[straightnut]

I was looking to buy the best partitioning software available, and
assumed it was Partition Magic, but I've read some very unappetizing
reviews of this product. And after scouring the web to find
alternatives, I have yet to find one that gets any glowing reviews.
I'm now ever so cautiously leaning towards Acronis Disk Director, but
this seems to have its share of adamant panners as well. I get the
impression that partitioning is a difficult thing for software to do
consistently well.

Jeff

[Arny Krueger]

"straightnut" wrote in message


I was looking to buy the best partitioning software
available, and assumed it was Partition Magic, but I've
read some very unappetizing reviews of this product. And
after scouring the web to find alternatives, I have yet
to find one that gets any glowing reviews. I'm now ever
so cautiously leaning towards Acronis Disk Director, but
this seems to have its share of adamant panners as well.
I get the impression that partitioning is a difficult
thing for software to do consistently well.

The basic business of partitioning hard drives involves next to nothing in
the way of processing or intelligence. For example, XPs' disk manager does
the basic job pretty well. XP's installation program does some basic
partitioning tasks, too.

It is all the bells and whistles that can come with repartitioning hard
drives that has the great potential for error and even disaster.

Furthermore, complex partitioning, and repartitioning of hard drives seems
to be falling into disfavor.

So, why are you even worrying about this problem in ways that can't be
solved with any copy of XP? ;-)

[Peter Larsen[_2_]]

straightnut wrote:

I was looking to buy the best partitioning software available, and
assumed it was Partition Magic, but I've read some very unappetizing
reviews of this product. And after scouring the web to find
alternatives, I have yet to find one that gets any glowing reviews.
I'm now ever so cautiously leaning towards Acronis Disk Director, but
this seems to have its share of adamant panners as well. I get the
impression that partitioning is a difficult thing for software to do
consistently well.

Partion Magic is a re-partitioning product, it can save the day and do
resizing and combining, you should preferably empty the partitions or drives
you want to change. There must be other good products out there by now, it
is no longer "the choice". I find I prefer to do it "the os way" now, things
are less simple than they were in its heyday.

For partitioning: use the disk manager or whatever that comes with the
actual OS. Right click "My Computer", select "Manage".

Jeff


Kind regards

Peter Larsen

[Richard Crowley]

"straightnut" wrote ...
I was looking to buy the best partitioning software available,

Why?

Why do you think that partitioning will buy you anything?

Why do you think you need some fancy software application
for such a simple and basic function (which is built into the
operating system)?

Unless you are trying to re-juggle a hard drive that is in-use
(NOT recommended!) the functionality of the operating system
should be all you need.

And hard drive space is so dirt-cheap, why does anybody fool
around with partitioning anyway? Just avoid the horror altogether.

[straightnut]

The reason I'm considering partitioning is the following article that
I read that made sense, not only to possibly improve performance, but
to organize my drives in a way that makes defragging and backups
easier.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may0...pcmusician.htm

I've navigated to the Windows XP Disk Management Utility and I
couldn't find a way to divide the one giant partition that contains
the operating system and applications already installed on my new PC.
That's why I figured a third party product would offer this. But it's
true that I'm not looking to resize partitions after the initial
setup, so if I can somehow partition with this utility I will. After
all it must have this capability if the utility even exists in the OS,
right?
I have 2 SATA drives, one of which in completely unformatted I
believe. The other, OS and Apps, is formatted in NTFS. I assume I
should format the other in NTFS as well if I'll be swapping files back
and forth from partitions of the soon to be audio data disk to those
of the OS/App disk?

Thanks,
Jeff

[Richard Crowley]

"straightnut" wrote ...
The reason I'm considering partitioning is the following article that
I read that made sense, not only to possibly improve performance, but
to organize my drives in a way that makes defragging and backups
easier.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may0...pcmusician.htm

The article admits in the very first paragraph that is was
virtually out of date when it was written almost 3 years ago.

Do you subscribe to computer magazines for musical advice?

I can't think of ANY valid reason to partition discs. Particularly
ones that are currently in use. You're just asking for trouble
with NO known advantage. Dunno why anyone is still doing
this?

[Scott Dorsey]

Richard Crowley wrote:
"straightnut" wrote ...
The reason I'm considering partitioning is the following article that
I read that made sense, not only to possibly improve performance, but
to organize my drives in a way that makes defragging and backups
easier.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may0...pcmusician.htm

The article admits in the very first paragraph that is was
virtually out of date when it was written almost 3 years ago.

