How do I optimize my PC's data storage across multiple drives?
December 29, 2009 11:32 PM Subscribe
Help me solve a data storage dilemma.
So I'm trying to figure out the best way to use about 1.5 TB of hard drive space spread over several drives. Here's the stats-- all these drives but the last are internal to my desktop:
1) 200 gb Seagate with Windows 7 installed on it. One big partition, half full. 6 years old. Have had some problems with it, though just ran a a filesystem scan which claimed to fix some bad sectors, but didn't give me any details. Thanks, Bill.
2) 500 gb Western Digital. Coming up on its first year of use.
-Partition 1: 417 gb, which has my home folder from the previous Ubuntu install on it. Mostly full of hundreds of gbs of music and movies. 5.21 gb remaining
-Partition 2: 20gb to hold the latest ubuntu install
-Partition 3: 20gb, currently unformatted in case i want to try some other OS.
3) Brand new, christmas gift, 750gb Western Digital. Entirely unformatted. This is the crux of the problem.
4) 250gb External Drive. Very old, its actually an IDE drive inside an enclosure. Really only used for backup purposes, but it does have some important stuff on it that isn't used too often-- some games, old video projects, etc.
So here's the issue: I'm wracked with indecision about just how to partition the new drive, which filesystem(s) (e.g. NTFS, ext3) to use in the new drive, and how best to distribute various kinds of data across the drives.
I'd like to move Windows over to the new, uncorrupted, high latency drive. I was thinking about 100gb for that, so i have plenty of space for games. That leaves me with just about a TB of usable space, most of which will most certainly be used to house my ever expanding media collection.
That said, it seems as though with all this space I should have a comprehensive backup system, not necessarily for the media but for school projects and personal files and such. How would you set this up to make access (especially to music and movies) across OS's and filesystems easiest (bonus for suggestions for ext2/3 reading utilities which work well with W7) ? Would it be a huge waste of time to migrate 400+gb of media to the new drive so I have it all in one place? What, then, would I do with the other drives?? Help!
So I'm trying to figure out the best way to use about 1.5 TB of hard drive space spread over several drives. Here's the stats-- all these drives but the last are internal to my desktop:
1) 200 gb Seagate with Windows 7 installed on it. One big partition, half full. 6 years old. Have had some problems with it, though just ran a a filesystem scan which claimed to fix some bad sectors, but didn't give me any details. Thanks, Bill.
2) 500 gb Western Digital. Coming up on its first year of use.
-Partition 1: 417 gb, which has my home folder from the previous Ubuntu install on it. Mostly full of hundreds of gbs of music and movies. 5.21 gb remaining
-Partition 2: 20gb to hold the latest ubuntu install
-Partition 3: 20gb, currently unformatted in case i want to try some other OS.
3) Brand new, christmas gift, 750gb Western Digital. Entirely unformatted. This is the crux of the problem.
4) 250gb External Drive. Very old, its actually an IDE drive inside an enclosure. Really only used for backup purposes, but it does have some important stuff on it that isn't used too often-- some games, old video projects, etc.
So here's the issue: I'm wracked with indecision about just how to partition the new drive, which filesystem(s) (e.g. NTFS, ext3) to use in the new drive, and how best to distribute various kinds of data across the drives.
I'd like to move Windows over to the new, uncorrupted, high latency drive. I was thinking about 100gb for that, so i have plenty of space for games. That leaves me with just about a TB of usable space, most of which will most certainly be used to house my ever expanding media collection.
That said, it seems as though with all this space I should have a comprehensive backup system, not necessarily for the media but for school projects and personal files and such. How would you set this up to make access (especially to music and movies) across OS's and filesystems easiest (bonus for suggestions for ext2/3 reading utilities which work well with W7) ? Would it be a huge waste of time to migrate 400+gb of media to the new drive so I have it all in one place? What, then, would I do with the other drives?? Help!
1) I've had no problems using Ext2 IFS for accessing ext3 drives from WinXP. It claims to support Win 2008 (which I assume = Win 7?)
2) It would be helpful to know exactly how much time you spend in each OS. For example, I have an XP partition on my system, but only boot into it maybe once a month to play an old game or fight with some crappy win-only program.
Assuming that you use them 50/50, I'd do something like this:
750 drive:
50 GB Win 7
20 GB Ubuntu root
The rest as one big NTFS partition for data
symlink your linux home directory to a folder on the data partition. That way, reinstalling or upgrading becomes easy without losing your data
Whatever other drives you can fit in your case, just make them one big NTFS partition.
