make sure you work out your drive partitions as carefully as possible.
 JS>> Do it on paper and give it a lot of thought, possibly post your
 JS>> thoughts here as you will get a lot of opinions on how to partition.

 LP> Have 2 hard drives setup as follows:

 LP> C - 1G
 LP> D - 1G

Both of those are way too large for any OS, such as OS/2, WinXX, DOS or Linux.
Although if I were a M$ addict, then 1GB might seem reasonable.

Even with 16GB available I don't waste that much space:
WinXX C: 450MB total, 116MB free.
Warp4 D: 450MB total, 238MB free.

Actually 350MB would be plenty for Warp4, even less for Warp3.  I have put
Java and NetScape on other partitions (so I don't have to re-install and
upgrade them again if I ever re-install OS/2) and it would be easy to do the
same for Swapper.Dat if you discover later that you don't have enough space.

 LP> E,F,G - 500 MB
 LP> H - 1G
 LP> I - 1G
 LP> J - 500 MB set up with a double space drive for temp files & single use
 LP> files, eg Win installs.

 LP> Am considering uninstalling the double space

I suggest you get rid of Double Space.  Most HD compression software only
slows the system down and increases the risk of loosing data.

 LP> So what do folk think?

You didn't say which partitions are on which drives, nor their age nor speed.
IMO that does make some difference as to what goes where.

There is no way I can specifically plan your HD usage.  And obviously you
can't duplicate my usage either.  But I will show you what I did and mention
some of the reasons for doing it this way.  So consider this a sample.

FDISK /QUERY

Drive Name  Partition Vtype FStype   Status   Start     Size

[Newest fastest 9GB SCSI]
    1 0000003f   :    1    0a          2          0        7
    1 Win98-C   C:    1    06 [FAT16]  1          7      455 [OS]
    1 Warp4-D   D:    2    07 [HPFS]   1        462      454 [OS]
    1 001cae74  E:    2    07 [HPFS]   0        917      125 [Swapper.Dat]
    1 00209a84  F:    2    07 [HPFS]   0       1043     1200 [BBS NetScape
etc]
    1 00461bdd  G:    2    07 [HPFS]   0       2243      604 [SO5 BlueCAD]
    1 0058fbea  H:    2    07 [HPFS]   0       2847      682 [cache for CDR]
    1 006e4f81  I:    2    07 [HPFS]   0       3529     3506 [*.ZIP]
    1 00dbe280  J:    2    07 [HPFS]   0       7036     1639 [TerMail & DOCs]
                                             **BIOS:8032MB
[Oldest 1.13GB SCSI]
    2 00000020   :    1    00          0          0        1
    2 00000820  K:    2    07 [HPFS]   0          1     1009 [Backups]
[Old 2.26GB SCSI]
    3 0000003f   :    1    00          0          0        7
    3 00003f00  L:    2    07 [HPFS]   0          7     2039 [Backups]
[Old 3.1 IDE]
    4 0000003f   :    3    00          0          0        3
    4 00001fbf  M:    2    07 [HPFS]   0          4     3067 [Backups]
    4 005ffa00   :    3    00          0       3071        6
                                             **BIOS: 504MB

C & D drives:
OS drives:
Make sure all of the partitions you want to install an OS on are within the
1st 1023 cylinders.  WinXX (and those apps) like a primary partition drive C.
OS/2 can be in either a primary or extended logical partition.  Normally I
would suggest you make both C and D primary partitions so that WinXX and OS/2
do not get into a fight where you lose.  In my case I almost never use WinXX
and have a lot of unfortunate experience that has taught me exactly what to
avoid, so the advantage of being able to copy files back and forth between
those OSs is worth the risk to me.  The penalty for failure is to re-install
OS/2, which is not worth it to a novice.  Alternatives for using 2 primary
partitions (safer) would be to make another small FAT partition just for
copying files, or use floppy or CD.  Actually the safest way to run WinXX is
to put it on another machine, so that if it screws the MBR it won't screw
OS/2.  And at 1 time I did just that and used a set of A/B switches so that
both machines used the same Keyboard, Monitor, TrackBall, and Printer.  And I
used ParaLink to transfer files between the 2 machines.

E drive:
You've seen other msgs that said the best place for Swapper.Dat is on the
most used partition of the least used HD.  I might gain a little by moving my
Swapper.Dat to drive 3.  But my newest HD is much faster than any of the
others.  By putting it in it's own partition it will never become fragmented.
And since that partition is right in front of my busiest partition and right
after Warp4 OS partition, there is very little head movement.  Besides with
64MB RAM my Swapper.Dat almost always stays at the default size, so it is not
accessed as often on this machine as it might be on yours.  And last but not
least, I like having all my active files on 1 HD, since I sometimes pull the
end HDs out to put in other machines.

