Break down partitioning for me...
 

I have one drive in my desktop, and i wanna have a seperate drive that only loads when needed (for media stuff), is there anyway i can do this... running xp with HD about 20% free

could you be a little more clear on what kind of setup you're looking for? you mention partitioning, which would mean to take the one drive in your desktop and divide what's being used and what isn't. in that case, all the files would be accessible at any time.

if you want an actual separate drive, i would recommend (if you have a free 5.25" bay free on the front of your computer tower) a hot swap. a decent one will have a power button for the drive, as well as a locking mechanism so the drive doesn't just pop out.

see attachment for reference. they're called hot swaps, hdd swap trays, etc.

the former

thank you much :-P

alright, the best way to go about it, in my opinion, is to perform a full format on the drive when installing windows xp.

if that option is not available to you, there are a few partitioning tools that will do the job even after an OS is installed. Symantec's Partition Magic is something I'm familiar with, although is does cost roughly $70, and I'm sure there's some freeware floating about that will get the job done just as well. I'll do a few searches on it and get back to you.

Yeah just grab a free torrent copy of partition magic. Make sure you dont screw with any of your existing drives letters either.

I always partition my HDs in half when I build computers. One half for programs and OS and the other for save files, music, pics etc. I can wipe my HD of a virus without loosing any files.

i don't even bother with partitions anymore, personally. I got so fed up with guesstimating how much space I needed on each partition. Now I just have two 250gb drives, RAID-0, and 1 500GB backup drive.

Yep, idk why I didnt fork out 40 bucks for a separate drive when I built this comp.

i just hurt my hand face-palming.

why wouldn't you add a drive for $40? anyway, i use a 30GB partition for windows, two 140GB partitions and the 120GB drive for active files, plus whatever is needed for backup (right now it's +/- 200GB).

partitioning, broken down, is you being able to decide how big the drawers are in a file cabinet. the cabinet is a fixed size, but instead of having to pull out the big drawer all of the time for operating system files (or something else that is accessed a lot) you customize the size of one of the drawers to make it a little smaller. you can have quite a few partitions, but after two or three partitions on the same drive you'd probably be better off just getting new drives. how many drawers does it make sense to have before you need a new cabinet?

well, ultimately im just gonna end up buying an external HD, just so i can store and move massive amounts of stuff... are they still expensive for no reason?

expensive? not so much anymore. newegg.com

go western digital, no exceptions

While I have a WD, I'm willing to argue there.. they're not the end all/be all of HDDs

x2 Seagate is where its at.

in my experience, i've had the best outcome and overall lifespan of WD hard drives over all others. there really is no end all/be all of hard disk drives... so long as there are moving parts, it WILL wear out.

Working at a break/fix PC job for over 3 years my conclusion was WD had the lowest rate of failure. I had a drawer full of drives, mostly maxtor and seagate (dont remember exactly) but I only had one or two WD's.

I would have to also tell you to get another hard drive for files or what ever. What a lot of people dont realize is that you can really slow down the performace of your computer by using a few partitions. The drive really doesnt see too much of a difference in the way files are actually written to the drive but it does have to access different TOC's for where each partition is (at least that is my understanding). All the files actually go to the same place but the seek times for files can get slower, this is probably not too true with the speeds of new drives but was moreso with older hardware. If you have 2 drives though you will be better off.
In my last PC I had a RAID 1 config for the OS (two drives in a stripe 15,000 RPM each) and programs and files on a seperate drive, or seperate computer.
More is better :lol: