i have only one notebook 500gb hard disk, and i allready created my partitions and OS installed. I want to make a fat32 partition at the begining of my hard disk(outher track), with the the only purpose for page files. followed by the OS partition and the DATA/Storage partition What are those softwares that lets me do this and how can i use them? i was thinking to format and repartition with acronis. and after that to restore a system image backup from a CD store exactly where i want. what do you think?
Komp Have you not read the responses not just from me but many other not to do this in your 7 post? But if you’re like me you will have to try this though won’t you. Tools you will need: Donor system or larger USB hard drive. Ghost boot CD. Partition Magic CD or FDD. Most if not all recovery systems will not give you any control of partitioning so you will need to first deploy your system from the recovery media. Only recovery solution I know of that does let you chose is the HP business mobile workstation lineup. After you deploy the system make an image of your boot partition. Using partition magic delete all existing partitions, then creates the fat32 partition and hide it. Create your OS partition (remember primary type) set it as active. Create your Data partition as extended. Using ghost clone “partition” from image using the active partition you used above as your target. If you use a newer ghost you should be able to boot to the OS at this time. If you are using an older one you will need to boot to the 7 DVD and click fix my computer which should automatically fix the BCD. After you can boot your system successfully boot back to PQmagic and set the FAT32 partition as unhidden do not set it as active. Boot back to 7 and set you swap files. Note you can not move your hib, prefect to the fat 32 partition so make sure your sizes are right. You should have just spent about 2 hours. After typing this I just thought you know they may not have access to the software like I do. So Option 2 with only freeware: Tools needed. USB hard drive. MS WAIK (available from Microsoft.com). Recover your system. Boot to the WAIK DVD. Yes if burned right it will be bootable. Navigate to the directory with imagex (I do not have my WAIK infront of me so I can not give you the exact location) run the command: imagex /capture c:\ (USB driveleter):\OSIMAGE.wim "WINDOWS 7" /verify This will take a snap shot of your OS and it is a good idea to burn it when done for easer recovery in the future. When done unplug your USB drive. Type Diskpart At the diskpart> prompt type the following. Sel dis 0 Clean Cre par pri size=(swap part in MB) (example “cre par pri size=4096”) Format fs=fat32 quick Set id 16 Cre par pri size=(ospart in MB) (example “cre par pri size=81920”) Format fs=ntfs quick Active Assign Letter=C Cre par ext cre par log Format fs=ntfs quick Exit Plug the USB drive back in. Give it second or two. Then back at the CMD prompt Type imagex /apply (USB Dive letter):\OSIMAGE.wim "WINDOWS 7” c:\ (note you may have to substitute “WINDOWS 7” with 1.) BCDEDIT If you get an error you will need to reboot and try again. It should list your boot entries what you interested in is seeing if the Device and OSdevice=C:\ if it does not you will need to correct the BCD by typing BCDEDIT /set {boot identifier (usually a long uuid)} DEVICE=C:\ BCDEDIT /set {boot identifier (usually a long uuid)} OSDEVICE=C:\ At this point you should be able to reboot to your OS. In the OS you will need to unhide your fat32 partition. So open a CMD in elevated privilege mode. Type Diskpart Then in diskpart Sel dis 0 Sel par 1 Set ID 0B. Exit Then reboot the Fat32 partitions should come online and will be assigned the next available drive letter. Set your swap as necessary. Have fun.
