Alternative location to install programs [question]

[cadlewv]

Hello. I subscribe to and read a popular PC magazine. I've read in it several times that they suggest putting Windows on the C drive, and creating a separate partition for the programs. I've actually tried this before. On the surface it seems like a splendid idea. The problem I've found is that even after telling the installer to install it to, for example, d:\[program name here], it still puts things in the c:\system32 folder, as well as a couple of other folders. And after reformatting, the programs don't work anyway.

Are there a few tips someone can give me to enable me to do this properly? I'm sure the problem lies with me, not with the idea.

Thank you.

[ktkendall]

No I don't think you are the problem, because some programs just do that and there isn't anything you can do about it that I know of. If in your scenario you format and relaod windows on C drive/partition then you just have to reinstall or repair the installations of those programs that no longer work cause they are looking for files on C: drive that are no longer there.. The reason for doing this is so you can reformat the windows partition and not loose your data on the other partition, but no matter how you slice it when you reinstall windows, there are usually a few other things that need reinstalled.

[doubledragon5]

If you have a decent size Hd, then it is better to load the programs your going to use on the one partition.. Less hassle all the way around...

[bozo]

Originally Posted by cadlewv I've read in it several times that they suggest putting Windows on the C drive, and creating a separate partition for the programs. I've actually tried this before. On the surface it seems like a splendid idea. Thank you.

It is, indeed, a "splendid idea". I have 8 partitions spead across 2 hard drives on my system ( XP, programs, data, pictures, swap file, and various backup partitions).

Some software programs require a few files to be installed on the OS partition regardless of where the program is installed to, for example, my primary browser (Opera) will install to my "H:\Program Files", yet some files are still placed in the "C:\" partiton, such as files that store "Favorites & Contacts". Anti virus programs do the same thing.

The beauty of have separate partitions with the OS isolated on one partition, is that if (when) the OS needs to be re-installed, your data can remain intact.

BTW: there is a registry tweak that will "set as default" the partition for new program installs, so you don't have to browse to the partition you want your programs installed to.

Hope this helps!

[cadlewv]

Originally Posted by bozo It is, indeed, a "splendid idea". I have 8 partitions spead across 2 hard drives on my system ( XP, programs, data, pictures, swap file, and various backup partitions).

I do as well. C, Home Movies, Music, Backup and Software

Originally Posted by bozo The beauty of have separate partitions with the OS isolated on one partition, is that if (when) the OS needs to be re-installed, your data can remain intact.

But that's the problem at hand. If some (or all) of the programs put files on the system partition, then you actually won't be saving your program data. You'll have to reinstall them anyway, making the idea seem pointless.

[bozo]

Originally Posted by cadlewv But that's the problem at hand. If some (or all) of the programs put files on the system partition, then you actually won't be saving your program data. You'll have to reinstall them anyway, making the idea seem pointless.

If (when) you have to re-install your OS, you still need to re-install all of your programs, regardless of where you install the programs. The programs have to be re-installed to set registry keys, add icons to the startup folder ect. So you are correct about the program files.

BUT, if your DATA is on another partition separate from the OS...then your data will remain intact. For me, the most important files on my system is my "DATA". All the rest of the things on my system can be re-created.

BTW: an alternatative to re-installing the OS, is to install the OS fresh, get all the updates, install all your hardware, and do any OS teaking you normally do, and then take an "Image" of the OS partition, while it is still in a pristine state. Now when the OS goes south, you can simply "Restore" that image. Doing it this way will eliminate you from having to re-install your programs (in MOST cases).

[cadlewv]

Yeah, I agree. My data is the most important to me as well (docs, pics, etc). I already keep those on a separate hard drive. I even keep a copy of all of the .exes for downloaded programs that I use all the time on a separate partition on my second hard disk. And, I already keep an image of my system partition after a clean install and all of Windows' patches downloaded and installed. I really just wanted to see if there was a way to -only- put windows on the system partition.

I didn't think there was a perfectly good way of doing it.

Thanks for all of your help though.

[Statica]