Do you subscribe to computer magazines for musical advice?

I can't think of ANY valid reason to partition discs. Particularly
ones that are currently in use. You're just asking for trouble
with NO known advantage. Dunno why anyone is still doing
this?

So if you overflow one fileystem it doesn't interfere with everyone else's
disk or with the OS disk in a shared system?
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Arny Krueger]

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message

Richard Crowley wrote:
"straightnut" wrote ...
The reason I'm considering partitioning is the
following article that I read that made sense, not only
to possibly improve performance, but to organize my
drives in a way that makes defragging and backups
easier.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may0...pcmusician.htm

The article admits in the very first paragraph that is
was virtually out of date when it was written almost 3
years ago.

Do you subscribe to computer magazines for musical
advice?

I can't think of ANY valid reason to partition discs.
Particularly ones that are currently in use. You're just
asking for trouble with NO known advantage. Dunno why
anyone is still doing
this?

So if you overflow one fileystem it doesn't interfere
with everyone else's disk or with the OS disk in a shared
system? --scott

By overflow do you mean fill the disk, or do you mean exhaust the bounds of
the file system?

No matter which, XP has a quota system that you can use to keep from
overflowing the bounds.

[Richard Crowley]

"Scott Dorsey" wrote...
Richard Crowley wrote:
I can't think of ANY valid reason to partition discs. Particularly
ones that are currently in use. You're just asking for trouble
with NO known advantage. Dunno why anyone is still doing
this?

So if you overflow one fileystem it doesn't interfere with everyone else's
disk or with the OS disk in a shared system?

Right. I was speaking from the context of "straightnut"s single-
OS, modern machine, though.

[Peter Larsen[_2_]]

Richard Crowley wrote:

I can't think of ANY valid reason to partition discs. Particularly
ones that are currently in use. You're just asking for trouble
with NO known advantage. Dunno why anyone is still doing
this?

It is not my advice to the OP, because the situation is different, but
fairly small partitions outermost on drives work well for me, because my
daw'ing is mostly done in the edit view of Audition and because I like to
protect my os and software installation via Drive Image 7. The theoretical
speed advantage is getting irrelevant, but the small OS and software
partition has some merit in case imaging is used as backup.


Kind regards

Peter Larsen

[Mike Rivers]

On Dec 10, 4:19 pm, Chel van Gennip wrote:

If you look in the supplied graphs you see even 5400rpm 40GB disk will
do better than 20MByte/sec on the wost part of the drive. In audio terms
that is over 200 channels 16/44k1 audio.

Even if you figure that reality is 75% of theory, that's 150 channels,
or more than 100 channels at 24 bits. At 96 kHz, that's 46 channels.
Considering that when doing a punch-in you need to be playing each
channel while you're recording it, at 24/96 you can punch in on 23
channels at once. Geez, that isn't much. G

But then everybody needs something to write an article about.

[straightnut]

On Dec 10, 5:42 pm, Mike Rivers wrote:
On Dec 10, 4:19 pm, Chel van Gennip wrote:

If you look in the supplied graphs you see even 5400rpm 40GB disk will
do better than 20MByte/sec on the wost part of the drive. In audio terms
that is over 200 channels 16/44k1 audio.

Even if you figure that reality is 75% of theory, that's 150 channels,
or more than 100 channels at 24 bits. At 96 kHz, that's 46 channels.
Considering that when doing a punch-in you need to be playing each
channel while you're recording it, at 24/96 you can punch in on 23
channels at once. Geez, that isn't much. G

But then everybody needs something to write an article about.

So channels are covered, but what about streaming samples? Is this a
non-issue as well?
Thanks,
Jeff

[straightnut]

On Dec 10, 4:19 pm, Chel van Gennip wrote:


Partitioning could introduce extra seek problems and only solves
imaginary streaming problems.

What seek problems could be introduced?
Thanks,
Jeff

[Richard Crowley]

"straightnut" wrote ...
Chel van Gennip wrote:
Partitioning could introduce extra seek problems and only solves
imaginary streaming problems.

What seek problems could be introduced?

You lose contact with a "drive" while the (shared) head goes
away seeking, reading, writing content on one of the other
"drives" on the same spindle.

[Peter Larsen[_2_]]

straightnut wrote:

The reason I'm considering partitioning is the following article that
I read that made sense, not only to possibly improve performance, but
to organize my drives in a way that makes defragging and backups
easier.