Forget about the movies and music, but set up a little rsync script (or scheduled task) to copy your important documents from one hard drive to the other nightly. It's not an offsite backup, but it's better than nothing.
posted by chrisamiller at 1:04 AM on December 30, 2009
2) It would be helpful to know exactly how much time you spend in each OS. For example, I have an XP partition on my system, but only boot into it maybe once a month to play an old game or fight with some crappy win-only program.
Assuming that you use them 50/50, I'd do something like this:
750 drive:
50 GB Win 7
20 GB Ubuntu root
The rest as one big NTFS partition for data
symlink your linux home directory to a folder on the data partition. That way, reinstalling or upgrading becomes easy without losing your data
Whatever other drives you can fit in your case, just make them one big NTFS partition.
Forget about the movies and music, but set up a little rsync script (or scheduled task) to copy your important documents from one hard drive to the other nightly. It's not an offsite backup, but it's better than nothing.
posted by chrisamiller at 1:04 AM on December 30, 2009
One partition.
Drives are getting so ridiculously low priced these days that a year from now any partition smaller than the full drive is going to feel cramped.
Toss the lowest size drive now, plan on doing the same in a few months when you buy a 2 Tb disk for 100 bucks.
posted by DreamerFi at 8:17 AM on December 30, 2009
Drives are getting so ridiculously low priced these days that a year from now any partition smaller than the full drive is going to feel cramped.
Toss the lowest size drive now, plan on doing the same in a few months when you buy a 2 Tb disk for 100 bucks.
posted by DreamerFi at 8:17 AM on December 30, 2009
One partition.
This is bad advice. What happens when you want to reformat and install a new OS without losing all of your stuff? If you have the room, you should always separate as much of your data as you can from your OS files.
posted by chrisamiller at 8:37 AM on December 30, 2009
This is bad advice. What happens when you want to reformat and install a new OS without losing all of your stuff? If you have the room, you should always separate as much of your data as you can from your OS files.
posted by chrisamiller at 8:37 AM on December 30, 2009
I think I would back everything up onto the 750, pull the 200 Seagate and toss (or take apart for fun/education), reformat and repartition the 500 as your main machine drive and take the 250 and 750 and put them in an old/cheap machine, setting it up as network storage. You can put whatever OS on the 250 and most of your media and other files on the 750, so if the 250 fails you don't really lose anything.
I have network storage machine that I also use as an HTPC with Boxee, which I really enjoy. That, in combination with a wireless Logitech game pad and an older, free version of Xpadder (which you can probably find with a little searching) gives me a media box that I can control remotely and play games on using my TV as a monitor.
posted by Menthol at 8:44 AM on December 30, 2009
I have network storage machine that I also use as an HTPC with Boxee, which I really enjoy. That, in combination with a wireless Logitech game pad and an older, free version of Xpadder (which you can probably find with a little searching) gives me a media box that I can control remotely and play games on using my TV as a monitor.
posted by Menthol at 8:44 AM on December 30, 2009
Response by poster: I'm surprised there's such unanimity on pulling the seagate! I figured I would just put crap I didn't mind losing on it. Could it be a threat to the integrity of the machine?
I think you're on the right track Menthol, but I don't have the resources to set up another box at the moment. I kind of like the idea of having one OS per drive. Is this unnecessary? Should I look into setting up some kind of mega-partition across multiple drives?
posted by Truthiness at 9:48 AM on December 31, 2009
I think you're on the right track Menthol, but I don't have the resources to set up another box at the moment. I kind of like the idea of having one OS per drive. Is this unnecessary? Should I look into setting up some kind of mega-partition across multiple drives?
posted by Truthiness at 9:48 AM on December 31, 2009
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Burn all the data you don't want to lose to DVD-Rs. Only use HDs for scratch purposes, to hold data you are actively using or will burn out sooner or later.
Make the new WD your primary HD. Install Win7 on it. Optionally create other partitions for said active data.
Make the 500GB WD your linux/experimental HD, with whatever partitions.
Demote the 250GB external to temporary back up, semi-offsite.
Well, that's what I'd do. I'm no linux wiz. Also, optical may or may not have the longevity, but I intend to re-encode my media collection later this decade when other non-raw formats and storage options present themselves.
posted by tad at 12:45 AM on December 30, 2009