F drive:
The BBS and NetScape and Mr2/Ice are on the same partition with all my native
OS/2 apps and tools that are not critical and most active.  That partition
has a lot of free space, for msg bases and NS cache to grow a lot between
purge maintenance.

G drive:
I consider SO5 and BlueCad and a few other personal prgms to be critical data
apps.  So they are on a partition all by themselves where they are unlikely
to be effected by any mistakes I or some flaky prgm might make.

H drive:
The partition for the CDR cache is sized especially for a whole CD and
nothing else is on the partition.  

I drive:
All my *.ZIP files are on their own partition to avoid fragmentation.

J drive:
DOS Terminate/TerMail (and formerly various test versions of that prgm) are
on a partition that has almost no other activity.  So again fragmentation is
nil.  I had thought about putting TerMail on the same partition with my BBS,
but TerMail gets very upset if it ever runs out of space.  My original plan
was to put TerMail on the partition immediately following the BBS and put my
critical data at the end of that HD.  But I have been too lazy to change that
since I would have to manually edit a lot of cfg and cmd files.

Placement:
I've found once you start writing cmd files to do simple file movement and
manipulation, that it pretty much locks in where you have your primary apps
located.  For me AdeptXBBS has always been on F and TerMail on J.  While that
may not be the most efficient placement, it was decided long before I
understood other advantages.  But mostly it is left over from before I got my
largest HD, when Adept and TerMail were on separate HDs, which was better
then.  I also had Swapper.Dat on an otherwise unused HD back then too.

Better placement:
Especially if you leave your Swapper.Dat on the default OS partition, but also
for reasons of later growth, I recommend you put your most active apps on the
partition immediately after the OS (or Swapper.Dat), with the following
partitions used for less active apps in sequential priority.  Storage files
can go near the end of the HD (far way from Swapper.Dat), since they are not
accessed often enough to make a significant difference in performance.

L & M & N drives:
My slower older HDs are in semi-retirement as Backup storage, with priority.
I also empty 1 of those for temporarily testing potentially flaky prgms, such
as beta prgms or Win prgms like TaxCut.

Good planning:
You might notice that I have avoided the drive letter shuffle so often caused
when more than 1 HD is installed.  The last 3 HDs are all extended logical.
That makes it easy to add and remove HDs without messing up normal operations.

Reconsideration:
If I had it to do over I would have 2 partitions both sized at 680MB for CDR,
with the 2nd used as a pre-staging area, since there is an advantage to being
able to see how close I am to filling a CD (without exceeding the limit, as
well as knowing that all the files can be copied and are not corrupted) before
I start the final copy and writing to the CD.  As it is now I just use 1 of my
Backup HDs as the pre-staging area and mentally subtract the excess space
while copying and check the space closely with a file manager before I start
the final copy and writing to the CD.

At the time I made the 600MB partition I had just found out that RE-writable
CDs don't hold as much as a write-once CD.  So that size was important then.
But later I found I don't use my RE-writable CDs very much, so I used that
partition for other things.

Free space:
There is an advantage (less HPFS fragmentation) if you have no more that 80%
of any 1 partition in use.  But having 3 or 4 times as much free space as data
isn't going to make that any better.  Obviously for caches and msg-bases and
ZIP files, allowing for growth is important.  But I would not recommend having
a lot of free space on the OS partitions.  Keep the OS partitions just for the
OSs and put all your apps and data somewhere else.  That way if you ever have
to re-install, you can 'Format fs:hpfs /L' and not lose any data.  I like to
size each partition especially for the apps/data that will be on it and put
all my excess free space on another partition after all the active partitions.
What I labeled Backup above, was actually free space, I put to use.

New HDs:
The fact is that it is bloody hard (no matter how much experience you have)
to determine exactly what your needs will be in the future.  Unfortunate HD
failure or running out of space and thus getting a new HD can make the best
plan dissolve.  What I do every time I add a new HD, is to print out on paper
the FDISK /QUERY and try to rearrange things on paper before I actually move
data and make new partitions on the HD.  The general rule of thumb is most
used 1st, least used last.

     Thanks and Good Luck,        Andy Roberts
                                  andy@shentel.net
--- Terminate 5.00/Pro*at