i mistaken posts and forums. sorry for making a new thread. thanks fot the rich advices Arddrea i will learn some new stuff from your post. But, with acronis i cannot manage that? about the partitioning....i started thinking after reading this post: " To tell ya he truth, If I had a 400 GB C:\ partition, I'd immediately be looking to reduce it to something more efficient for performance and maintenance reasons. Remember that your HD is fastest (about twice as fast) at the outer edge than it is at the inner edge. That's cause more real estate pass under the head in one revolution at the outer edge than at the inner. So installing windows and then letting it decide how fast your machine is gonna be as it, over time keeps moving ya page file further and further towards that inner circle is unwise. For faster performance, improved backup and maintenance and ease if restores, consider the following: 1. Even with Windows bloat you can easily keep ya C:\partition down to 16 GB ....8 if you are fastidious. 2. With 16 GB allocated for C:\ you can then create a D:\partition for one sole purpose .... windows memory swapping and temp files. This is where your HD heads are gonna spend most of their time. No matter how much memory you have Windows is gonna swap stuff out. Programs and games will force writes to the page file even when oodles of physical memory is available. If ya wanna confirm for yaself, open task manager, go to processes tab, hit View / select columns and make sure Memory Usage and Virtual Memory Size boxes are checked. Right now, I have 1.2 Gigs of free physical memory and yet still have almost 400 MB paged out to disk. Taht's 400 MB of stuff that is being continually swapped between HD and memory.....you wnat that happening at full speed (outer edge) , 3/4 speed (middle) or 1/2 speed (inside edge). So create a FAT32 D Partition of 8 gigs or so. Yes, FAT32 because NTFS has an overhead associated with it and you don't need "file protection" on files that get deleted or wiped at every reboot anyway. And yes I have benchmarked both FAT32 and NTFS Swap fiel partitions and it is faster. 3. Then go into Control Panel / System / Advanced / Performance / Settings / Advanced / Virtual Memory / Change and: Set C to No Paging File (you lose dump file access but I don't know anyone who has ever looked at one after a crash and said "Oh cool, I can recover this" Set D Minimum and Maximum to 2 x the amount of RAM you have. (you like a better number, use it.) Reboot and then create a Folder called "Temp" on your D partition. Go into Control Panel / System / Advanced / Environment variables and select TEMP in the top window then hit Edit and change the value to D:\Temp...then select TMP in the window and change the value to D:\Temp. Now all the files your computer, programs and games will use most often are locked into being placed right at the outer edge of your hard drive giving your machine a distinct speed advantage over time. Otherwise, a year or so down the road when you have 200 Gigs of stuff on there, the paging file and temp files will have moved to the middle of your HD where they will be written and read at only 75% of the speed that they will on that D partition. 4. Then go with the rest of the drives as you see fit. I'd change the drive letter of your optical drive to Z to keep it the heck outta the way. Doing this saves headaches later if you add another HD or more partitions. 5. Next , depending on your usage, I'd go with E:\ being reserved for Games. Pick a size you deem appropriate. After all what do you need loading faster, your fragfest of game or pictures of granny and aunt tillie from last year's thanksgiving ? Of course if programs take precedence over games, then do programs 1st. F:\ would then be for programs G:\ say for data H:\ say for backups and / or an alternate install of XP. Peeps generally care a lot less how long it takes to load a data file and backups ...whatever you use to restore is a lot slower than ya HD. Of course after D, what you set aside and how you allocate it is very personal. Again all but the page / temp file partition should be NTFS. 6. There's several other advantage. Ever screw up Windows....what's easier / faster to restore from your backup media....a 16 GB or 400 GB partition ? 7. And ya know that interminable wait when ya crash and the system does chkdsk on the next reboot and you wait while it chugs thru 400 GB...well most of the time, that chkdsk is only gonna run on the D partition and waiting for 8 GB is way way better than 400. 8. The breakout makes it easier to backup ya stuff. data partitions can be done daily or weekly.....programs monthly or quarterly even. 9. Daily Virus and malware scans can be limited to places where the stuff resides (C:\) .....do the rest of the stuff on a weekly schedule. 10. When ya HD gets "dinged" say when ya 18 pound bust of Darth Vader falls from is shelf on top of ya puter, ya most important stuff...the data....is located far away from the "park" position of ya heads. Windows can be replaced....often lost data can't be replaced. 