Partition Hard Drive?

W

walkinbass

New member
I have a 60 GB hard drive that at this time only 8 GB is used.

I'm going to a new recording software that will work better with XP.

I'm now running ME and for some strange reason…. if possible, don't want to entirely abandon this OS.

One solution recommended to me is to partition my hard drive to have a C and a D partition. Then, install XP and the new recording software on the D partition. (Have a double boot capability.)

Has anyone else done this?

Any "got ya's" I should know about?

Is it just a bad idea?
 
Good idea, but I believe you'll lose everything and have to format both drives and reload everything. so save everything:files, favorites, downloads, ect...
I'm not a computer geek so if there is someone with better info, please reply
joe
 
jokinjoe is right. You will erase everything from the disc when you partition. You do with Mac anyway.
Why not get a second drive? They're dirt cheap now, and in most cases it's better to have your operating system and recording software on one drive, and have the audio go to another. That's what I'm doing and it works beautifully.
Partition the new drive, and put ME on one of those partitions. Keep the other partitions at about 2-4 gigs, depending on how much hard drive space you need for a typical recording. This makes for more convenience when running utilities, and theoretically makes your system faster by reducing write and seek times.
 
I would recommend getting a completely seperate harddisk

I just set up a 3 disk setup in my system

10Gig system drive
2 Gig program
40 gig audio

Partitioning the disk will prevent swapfile from getting mixed in with audiodata but your still tring to do 2 things with 1 disk

To repartition the disk you will need to FDISK and lowlevel format

I just had a recirnt bad experience with FDISK on a backup drive about which I am writing an article for another recording site as a "howto" for Data Recovery
 
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Good idea, but I believe you'll lose everything and have to format both drives and reload everything. so save everything:files, favorites, downloads, ect...
Click to expand...

This is not entirely true.
A few years back I was working on installing a linux partition without blasting my huge windows partition. There is a software program called "FIPS" that will try to make a new partition out of the unallocated hard drive space. Do a search for it online, Im sure they have other more sophisticated programs to do it by now. (But I remember it did work)

but jokinjoe is right... make sure you back up everything (twice?) anyway.

--demensia
 
You can do initial partitioning right from any NT setup....no need to use FDISK anymore.

Programs like Partition Magic can repartition your drive without requiring that you lose your existing partition. I've never used it so I will not personally vouche for it.

Slackmaster 2000
 
W,

> I have a 60 GB hard drive that at this time only 8 GB is used. <

See Part 1 of my series for Keyboard magazine that describes all of this in great detail. You'll find it on my Articles page:

www.ethanwiner.com/articles.html

And you do not need to erase anything to create new partitions if you get Partition Magic.

--Ethan
 
Slackmaster2K said:


Programs like Partition Magic can repartition your drive without requiring that you lose your existing partition. I've never used it so I will not personally vouche for it.
Click to expand...

i've used partition magic and it works just fine. but the software will cost you about half what you'd spend buying a new harddrive so i agree with just getting a new harddrive........or you could let go of whatever silly idea makes you think running ME is the right decision for you :).
 
erichenryus said:
i've used partition magic and it works just fine. but the software will cost you about half what you'd spend buying a new harddrive so i agree with just getting a new harddrive........or you could let go of whatever silly idea makes you think running ME is the right decision for you :).
Click to expand...
Partition Magic does work well. I got a copy from work. Check around, you might can get a copy for free. And it will partition without losing your current OS.
I have a dual boot of XP..the second is tweaked for my Logic 5.5 and stripped of all the XP garbage and I disabled a lot of crap that affects the recording process. And as mentioned above, its a good idea to have a second HD for audio only...a fast drive...perhaps the new WD 7200 with the 8mb cache.
 
erichenryus said:
........or you could let go of whatever silly idea makes you think running ME is the right decision for you :).
Click to expand...

:D :D :D

I made the switch (finally) on my DAW. I'm so glad I did. I was in the position where my hardware was not compatible with XP. Now, all my computers are running the same OS. Everything is just dandy!


Vice
 
I agree that Partition Magic is a good solution for your situation. I've used it quite a bit at work, never needed to at home. It's a good product. It also has a number of nifty utilities for doing things like re-sizing your clusters non-destructively.
 
sort of related to this topic - these might not apply to you.

while you're messing with hard drives, take a second to check and make sure your hard drives IDE channels are useing DMA mode. EXPECIALLY if you are running XP on an SiS chipset (PIII usually) ... as the micro$oft drivers for the IDE controller are buggy and prevent switching to DMA in some cases. The correct drivers can be found at SiS's website.

Also, if after switching to XP you get this "tinty" sound in all audio playback (not recorded) after a few minutes. it is because the DHCP service is a little goofy... type: services.msc in the "run" box and stop the service. I think only the Aardvark Q10 has this problem though. You need DHCP if you have a broadband connection....so just turn it on and off as needed

If you have a dual boot if XP the last activated copy will be the only one able to get updates (thanks to SP1)
 
partitioning hard-drives

I've got two drives. One is used as the "software" drive and the second as my audio only drive.

The software drive is triple booted (!) with (1) a general partition, (2) a "Logic software" partition for running Logic Audio Plat 5.1 and (3) a "SONAR software" partition for running SONAR 2. It all works as well ! I used PartitionMagic 5 to set it all up and this is a doddle to use. The BootMagic boot manager which comes with it enables easy selection fo the booting partition when you start up.

If you want some tips on setting up and tweaking go to www.sospubs.co.uk (Sound on Sound magazine) and search for the PC Musician articles written by Martin Walker. The guy is a bit of a wizard on this sort of stuff.

khapahk
 
PMboot

OK,
Everyone has already said this but Partition Magic is a very nice program especially if you are unfamiliar with dos commands and fdisk. It also does not have the limitations that FDISK has with larger hard drives. All you would really need from partition magic are the 2 boot disks it creates to run the program. I installed the program, had it make the 2 disks and then used WinImage to make an image of the 2 disks. Once I had those images I uninstalled PM8 cause I didn't really need it anymore. Now I just have 2 1mb files that I click on and it automatically creates the disks...very nice..WinImage is a must have for anyone who has specialized boot disks they don't want to leave on the unreliable floppy media. (I sound like a commercial don't I!?)

{cuts to scene of man fumbling through hundreds of floppy disks, dropping them all on the floor and rolling over them with his office chair. Man puts floppy into disk drive and huge colorful whimsical error message pops up on screen. man makes ignorant frustrated gesture for all his friends to watch and make fun of him for later}

dlv
 
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