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I have partioned my HDD to have 70GB for the operating system and 180GB on the other bit (totalling 250GB). I basically am using the 180GB to store all my music and art, as well as around 100GB worth of soundbanks.
I have a few programs I have installed on the 70GB drive, and I was wondering if it were possible to move them to the 180GB drive without having to re-install them? So that all the shortcuts in the program files list works, registries, and so on.
Most programs can be moved like that, but be prepared to spend a few hours delving around in regedit. ;)
How would I go about moving the programs then? Just drag them over into a folder of my choosing? Then how do I edit the regedit?
What's the reason for moving them? In case you need to reinstall windows, most of those programs would need a reinstall anyway, that's my experience anyway. That's why I keep most programs at the same partition as my operating system.
I prefer to keep programs on a seperate partition since the Windows partition fragments a lot :p I also wouldn't give Windows a partition larger than 8 GB - though that might change with Vista, should I ever use it :p
I'd suggest you uninstall and reinstall the programs to the other partition, you'll save yourself a huge amount of headache otherwise from having to trawl the registry and change wherever else it might reference itself if it's not that tidy to keep it's settings there, plus all shortcuts etc. manually :p
As clout said, it'll be a lot easier to back up your conf and data files for whatever program, uninstall and reinstall to the new location.
The reason for that is, as Samuraid said, you're going to have to find all relevant registry keys (through research or trial and error) and manually change them to suit the new location. This will take you several hours. :p
Then you need to actually move all files concerned, which may or may not be confined to the program folder itself.
So yeah.
It took me a very very very long time to figure out how you would run windows programs on a linux partition.Quote:
Originally Posted by crono_logical
and by figure out, realize that's not what you meant.
:headdesk:
I see. Well I recently bought a burner so I can finally back up music and soundbanks. So I might take the opportunity to format, and partion my HDD properly.
What would you suggest? 10GB for Windows XP? 100GB for music and the rest for program files and soundbanks (soundbanks are around 100GB)?
I hate formating due to having to round up all my installation CD's and drivers, and then do long updates on certain software I have.
Hmm.
10GB will do just fine for an "OS and drivers" partition. I would also suggest making a separate partition for your sound libraries as they would tend to be larger files and to do better being stored in contiguous blocks on disk.
Ah okay, well thank you heaps for that information. I'm going to try and store as much as I can first, then I'll format. There won't be any delays for Windows XP to access other partions? Specifically the partion I store all my program files on.
You'll probably find stuff can be read faster when partitioned properly since the data can be organised more tidily :p
Most programs can easily be put on a second partition, but some are pretty stubborn about wanting themselves on C:
I think mine are 30gb for c and 205gb for D
Could even buy a second hard drive, like 10gb.... put the swap file on it for added speed :)
C: OS
D: Apps
E: Data
Second HD
F: Swap File
Or is that overkill? :)
With partitions its still on the same drive, so it may or may not be a little slower, may even be faster.
If a second HD, its faster I believe since you can read from two places at once.
Swap partition on a different physical disk is good because the computer can read from multiple disks at the same time, yes :p Of course, just having a swap file is overkill itself if you have sufficient RAM :p
some programs require a swap file....
Not sure why, but some windows xp installs freak out when you take out the swap file, even with 1.5+ gb of ram.
So I merely set mine down to 128mb, and it can expand a little higher than that.
2gb ram here.
If you have more than/equal to 1gig and aren't running latest cutting-edge graphics design or games, you can start to play with the swap file and reduce its size or try to eliminate it altogether.
The swap file I think was said to be about 10x slower than real RAM.
Something else to keep in mind:
HDDs generally seek faster on the inner edge of the disk platter (due to less latency waiting for a rotation to complete), so put your OS and other critical stuff in the first partitions, then put your large storage partitions in the remaining space.
I've never had problems disabling swap when I've had at least 1 GB of RAM. I also have swap disabled on my work PC (2.5 GB) which is also hosting virtual PCs :p I thought certain programs that require swap like Adobe/CoolEdit create their own swap files anyway, irrespective of what Windows is using :p