hard disk de fragment

[faithfoo]

used to have 40 Gb in this 2.5 inch hard disk but now I have deleted them .
besides formatting the hard disk by NTFS

1) SHOULD I STILL defragment disk ( and not analyse ) , UNDER PROPERTIES
a) how often should I do defragment

2) is there a need to do error check ( UNDER PROPERTIES ) for
a) AUTOMATICALLY FIX FILE SYSTEM ERRORS
b) SCAN & ATTEMPT RECOVERY OF BAD SECTORS
c) how often should I do an error check

3) partitioning helps in a way to prevent one bad sector from corrupting the other
a) how do I partition the 40 Gb into 4 partitions ?

[Rigor Morton]

It's wise to defragment your hd once in a while, at least once in a month. It's always wise to error check it too at the same time.

My suggestion is, although a 40 Gb hd is a little old one, to make 3 partitons. Probably a fourth one would force them all to be too small. First partition (C) should be only a start-up disk, thus very small. It would need room only for the necessary start-up files, maybe 50-100 Mb would be enough. Second partition (D) would be for the OS and programs, 10-15 Gb maybe. The third one (E), the rest of the hd, would be your data partition.

The benefit for having several partitions is that boot sector viruses (among others) would leave your OS alone, being on different partitions. Other benefit is that you eventually have to defragment the OS partition and it's most conveniant when the partition isn't too big. And always in the end, you will have to re-install your OS, particulary if it is Windows. When having the data on some other partition there's no fear of data loss during re-installation.

Also notice that many software try to install themselves to partition C by default. There will be absolutely no room for any kind of software if you follow instructions above.

40 Gb hd is quite old, though, and you should prepare yourself for its breakup in the near future. So be sure of taking backups regularly. Maybe you should get a new, bigger hd and make your 40 Gb hd a secondary one.

[Bjs]

Rigor Morton

"The benefit for having several partitions is that boot sector viruses (among others) would leave your OS alone"

Utter rubbish ...

=======================

1: Defrag once a month just help's keep slack space to a minimum , thus helping to speed up the system .
2: Error check would be good advice , esspecially if your into heavy video editing where file's eventually get deleted .

Some program's that encode also leave crap behind in the registry ... a good clean here would help .

3: Scan and attempt bad sector recovery ... if there gone , xp "hot patch's" these to prevent file's being written to them ... if you are heading here ... new drive is a must .

4: Partitioning of a drive is you choice ... though when it come's to video editing , or downloading file's that eventually make it to cd/dvd media ... or simply deleted from system once used ... it dose prevent the "os" partition from becoming fragmented .

5: The simplest method to partitioning your drive to 4 partition's would be to download the tool's from your hard drive's manufacturer's website ... new install and diagnostic diskette creator's ... and use the "new install" disk to partition the drive to 4 partition's ... you will be asked os type ... as in xp fat32 or ntfs ... when done , install os cd , shutdown pc , wait 15 second's and reboot ... continue with install from cd (bios must be set to boot from cdrom first) .

6: Partitioning dose not prevent one bad sector from corrupting another ... which is not how it happen's ... these are marked , and the system will nolonger write to these bad sector's ... to prevent corruption .

[faithfoo]

0) I confirm that after I first partition in 3 partitions; then I reformat by NTFS; then I defragment, then I error check ?

1) Some say that if I format by NTFS ; there is no need to de fragment ; If I still defrag ment once a month; I think it’s not harmful to the hard disk

2) what hard disks is considered new ; which is a better brand ?

3) RIGOR : Scan and attempt bad sector recovery ... if there gone , xp "hot patch's" these to prevent file's being written to them ... if you are heading here ... new drive is a must .
a) 6: Partitioning dose not prevent one bad sector from corrupting another ... which is not how it happen's ... these are marked , and the system will nolonger write to these bad sector's ... to prevent corruption .


a) can you explain the above 2

[CrayonEater]

See my reply to you in the other thread. Avoid defragging unless your disk's performance slows to a crawl; only do it if it's absolutely necessary.

Best brand is Seagate followed by Western Digital.

All hard disks have bad sectors. Usually the hardware deals with them. What you have to look out for is if formerly good sectors and clusters start going bad. If a surface scan shows bad spots that weren't there before, it's time to think about a new drive.

