Do I need to format my HDD?

[opel80uk]

Me again guys

I was playing away today on my new build and it just crossed my mind that I haven't formatted or partitioned my new hard drive. The PC seems to be working fine an all, and I wasn't promped to do so at any point but if it is neccesary then I will do it now as I don't have a lot of stuff on it yet, only steam and a couple of games that I can get back I think.

So should I format and partition or do I not need to bother? I did hear that the drive wastes space if it isn't done, but someone else said that was rubbish. And if I do need to then how do I do it seeing as I wasn't prompted during boot up.

Thanks for any advice

[Vimeous]

If you're OS is on and running the partition it is sitting in is already formatted.

Question:
How much total hard drive space does your machine say drive C has?

If it's near as dammit 1Tb (from your system specs) then it's all already formatted. If you wanted to partition it further you'd either need a specific software tool like Acronis Trueimage or to start again from scratch and redo your entire install.

Is partitioning necessary?
No

Is it desirable?
Depends on what you want to use your PC for, your backup solution and so forth.

Have a quick think about this and post again and we'll give you an idea of what is best in your circumstance.

[opel80uk]

Thanks for the reply

I have a 1TB drive with a total of 931GB availiable. Of that I've got 890GB free after installing a RC copy of Win 7, a couple of games, steam, anti virus etc.

The PC will mainly be for games as I have another one for browsing, although will do the odd bit of surfing now and again. Will probably start using it for my digital camera photos also at some point, but don't take a lot really, just now and again.

I don't really have a backup soloution. What would your advice be?

[Vimeous]

Sounds like pretty general PC use so you've no need worry and change anything. You've the whole drive formatted into one big chunk which is fair enough.

I have a variety of approaches depending on my usage.
For a single drive system like yours I'd be tempted to split the drive in two. The first portion would be for the OS, apps and games. This is the busy partition that where all the activity like swap files, loading programs etc takes place. Because it's at the beginning of the drive it will also tend to be a touch faster for access than the later partitions because for those the drive has to travel further from the centre of the disc.
This leaves the second partition for static data like photo stores, documents and the like which are accessed or changed occasionally.

The other key benefit here is that a failed Windows install can be rebuilt from scratch on the first partition without affected the long-term data in the second.

That said I currently have a similar setup to what you have now. This is because I rely on have a RAID1 array to protect me against hard drive failure and tape backups when I suffer system loss.


My suggestion would be to leave it as is if your happy with your current setup. However I would strongly suggest you invest in some external storage such as a Western Digital MyBook with backup software. This can then be setup to store changes to files you make as you shut your PC down saving you the nightmare of lost family photos and the like.
Also programs like Acronis Trueimage will offer more complete backup options and the ability to change you partitions without starting from scratch again.

One last note on backups. Don't rely on DVD's as they degrade over time (certainly over 10years) unless you intend to keep replacing the backup media with new.

Hope that helps

[jim]

One last note on backups. Don't rely on DVD's as they degrade over time (certainly over 10years) unless you intend to keep replacing the backup media with new.

So if DVDs degrade, then what do you advise?

[Bane]

So if DVDs degrade, then what do you advise?

I don't have a suggestion, but most back-up options have a limitation and chance of it to failing, e.g. using a USB mechanical hard drive and accidentally dropping it while moving it to the PC awaiting back-up. So the answer is to use multiple types of backup if the data is very important to you.

Is Iomega zip disk backup a reliable option? Seems they are now called REV disks, and cost a lot for what it is.

[Vimeous]

So if DVDs degrade, then what do you advise?

The simplest route would be to keep 2 DVD copies and replace them every 5 years or so.
It's a pain but it is cheap if your data store is relatively small.
Usually I'd recommend keeping two copies of data on two different setups.
For me this would usually be one copy on my live system and one on tape/dvd or other removable medium. However with external hard drive costs being so reasonable I'll be looking at using an external drive - which is what I'd suggest for you.

Drives do fail (like discs) but if you have two copies - like the DVD's - then if one fails you can recreate the copy from the survivor.