I think installing programs on a separate partition is equally beneficial. There are a few things that it alleviates. A lot of programs are keep the settings and other nuances that you have when you use a program often enough on the same folder as the install folder. If you lose Windows and you have to reinstall the programs, installing the programs to the same location as the previous one (your Programs partition would not be formatted) - you still have a lot of the user settings preserved. Some programs will also recreate some of the registry keys that you need when you run them, that saves you the trouble of installing everything from scratch as well. It isn't an exact science, of course, but it's a generally a good thing to install to a separate drive.
Finally, the main reason why I prefer a separate partitions in a number of different scenarios is based on "file lifecycle".
Windows residing on a separate partition is a must IMO. With data such as the documents in type out, they could have varying lifecycles, some of them could be erased out frequently, but for me a lot of my documents sit on my drive permanently. Program files also dont vary a lot. There usually aren't too many upgrades to suites such as MS Office that change a whole lot, so once installed I dont need to touch them up very often. What this does is restrict the amount of fragmentation on my drives on my core drives. The Windows is going to be frequently fragmented - that's the way it's laid out, too many SP files, too many temp files, application data etc etc etc. For example, everytime you add a new addressbook to your Windows Address book, you are deleting the old one and recreating a new WAB file - more fragments. Meanwhile, longer lifecycle files such as winword.exe sit unchanged. This allows me not to have to deal with fragmentation on my program drives as much as I have to deal with other drives.
What i have is:
Windows partition - Windows files .. give them their space.
Program partition - longer lifecycle. A lot of programs will access the Program files and Common files area on the Windows partition, that's ok .. those are going to be written and erased frequently anyway
Data partition - because I store everything linearly there isn't too much fragmentation there
'Swap partition' - these are things that are extremely low lifecycle .. for example mp3s that I may have ripped that are going to be stored on a CD and then deleted immediately. Outlook mail folders are usually on the swap partition list (I have a lot of emails that I store here .. allows me to backup mails even if my Windows partition goes down).

It isn't an exact science, but hopefully it will allow you to look at files from a different perspective as well and help you store and recover things efficiently.

[EdCompSci]

I just read this thread on another forum and want to know if it's possible to move files from the system partition to another partition like as in Debian Linux (below)

Howdy! I suppose it's a silly question, but one I haven't seen mentioned in the documentation yet: I'd like to install Debian Linux into various partitions on 2 harddisks. hdb holds 400 MB, and hdc around 1.1 GB. Would it be possible to put /, /var, /swap, /home, and (perhaps /local or /pub, which might not be Debian-like partitions to create) on hdb and leave hdc free for /usr? Alternatively, could I create /, /swap, and /usr on hdc, and fit the other partitions onto hdb? This would put the bootable partition farther down the queue (or something) than /home and /var, etc., but might be convenient, if it wouldn't engender kernel panic. Finally, as far as I know, / doesn't have to be a primary partition. But are there any advantages to designating it as primary? Thanks in advance. TandMark@aol.com (Mark Manning, Seattle) -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to debian-user-REQUEST@lists.debian.org . Trouble? e-mail to Bruce@Pixar.com On Sat, 4 Jan 1997 TandMark@aol.com wrote: > I'd like to install Debian Linux into various partitions on 2 harddisks. > hdb holds 400 MB, and hdc around 1.1 GB. You bet. If possible, stick to hda and hdc. I saw a 10 to 1 performance improvement in Win95 ScanDisk when I moved my second 1.2G Western Digital to secondary master from primary slave (primary master is an identical 1.2 WD). But yes, NOTHING wrong with splitting across two drives. Try to split them intelligently for best performance. Here's some of my thoughts on partitioning: when you are reading data, you want it now. /home and /usr should not be on the same disk (launching emacs on a file will be reading both the executable and the file). /var probably should be on a different disk than /usr (same as /home?) because daemons want to write to their log file as they are starting up, etc. Here's a df on my server: Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on /dev/hda1 19485 10253 8226 55% / /dev/hda2 223494 146781 65172 69% /usr /dev/hdc3 198123 11279 176613 6% /var /dev/hdc4 288354 542 272919 0% /tmp /dev/hda3 560060 5788 525343 1% /nfs /dev/hdb1 2990073 2038838 796610 72% /server /dev/hdc2 is a 120M swap. /nfs holds /home and /var/spool/mail, you'll see why in a minute. Here's a df on my workstation: Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on /dev/hda3 39039 7855 29168 21% / /dev/hda4 577609 307494 240279 56% /usr /dev/hdc3 99539 7646 86753 8% /var /dev/hdc4 201043 37 190624 0% /tmp templinux:/nfs 560060 5789 525342 1% /nfs hda1 is 200M FAT (Win95 OS). hda2 is 400M NTFS (WinNTW 4.0). hdc1 is 800M FAT (Common 95/NT apps). hdc2 is 120M swap. On both machines, /home is a symlink to /nfs/home, and /var/spool/mail is a symlink to /nfs/spool/mail, allowing easy NFS mounting of user files with only one NFS mount (and one partition!). > Finally, as far as I know, / doesn't have to be a primary partition. But are > there any advantages to designating it as primary? I try to make every partition a primary, if possible (keep in mind that Linux can have four primaries, unlike DOS). I've seen a few (albeit older and non-Debian) Linux fdisk's choke on the whole extended/logical deal. --Pete _______________________________________________________________ Peter J. Templin, Jr. Client Services Analyst Computer & Communication Services tel: (717) 524-1590 Bucknell University templin@bucknell.edu -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to debian-user-REQUEST@lists.debian.org . Trouble? e-mail to Bruce@Pixar.com

This would allow me to use more outside partition space so that more of the files that have to go into System32, etc. can and I can install more software. Just installing DirectX and kosak easyshare software alone takes up so much space on my system partition, and then if I want to have IIS, MSOffice, ..., I just run out of space and have all kinfs of outside partition space.


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