Has some merit. Now re-read my first follow up, and do try to understand the
difference between partitioning and re-partitioning.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may0...pcmusician.htm

I've navigated to the Windows XP Disk Management Utility and I
couldn't find a way to divide the one giant partition that contains
the operating system and applications already installed on my new PC.

What you ask about is re-partitioning. To do it you have to empty the drive
first. Don't do it. My advice to you: use the bathtub principle, just format
the drives NTFS and be happy.


Kind regards

Peter Larsen

[Scott Dorsey]

straightnut wrote:

I was looking to buy the best partitioning software available, and
assumed it was Partition Magic, but I've read some very unappetizing
reviews of this product. And after scouring the web to find
alternatives, I have yet to find one that gets any glowing reviews.
I'm now ever so cautiously leaning towards Acronis Disk Director, but
this seems to have its share of adamant panners as well. I get the
impression that partitioning is a difficult thing for software to do
consistently well.

No, partitioning is easy to do well and you need no additional software to
do it.

REpartitioning is difficult to do well, and in fact the chances of something
going wrong with any of the repartitioning systems is alarmingly high. But
we live now in the 21st century where disk space is cheap. There is no
longer really any reason to repartition your drive... just set up the
partitions on a new one, copy the data to it, then replace the drive with
the new one. Keep the old one on your shelf as a safety backup.

Repartitioning in place is just a bad idea. There was a time when there
was often no alternative because disk space was expensive. That time is
over.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[straightnut]

On Dec 10, 2:47 pm, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
straightnut wrote:

I was looking to buy the best partitioning software available, and
assumed it was Partition Magic, but I've read some very unappetizing
reviews of this product. And after scouring the web to find
alternatives, I have yet to find one that gets any glowing reviews.
I'm now ever so cautiously leaning towards Acronis Disk Director, but
this seems to have its share of adamant panners as well. I get the
impression that partitioning is a difficult thing for software to do
consistently well.

No, partitioning is easy to do well and you need no additional software to
do it.

REpartitioning is difficult to do well, and in fact the chances of something
going wrong with any of the repartitioning systems is alarmingly high. But
we live now in the 21st century where disk space is cheap. There is no
longer really any reason to repartition your drive... just set up the
partitions on a new one, copy the data to it, then replace the drive with
the new one. Keep the old one on your shelf as a safety backup.

Repartitioning in place is just a bad idea. There was a time when there
was often no alternative because disk space was expensive. That time is
over.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Forunately I'm starting completely fresh. I have nothing to transfer.
I just have 2 250G SATA drives that I wanted to configure with
partitions.
Jeff

[Richard Crowley]

"straightnut" wrote ...
Forunately I'm starting completely fresh. I have nothing to transfer.
I just have 2 250G SATA drives that I wanted to configure with
partitions.

If re starting with empty drives, then just use the functionality
you already have. Although I still see no valid advantage.

[Arny Krueger]

"straightnut" wrote in message


Forunately I'm starting completely fresh. I have nothing
to transfer. I just have 2 250G SATA drives that I wanted
to configure with partitions.

If you are starting out fresh, then you have no need for repartitioning
software, right?

[straightnut]

On Dec 10, 3:08 pm, "Arny Krueger" wrote:
"straightnut" wrote in message



Forunately I'm starting completely fresh. I have nothing
to transfer. I just have 2 250G SATA drives that I wanted
to configure with partitions.

If you are starting out fresh, then you have no need for repartitioning
software, right?

You've all convinced me of that now, yes.
Jeff

[Arny Krueger]

"straightnut" wrote in message

On Dec 10, 3:08 pm, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:
"straightnut" wrote in message



Forunately I'm starting completely fresh. I have nothing
to transfer. I just have 2 250G SATA drives that I
wanted to configure with partitions.

If you are starting out fresh, then you have no need for
repartitioning software, right?

You've all convinced me of that now, yes.

The other pro-partitioning idea I can give some credibility to, is the idea
of partitioning drives into high-performance (outer) and low-performance
(inner) partitions. Archived data can be put into the low-performance
partition.

[Mike Rivers]

On Dec 10, 2:56 pm, straightnut wrote:

Forunately I'm starting completely fresh. I have nothing to transfer.
I just have 2 250G SATA drives that I wanted to configure with
partitions.

In that case, FDISK is the tool to use. I assume you're going to leave
your boot drive alone and partition your data drive. That would be the
smart thing to do.