Let's stick with this thread from here on out and ignore the DVD-RAM one.

[donnyj]

First partition (C) should be only a start-up disk, thus very small. It would need room only for the necessary start-up files, maybe 50-100 Mb would be enough.

For linux, yes this is correct, for windows, this is nonsense.... just wasted space

Second partition (D) would be for the OS and programs, 10-15 Gb maybe. The third one (E), the rest of the hd, would be your data partition.

there is some benefit to having data separate from programs, but it's an idealistic view. In reality your data files are spread all over the place and you're only kidding yourself that they will save to one location. Also, in a drive that small, you will be constantly juggling stuff around trying to get the free space where you need it. Get another drive and TRY to save your data to it.

The benefit for having several partitions is that boot sector viruses (among others) would leave your OS alone, being on different partitions. Other benefit is that you eventually have to defragment the OS partition and it's most conveniant when the partition isn't too big. And always in the end, you will have to re-install your OS, particulary if it is Windows. When having the data on some other partition there's no fear of data loss during re-installation.

I don't even know where to start on explaining how VERY wrong that information is. Let's just say every statement is wrong or misleading.

40 Gb hd is quite old, though, and you should prepare yourself for its breakup in the near future. So be sure of taking backups regularly. Maybe you should get a new, bigger hd and make your 40 Gb hd a secondary one.

40 Gb might be good for temporary, non-important files... swap, files in the process of being converted (videos), temporary captures, etc. but nothing that you were afraid of losing....[/quote]

[faithfoo]

1) so should I continue to partition the hard disks in that case ?
a) there should be some benefit

2) what type of new 2.5 inch hard disk should I buy ?

[DarrellS]

I would keep the 40GB for my operating system and programs and add at least one 200GB drive for storage. You can find them on sale for around $100.
Fry's has the 500GB Seagate with 16MB buffer for $180 and either a 200GB Maxtor PATA or SATA for $60.
Newegg has a 300GB Maxtor with 16MB buffer for $100 and a 320GB WD for $106.

Someone also recommended not defragging NTFS to me and I didn't take their advice and lost 200GB of data when a defrag was interupted and the system rebooted and erased my drive. Now I'm very leary of defragging any of my drives. I'm running Windows 2000 SP4.

[Nelson37]

I see no point to partitioning drives except for ease of organization, but then this is what subdirectories are for. There is no performance benefit, and no effect on bad sectors. There is also an old rule about more complex structures being more prone to failure, and when a partition table fails, that is almost always Very, Very bad.

Other than drives that were already defective, I have never seen or worked with a drive that experienced a catastrophic failure due to a defrag. A defragged drive also uses fewer head movements to retrieve files, thereby increasing life of the drive. Once a month or 3 months is a good rule of thumb. A power loss during any write operation can cause catastrophic data loss, this is what battery backups are for.

As for the selection of bad sector repair, unless you have a better tool, yes. When you see new bad sectors appearing, they typically come in bunches. When new ones start to appear, it is time to consider drive replacement. Any number greater than two is something to be concerned about.

Brand names on drives are like comparing Ford or Chevy, ask enough people, you will find good and bad experiences on both, and particular models that were terrible. Very few people like Yugos, however. Stick with name brands such as Seagate or Western Digital, though I personally will never buy another Seagate drive again unless it is Very Inexpensive, like less than $5.00.

[CrayonEater]

Incorrect. If the partition table fails then the disk is hosed whether it has one partition or many. Complexity has nothing to do with it. The partition table is a fixed 64-byte structure which has null pointers if there are no extra partitions. It is located in the same sector as the Master Boot Record, so any disk damage or corruption that affects the PT will take out the MBR as well.

[CrayonEater]

Seagate has a 250Gb PATA/IDE for $89 at chiefvalue.com, and the SATA-150 is only five bucks more. Tigerdirect has them on rebate for even less (and they're pretty good about rebates, though I rarely buy rebated products.) But these are all 3.5" drives we're discussing. You will pay more if you must have a 2.5" form-factor drive.

http://www.chiefvalue.com/product/searchcategory.aspx?linkid=101&catalog=14
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Category/category_hdd.asp