OT: Partitioning your hard drive?

["Geoff Hart" <Geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca>]

Julie Johnston <<...will be purchasing new PC's for the tech 
writing department... We are trying to decide what the most 
logical partitioning structure would be.>>

That depends on a range of factors. For one, you can 
calculate optimal partition sizes based on the size of the disk 
allocation blocks that your operating system (OS) defines for 
each partition size. Unless you're using one of the most recent 
file systems, block size increases rapidly with the size of the 
partition. I don't have the actual sizing info. handy (someone 
here can surely provide actually numbers), but for the sake of 
illustration, consider that the minimum block size might range 
from 4K for a small partition to 32K or even larger if you 
don't partition a large disk at all. This is a problem because a 
2K letter to your boss wastes only 2K on a drive with 4K 
minimum blocks, versus 28K on the larger partition. These 
small losses add up over time. (Newer file systems are 
smarter, and some don't use such rigid minimum block sizes.)

A few other guidelines:

It's usually a good idea to keep your data and application 
software in separate partitions, since this simplifies backups. 
It may also fool the occasional older virus that isn't smart 
enough to switch between partitions, thereby buying you a 
measure of security. Don't count on it, though.

Speaking of security, it may be possible to use software to 
write-protect a partition (various products exist for this 
purpose on the Mac; I don't know what the equivalents are 
for the PC). This obviously won't work on your data partition, 
which you'll be modifying frequently, but wouldn't it be nice 
to lock your operating system into its own write-protected 
partition so it's safe from all but the most clever viruses? (This 
can be done on a Mac; I don't know whether PCs let you do 
this, but imagine you could fake it with a little ingenuity.)

Speaking of the OS, wouldn't it be nice to keep that separate 
from the applications, and perhaps even create an additional 
partition with a working backup of your OS? If the main 
version, from which the PC boots, gets damaged irretrievably 
(e.g., by a virus or a faulty installation program), boot from a 
floppy, then reload the entire OS, complete with all your 
settings and customizations intact, from the backup partition. 
I now consistenly back up a working copy of my computer's 
OS folder before any installation, so if the installation screws 
things up, I can restore the old, working version easily.

--Geoff Hart @8^{)}     Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

"Perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all those sevens, something just calling out for us to discover it. But I 
suspect that it is only a pernicious, Pythagorean coincidence." George Miller, "The Magical Number Seven" (1956)