[straightnut]

On Dec 10, 3:12 pm, Mike Rivers wrote:
On Dec 10, 2:56 pm, straightnut wrote:

Forunately I'm starting completely fresh. I have nothing to transfer.
I just have 2 250G SATA drives that I wanted to configure with
partitions.

In that case, FDISK is the tool to use. I assume you're going to leave
your boot drive alone and partition your data drive. That would be the
smart thing to do.

I could do that. The article gives different schemes to take advantage
of the outer edge speed of the drive for streaming samples and for
audio data. I don't know if I'll be using streaming samples, but I was
going to leave a partition somewhere towards the outside for this
potentiality on one of the two disks. But now that you guys are all
yelling at me I would certainly reconsider.
With FDISK I assume I would wipe everything clean and have to
reinstall the operating system? If this is necessary I'll do it, if
not I would like to use the XP Disk Management tool if I can figure
out how. Maybe there's a help file somewhere.
Jeff

[Laurence Payne]

On Mon, 10 Dec 2007 12:25:00 -0800 (PST), straightnut
wrote:

I could do that. The article gives different schemes to take advantage
of the outer edge speed of the drive for streaming samples and for
audio data.

The numbers are doubtless correct. But I think you'll find little
practical difference. There's a lot more to disk performance than raw
reading rates. And modern mainstream drives are rarely the weak link
in a DAW system.

[Mike Rivers]

On Dec 10, 3:25 pm, straightnut wrote:

With FDISK I assume I would wipe everything clean and have to
reinstall the operating system? If this is necessary I'll do it,

That's why I suggested leaving your boot drive alone and just
partition your data drive, which I assume is empty now. When you run
FDISK, you definitely wipe out anything on the drive and you'll have
to re-install Windows and anything else loaded on there. When you use
a partition manager you MIGHT wipe out what's on there, or rather,
make it unaccessible from the operating system.

if
not I would like to use the XP Disk Management tool if I can figure
out how. Maybe there's a help file somewhere.

I've never found that useful for anything other than information.

[Laurence Payne]

On Mon, 10 Dec 2007 11:56:54 -0800 (PST), straightnut
wrote:

Forunately I'm starting completely fresh. I have nothing to transfer.
I just have 2 250G SATA drives that I wanted to configure with
partitions.
Jeff

In which case you just need fdisk (or whatever Windows calls it now).
A simple Windows utility.

[Frank Stearns]

(Scott Dorsey) writes:

straightnut wrote:

I was looking to buy the best partitioning software available, and
assumed it was Partition Magic, but I've read some very unappetizing
reviews of this product. And after scouring the web to find
alternatives, I have yet to find one that gets any glowing reviews.
I'm now ever so cautiously leaning towards Acronis Disk Director, but
this seems to have its share of adamant panners as well. I get the
impression that partitioning is a difficult thing for software to do
consistently well.

No, partitioning is easy to do well and you need no additional software to
do it.

snips

Repartitioning in place is just a bad idea. There was a time when there
was often no alternative because disk space was expensive. That time is
over.


To both Scott and Richard -

I must disagree a bit on this one... I partition the main system drive for two main
reasons:

- much easier and faster daily delta backups over the LAN to my "standby" image
machine (the old clunker that can take over in a matter of minutes should the main
machine croak.

- one more layer of simple, high-level organization: OS on the first partition, Apps
on the next, data files for those apps on the next, then, indeed, single drives as
one big partition for data (just the other day added another 1/2 terabyte drive for
audio projects).

Longer-term advantages include:

- I take "image" backups of partitions, such as the OS or selected Data partitions.
Again, hugely faster to do these in smaller chunks rather than imaging an entire
disk.

- in the case of a catastrophic OS hiccup (they don't happen often, but when
they do, yikes) damage is usually limited to just that partition. Again, from these
"smaller containers" of image backups, I can get back up and running way, way
faster, and I usually don't need to reinstall anything.

- easier migration to new hw.


Indeed, partition SW can muck things up if you don't think it through, but over the
past 22 years I've been on PCs (and even on coal-fired systems for 7-8 years before
that, and also in parallel on the Sun workstation I owned for many years) I can't
imagine surviving without partitions for the reasons noted.

But, as always, YMMV.

Frank Stearns
Mobile Audio

--

[Richard Crowley]

"Frank Stearns" wrote ...
To both Scott and Richard -
I must disagree a bit on this one... I partition the main
system drive for two main reasons:

- much easier and faster daily delta backups over the LAN...
- one more layer of simple, high-level organization: ....

