Be Excellent To Each Other

Just quickly, what would people recommend to be the best way to partition a 1TB hard drive?

I'm thinking 50 gig for the operating system (keep this seperate in case I need to reinstall windows) and then a couple of other partitions of equal size for music and junk.

Is this roughly on the right tracks?

One enormous NTFS partition. You should be backing up to a different physical disk anyway, should you need to reformat.

I always hated trying to partition, I always got my sizes wrong, and ended up either running out of space on one or being glum about the glut of never-to-be-used space on another.

i only partitioned once and i never saw any advantages on it. Instead i got many temporary files and saves games in completely wrong folders.

but I use an additional drive for my OS drive.

so a 200 gig OS drive, and 750gig storgae drive.

Yeah, partitioning is extremely overrated.

Even geeks don't bother with multiple partitions unless they're going to be installing multiple OSs on there. I have 1TB on my Mac and it's all one thing.

Must get around to backing it up.

Well that's that sorted then! Thanks for putting my mind at rest... and yes, regular back ups are called for!

Who was it that said "Data that you don't back up is data that you don't want"? I think it might have been Chinny but I could be wrong..

I didn't come up with it but I've certainly said it several times on here.

What's the best deal for an external 1TB drive at the moment then?

Pre-packaged or harddrive + caddy?

Either, I suppose, but pre-packaged is easier as I'm lazy.

I'm in for a beex backup bulk buy if anyone else is.

2.5 or 3.5 inch?

I didn't come up with it but I've certainly said it several times on here.[/quote]
Me too. It always annoys me when people tell me about the hours and hours and hours they've spent trying to rescue a dead drive. Partly, there's this odd perception that backing up is really pricey. For Mac users, this is even worse. Just get a 50-quid USB drive, plug it into your Mac and turn Time Machine!

As for partitioning, it used to be absolutely essential on the Mac when there was a 'minimum' space allocation regardless of a file's actual size. These days, I really wouldn't see the point in doing this to a drive, unless you're using it for something like video and want to regularly zero half of it or something.

Is £70 a good deal? I was thinking that was quite expensive, but then I remembered that my 500GB one cost about that two years ago.

Kov: 3.5" as they're better VFM.

The price is right Grimelda. Is it any good? What drive is in there?

Christ, I don't know.

Amazon have a couple for similar money.

Amazon have good after-sales*.


* EBuyer might these days too, but they were complete and utter cunts when I had to (try and) return something faulty. As they were to everyone back then. And refused to give out address or phone number, despite Trading Standards having told them to comply with the law. As such, I will always pop up to anti-recommend them.

With Amazon, could we do one of those scams where someone sets up a link on their "Site" and they get £2 if you buy it via that?

I'd avoid LaCie externals personally as every one of them at work has died. They were hammered though.

ProTip: don't hammer your hard drives.

Yeah, everyone will have a story about such and such a drive failing.

Yeah, but 8 though?

True, but had to ask incase you wanted to transport it.. My WD 2.5 fits in my travel bag easier.

Lacie don't make HDs. If i'm not mistaken they can be of various brands, including maxtor and seagate. You can be lucky or not.

LaCie external drives do seem to have a bit of a reputation for it; given they'll go for whatever drive is cheapest the suspect might be the enclosure design.

Y'know, I'd have stopped buying them after the seventh one broke. You live and learn.

Just to add further, my Lacie HDD went tits up and it was the enclosure not the drive. It's not like it got a thrashing either - light use really as all my important work stuff gets backed up weekly to a separate drive and this was used once a month or so to create bootable clones on all the machines in the house. I was unimpressed, TBH

@ Myp - I had a quick look on offer of the day. There a lot of 1TB between 75 and 100 english pounds

http://www.offeroftheday.co.uk/search.a ... &max=0&np=

That's more than the ebuyer one Grim... posted.

Grim...: Solving your problems.

yes it is, but was giving more options.... cheapest is not always bestest

There is a Tosh, Maxtor and a WD for £74.95 from amazon.

and an Imogea from Tesco for £69.97

1. I didn't buy them
2. They were bought together
3. Shut the fuck up

True, they don't machine tool the screws either, but they do sell a bundle of shit cobbled together as an external storage solution under their brand name.

but i never seen any excuse to buy one though. They're roughly the same price as WD's

Yes

And they sound a bit unreliable to me.

Yes

It's all subjective, though. I bet there are 8 Lacie drives out there that haven't failed.

Yes

It's not subjective, it's anecdotal. But as anecdotal evidence goes, it does at least suggest a problem with that particular model or batch.

HDs don't go wrong very often, in general.

Your mums sex drive is still top notch too.

I have a Lacie external drive. You guys are making me paranoid now.

Yes, I was rather taking the piss. And thanks for correcting me; I knew I'd used the wrong word.

Our team at work has quite a few lacie drives used for backups and moving data about, so not particularly intensive work. I've not heard of anybody having any problems with them.

We have a lot of those horrid looking 'rugged' ones.

All the rest might very well be bulletproof, but I wouldn't buy one personally.

Once Eightce bitten etc...

I've got a small pile of LaCie D2s. I'll never buy another, and I've no idea why I bought so many. One is currently a bookend. One sits under by Apple display to raise its height. One is actually still used for back-up. Three others are 'archive' drives, unused because they're so fucking noisy. And LaCie's 'support' is absolutely pathetic.