Linda Proulx,

06-Nov-99 14:26:02, Linda Proulx wrote to Andy Roberts
 LP> -=> Andy Roberts wrote to Linda Proulx <=-
          Subject: Re: Get Going

 JS>>> Make sure you work out your drive partitions as carefully as
 JS>>> possible.

 LP>> Have 2 hard drives setup as follows:

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

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

 LP> Why?

For OS/2 you should put ONLY the operating system files on it's partition, so
that if you ever have to re-install, which also should mean re-format with
the /L parameter, then you won't lose any apps or data.  You could put
NetScape, Java upgrades and Swapper.Dat all on the same drive with OS/2
(although I don't) and still not use even 500MB.  So the rest of your 1GB
will just be wasted free space.

With NetScape and Java treated like apps, since they do get upgrades, I put
them on a different partition, Warp4 only uses 238MB here.  If I had a 1GB
partition, then that would be 762MB of dead HD space that never gets used.

Well almost never gets used.  I suggest you leave about 100MB free for
archives and FixPak installation, although 50MB is probably enough.  And
Swapper.Dat can under extreme graphic conditions take 100MB (like with a
Scanner.)  I never do both of those at the same time.  Thus 100MB more than
the OS or about 350 for Warp4 and probably 250 for Warp3 should be plenty.  If
it were me with Warp3 then I would still make the partition big enough for
Warp4 and be optimistic about getting Warp4 before I would change that
partition size again.

Furthermore that extra unused space consumes cylinders which I might want to
use for some other OS within the 1st 1023 cylinders.

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

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

 LP> Not using it for data, just 1 event or temp use.  I could lose
 LP> everything on the double drive & wouldn't care.

I guess I just don't see any meaningful advantage to using Double Space, which
will slow your system down and not let any data that is there be seen from
OS/2.  OTOH I normally avoid anything that puts my system at a greater risk
without a very good reason.  And since I use OS/2 as my primary OS, I don't
hide anything from it.  Since you apparently have plenty of HD space, why
bother with Double Space?

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

 LP> Drive 0 has @ 2.5 G total with C, E, F, G.

 LP> Drive 1 has @ 3.5 G total with D, H, I, J.

 LP> Not certain how old but sometime within the last 3 years I
 LP> believe. Not the fastest by present standards but OK.

Typically, but not always, newer HDs are both larger and faster.  So without
looking at the specs (which you should do), my guess is that the 3.5GB may be
faster.  Thus it would be better to use it for the OSs and most active apps.

 LP> None are seen as extended logical drives

Possible but not likely.  I think this is a misunderstanding of definitions.
Start by considering it is not the "drive" that is "Extended Logical", but
rather the partitions on the drive that are "Extended Logical".  And that
"extension" lets the primary partition see the other partitions assigned other
drive letters.  OTOH if all your partitions were "primary", then none of them
would be able to see any of the others on the same HD.  [It's after 1AM, so I
hope I got that right.  If not, someone else will correct me, I'm sure. ]

 LP> & C & D are seen as boot drives.  The are IDEs & are master/slaved but
 LP> are both are seen as master by diag programs.  Also run a SparQ, a Zip
 LP> drive, a CD-ROM and have other things in long term planning needing
 LP> drive letters, especially in SCSII.

If you ever get a SCSI HD with a good controller, then you will very likely
want to use that as the boot drive, because it will probably be faster than
IDE.  This isn't the time to get into a long thread on SCSI, but depending on
your controller (such as a good Adaptec 2940) it can provide significant
advantages to a multitasking multithreaded OS such as OS/2, that are not all
that important for pure DOS and Win9X.

Another benefit of a SCSI HD is that I can tell the BIOS I don't have any IDE
HDs, which will prevent them from messing up the drive lettering sequence and
force them to use the letters following the SCSI HDs.  Thus all the drive
lettering will be in a straight sequence instead of jumping back to D etc.
AFAIK you can do the same thing with 2 IDE HDs by telling your BIOS you only
have 1 and let OS/2 find the other and assign the drive letters later.

 AR>> C & D drives:
 AR>> OS drives:
 AR>> Make sure all of the partitions you want to install an OS on are within
 AR>> the 1st 1023 cylinders. WinXX (and those apps) like a primary partition.

 LP> And this means?

The 1023 cylinder limit topic has been discussed so many times, that I'm sure
someone else will fill you in with great detail.  If not, then review some of
JdeBP's excellent technical discourses on that topic.

 LP> All 1 G drive partitions have 16 bit cluster, all smaller ones have 8.
 LP> Where would this be in the drive partition set up know, taking in
 LP> consideration I may add more hard drives later.  And say I want to load
 LP> Win9X and/or Linux later.

Boot up with your Install Floppies, but exit to the command line with F3
(since you don't have OS/2 installed yet), and then run JdeBP's OS2CLU02.ZIP
PartList.exe and take a good look at the output of that prgm.  It should tell
you (with some explanation from JdeBP) more than what you want to know.

 AR>> Normally I would suggest you make both C and D primary

 LP> From what I gather, all partitions are considered primary, no
 LP> logical extensions.

On this system here with 4 HDs I have a total of only 2 Primary partitions.
The 1st primary partition is for Boot Manager.  On that same HD the 2nd
primary partition is for Win98.  All the rest of my partitions on that HD and
all other HDs are Extended Logical partitions.  Take a close look at the drive
lettering assignments and types from my FDISK /QUERY output I posted in the
previous msg of this thread.

If I ever add another HD then I will make it all Extended Logical partitions
too, and those drive letters will follow all my existing HD lettering, so
nothing will get jumbled up by inserting a letter like D in front of my
existing setup.

In your case I would put at least 3 and maybe 4 primary partitions on the 1st
and fastest HD.  1 for BM, 1 for WinXX, 1 for OS/2 and 1 for Linux.  All of
those should be within the 1st 1023 cylinders.  If not then OS/2 FDISK will
not let you make them bootable.  And JdeBP's PartList will give you cylinder
warnings too.

 LP> When I ran DOS 3.3 I had too many drive letters & don't want to
 LP> get into that again.  That's why these hard drives were set this
 LP> way.

I agree about making too may drive letters.  But if you look back at what I
did from my previous msg, then you will see I haven't even come close to the
limit.  M is my last HD.  N is my CDROM.  The CDR gets Z.  If I removed 2 of
my 3 extra HDs and put them in another machine with a NIC then it would be L
(which is no coincidence.)  But I don't assign drive letters according to how
much total HD space I have nor how many HDs I have.  I assign drive letters
according to what special purpose that partition is going to serve.  So it is
very easy to stay within the limits.

You are on a complex topic.  I doubt you will totally grasp it all until after
you have installed OS/2 at least once.  With that assumption, making your OS
partitions no larger than necessary should become obvious.  Which takes us
back to the top of this msg.

The previous advice about doing your planning on paper is very old and common.
I might add, do it in pencil with a good eraser, since that is easier to
change.

     Thanks and Good Luck,        Andy Roberts
                                  andy@shentel.net
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