partition magic pretty much

Just don't partition in the first place, there's no need for it. Make a new folder sheesh..

nah it's the bomb

No, you can resize a partition in use. Well, I know you can increase the size, not entirely sure about decreasing. Acronis lets you restart and does it prior to bootup for you.

Paragon Disk Manager will let you resize without having to format. Works fine with 7.

Why do people bother partitioning? Surely just having one full drive with an extra folder is cleaner?

gparted is an open source partition manager which will do this.

Why do people bother partitioning? Surely just having one full drive with an extra folder is cleaner?

Windows on its own partition is much better. Formats & reinstalls are much easier this way, like whoop said.

I store stuff on other partitions so when I format I don't have to download 50 gigs of steam games

Windows on its own partition is much better

I assume you guys only have a single drive system, otherwise the no-partition argument would still hold.

I thought most people would have moved onto at least two drives by now? One for OS/apps and another for media, games and long-term storage. That way you not only have less fragmentation but you'd split up disk I/O and hence should have faster loads and less thrashing/glitching during games and also everyday tasks.

With disks so dirt cheap these days it's a wonder ...

last edited by parabol at 10:16:02 23/Jan/10

On another note why aren't people running a storage server, actually come to think of it that could be a good article for the next ausgames walk-through

While I can see a NAS being a good storage solution if you have multiple PC's and your NAS can act as a router, print server, media server, etc and stream data to all the PC's and allow them to print. It's probably not as cost effective if you only have one PC connected directly to your printer & modem.

Then there's the issue of where to put it, if you live in a one bedroom apartment with only one PC and your PC is also your TV then there's no need for a streaming media server.

As for the walk-through, it would read like this: Go to some place that sells thecus, buy the [insert model number here], put hard drives in it and enjoy, anyone who needs help building their own NAS shouldn't.

last edited by whoop at 12:21:49 23/Jan/10

See, the way I had mine set up was a main system partition and all my docs & settings were stored on another drive so when I formatted I didn't have to copy anything across. I did it that way so that if windows suddenly dies one day and I can't even get into safe mode I know it's safe to just nuke the windows partition from orbit without having to worry about how I'm going to get in & copy any data off.

I used to have 4 hard drives in my main PC all for different storage stuffs but since hard drives got so big I just do the same thing but with partitions instead of separate physical drives. I do have a NAS too though but then again there's 2 PC's and 4 laptops here so makes for a nice handy central storage instead of having to have the main PC on chewing up 300 watts at idle.

rrrocket, gparted is a linux-based livecd. Boot off it. File systems are best modified when they're not in use :)

so say you have two partitons, a and b

<---a---><------b------>

and you want a to be bigger
you can't increase a without reducing & moving b

so it'll go like this

1. Original State
2. Reduce partition B
3. Move partition B
4. Expand partition A

diagram:

<---a---><------b------>
<---a---><---b--->xxxxxx
<---a--->xxxxxx<---b--->
<------a------><---b--->

lol you seriously think I haven't already reduced my other drive? If you read my first post you'd know I already successfully reduced my other drive.

get the facts jim

lol

I said lol cos you didn't even read the instructions, then concluded an existing partition can't be resized - but it can

also when I boot with gparted the screen shot button doesn't work.

Partition 8 can do it but not compatible with win7.

www.partedmagic.com

/thread

infi you just use any software like acronis true image, norton ghost and image the drive to the new drive and then just plug in the new drive and w00h00 hooray magic /cheer

hardware wins for best ever ASCII diagram explaining the solution

I thought most people would have moved onto at least two drives by now? One for OS/apps and another for media, games and long-term storage. That way you not only have less fragmentation but you'd split up disk I/O and hence should have faster loads and less thrashing/glitching during games and also everyday tasks.

I've got 4 drives actually. However, the (2) smallest are 300GB. Windows + UserData + Program Files take up 18GB atm. I have no interest in 'wasting' The remaining ~260GB. Hence I partition, and put storage stuff of the remainder of the drive.
When I format, only Windows, Program Files and UserData are erased and the rest of the drive storage is left intact. No thrashing problem. Pagefile also kept on entireley unrelated disk.