Longer-term advantages include:
- I take "image" backups of partitions, ....
- damage is usually limited to just that partition. ....
- easier migration to new hw.

I guess I rather do that myself for most of the same reasons.
But not with partitions. I generally use a small (~80GB) hard
drive dedicated as the boot/system/cache/program drive.

Then I store actual data on other drives (typically removable
ones organized by project, etc.) Same technique for both
audio and video projects.

[Nick Brown]

I started reading this thread last night, and was intending to post
here this morning to mention the advantages as I see them of
partitioning, but Frank's saved me the effort.

For anyone not going down the image backup route, I'd agree with other
folks here that partitioning is of limited value.

Even if the OP does decide to create separate partitions, that still
doesn't require third party-partitioning software, so long as he
doesn't subsequently change his mind about what partition size he
wants. (The C partition can be created at a user-specified size by the
Windows installer, and once Windows is running the remaining disk
space can be partitioned, formated and have a drive letter assigned by
the disk management tool - Start menu, run, "diskmgmt.msc" - without
even a reboot required.)

FWIW I've used Partition Magic on probably a hundred computers, and
I've always found it to behave itself. I don't know the Acronis
product, but I do use their TrueImage software (in preference to
Ghost), both the regular and server versions, and on account of it I
have a pretty high opinion of Acronis, so I'd guess their partitioning
software is worth a look, if you want partitioning software.

-Nick

[Keith W. Blackwell]

straightnut wrote:
I was looking to buy the best partitioning software available, and
assumed it was Partition Magic, but I've read some very unappetizing
reviews of this product. And after scouring the web to find
alternatives, I have yet to find one that gets any glowing reviews.
I'm now ever so cautiously leaning towards Acronis Disk Director, but
this seems to have its share of adamant panners as well. I get the
impression that partitioning is a difficult thing for software to do
consistently well.

Sorry, I've never used any products that cost money. The
last few times I've done repartitioning, GPartEd LiveCD gave
me what I needed. It's free: http://gparted-livecd.tuxfamily.org/
But it helps to know a little about what you're doing with it.
OK, to know a LOT. :-)

--
Keith W. Blackwell
(I do not speak for my employer or anyone else)

[David Morgan \(MAMS\)]

"straightnut" wrote in message ...
I was looking to buy the best partitioning software available, and
assumed it was Partition Magic, but I've read some very unappetizing
reviews of this product. And after scouring the web to find
alternatives, I have yet to find one that gets any glowing reviews.
I'm now ever so cautiously leaning towards Acronis Disk Director, but
this seems to have its share of adamant panners as well. I get the
impression that partitioning is a difficult thing for software to do
consistently well.

Jeff

Partitioning is such a simple matter that it's built in to Windows installation
and it also comes with a number of odd-ball 'disk tool' sets.

For Windows XP, Partition Magic 8 is perfect. Forget all the bull**** extra
tools, you want a partition or two with names, sizes and file formats - PM8
will do this excellently and with ultimate simplicity and a massively friendly
user interface. The 'New Partition Wizard' literally kisses your ass. Never
had *any* issues with PM, since PowerQuest's version three and forward.

There.... have another "review". ;-) Not worth much, eh?

But I'm not on a blog or newsgroup trying to diss anyone's product or
sell my own, either. PM works and it works well.


--
David B. Morgan (MAMS)
Morgan Audio Media Service
http://www.m-a-m-s DOT com
Dallas, Texas (214) 662-9901
_____________________________
http://www.januarysound.com

[straightnut]

On Dec 11, 5:38 am, "David Morgan \(MAMS\)" /Odm
wrote:

Partitioning is such a simple matter that it's built in to Windows installation
and it also comes with a number of odd-ball 'disk tool' sets.

For Windows XP, Partition Magic 8 is perfect. Forget all the bull**** extra
tools, you want a partition or two with names, sizes and file formats - PM8
will do this excellently and with ultimate simplicity and a massively friendly
user interface. The 'New Partition Wizard' literally kisses your ass. Never
had *any* issues with PM, since PowerQuest's version three and forward.

There.... have another "review". ;-) Not worth much, eh?

But I'm not on a blog or newsgroup trying to diss anyone's product or
sell my own, either. PM works and it works well.

You're right, there's just no way to trust the user reviews really.
But it's something when I have nothing else.
Thanks,
Jeff