11. Wanna clear out all ya old and useless files.....delete everything on D:\ .... that was easy. 12. Now ya can start thinking of putting that D:\Partition as the 1st partition on a second HD . Though this isn't as good ideas ya might think if ya got an old HD lying around . Likelihood is that your new HD at the inner edge is faster than the old one at its outer edge. Still heads can't be at two places at once so it's a consideration. I typically take a bare metal box and don't even load windows till after I have used Partition Magic to make all my partitions. Alternately, like when ordering a laptop, I have the vendor install windows on a 16GB partition and leave the rest unformatted. I then use disk manager to make D thru whatever. The HD is the slowest part of your system. Everything you do on it is constrained by the weakest link in the speed train and that is ya HD. So best to make it work for you as best you can. So, if I were you, I'd be grabbing a copy if Acronis Disk Director or .... BootIt NG has a 30 day free trial period....and optimizing my HD work for me. "
Komp If you want you can use the ghost method with Acronis. Also if your into risk or have made a back up image you can use PQmagic directly to resize your partitions, but as I’ve had this explode too many times I do not recommend it. Failure rate is about 20% with a resize and move. I missed in your original post that you have a system all ready set up with a data drive. If you have anything on the data part you will need to make an image of that as well if you use imagex. Acronis, ghost, imagex and many others have the same issue with restoring to a different hard drive layout. When they lay down the partitions they create a new signature (under windows 6 & 7 Microsoft refers to it as a partition UUID). This is the reason with older versions of ghost you need to edit the BCD after loading. The default BCD device and osdevice entries are the boot partition UUID. If windows is working right the first successful boot the edited BCD will be change from the modified layout (we did) to the correct UUID entries. The drive letter is also assigned by UUID. So lets say your stating layout is: C: OS Date. You take an image then; You use acronis to create a fat32 partition and then lay down the image you just took in the remaining space. Fat32 ; OS ; Data. Now you have no dive letters as all partitions have new UUID. When you boot the letters get moved around so stuff blows up, that is why for the first boot your fat32 needs to be hidden (so drive C; is not reassigned to it). Also if acronis is not smart enough to edit the BCD you will get a non bootable unit that the MS boot repair will not be able to handle (because for the exposed fat32 partition). And the new layout is: C:Fat32 ;D: OS ;E: Data. Recommended method from new info: Make acronis image. Boot to Windows 7 DVD. Click repair my computer, Skip / exit the repair wizard. Click command line in the menu. Type Diskpart At the diskpart> prompt type the following. Sel dis 0 Clean Cre par pri size=(swap part in MB) (example “cre par pri size=8192”) Format fs=fat32 quick Set id 16 Boot to acronis and load the image to the free space. See if system boots to OS. If it doesn’t boot to windows 7 DVD and run the autorepair. Once in the OS you will need to unhide your fat32 partition. So open a CMD in elevated privilege mode. Type Diskpart Then in diskpart Sel dis 0 Sel par 1 Set ID 0B. Exit Reboot. Now the layout is E:Swap C: os D: DATA. Fat32 does have less overhead (and very easy to recover data from) but the problem comes not from the file system but from the MS Fat32 service. Under 2k / XP / and Vista Fat32 is doggedly slow due to this botched (purposely?) service. I have not used 7 enough with F32 to know if it has been fixed (I know in RC1 it was not). Many of your points are good. But the reason you want to set a swap file on the boot volume to like 20MB is not for the dump file (which yes I have used a couple of times, also the dump file has no recoverable data with MS’s default mini dump, it is for debugging) but because some services require swap space to start. If any thing goes bad with the beginning of the drive you will have no start system and it will be harder to get back up. Good example is you suffer data loss from a crash on the fat32 partition. “Set D Minimum and Maximum to 2 x the amount of RAM” I used to do this religiously but I have since discovered that you get better performance when you leave it in windows managed mode on its own dedicated partition or drive (nothing else on it). On my laptop I had a 160 configured as F: 8G Swap C:20G OS d: 132G I had made the accident of installing WOW on F: and the system ran fine. I have since upgraded to a 250with the layout F: 4G Swap c: 40G OS d: 183G DATA I installed wow on C: but due to the seek issue loading take a long time. Next time I reinstall its going to be 25 25 rest. And WOW will be on the swap file partition.
I do not think partitioning makes any sense with todays HDs I used to do it years ago, but stopped bothering. Just OS & Data are fine I loved PQMagic, but that was also years ago. Never touch it again, only Acronis by now! sebus
Or partation wizard. 100% free and very good. And indeed partitioning is not needed these days. Just OS (40 gigs or something) and the rest data. I always thought the libraries are completely useless, cause saving stuff on your OS partition is something I never do. So I move the libraries locations to my data partition, or just don't use them at all.