Question about hard drive partitions

So I am still on the hunt for a program to clone a hard drive, as posted in this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/best-simplest-hd-cloning-software.828856/


There are a lot more companies to choose from than I originally imagined, and frankly, none have jumped out at me as being the one to get. I'll admit I might be overthinking the problem. In any event, virtually all such programs are heavily marketed on their ability to partition a hard drive. My layman's question are, why is partitioning such a big deal? What kind of circumstances would necessitate constant partitioning to the point that one would need a program to do it? I thought new hard drives get partitioned automatically by Windows when initialized.

 

Macrium Reflect & Minitool Partition Wizard here, never failed me for 100's of imaging\backup\restore\partition operations.

As to why one may prefer having partitons or not, completely individual choices, do whatever one may think is useful \ practical.

Main use would be to have OS and personal files separated.

Example: some windows update makes chaos, or one's late night experiments breaks everything... then simply restore only the image of the OS partiton and be up and going again in 5 minutes, without touching some 100's of GBs of files, programs etc, them being stored separately on their own 'disk' (partition).

My setup, 2 disks in laptop with 2 partitons on each, 250GB ssd C: D: for os etc, 2TB hd E: F: for files etc, 2 bitlocked partitons for sensitive stuff.

 

Thank you for the helpful reply. My new/used computer (MSI GT80) can hold several hard drives. Primitive or naive question, but am I correct to assume that partitioning is something necessitated by having only one hard drive, and that I (having multiple drives available) can simply save data files to a drive other than C:, as a means of keeping the data separate from the operating system? And you say: then simply restore only the image of the OS partiton and be up and going again in 5 minutes, without touching some 100's of GBs of files, programs etc, them being stored separately on their own 'disk' (partition).

...but aren't many programs written such that they are installed "within" the operating system? If so, how does one keep them on a separate partition and still have them work?

Are you using Minitool and Macrium free versions, or paid? I don't mind paying a few $ to have the right program. I think my main requirement would be ease of use with a good GUI, since I am not so tech savvy.

 

^^^^
If one got several drives one may chose to have some partitions...or chose not to.
It's 100% just a personal choice one makes according to what one finds useful, practical.

The free versions are fine for normal use and a fantastic offering. But respect the user agreements, I do some business work so got paid versions (where I do not use anything else than what's in the free versions :O)

Many programs (most?) will offer to chose installation location, just a few 'things' are written to the OS (registry) for the OS to keep track of where things are. So to install on C: or another drive when given the choice in some program's installation setup is also just a personal choice (see attach.). An example of considerations: with a SSD + a HD, one may want to install often used or heavy programs on the fastest drive.

2 tips about partitioning, full backups before starting. & do it before any drive starts to fill up, or else there will be tons and tons of files to move around, lots of time, and obviously more risk of something going wrong (f.ex. power cut \ flat battery, some latent hd failure or whatever in the middle of the process... :O)

Just some opinions, good luck.

 

Macrium Reflect free version clones drives smaller and bigger than source drive, there is a little setup work, best one.

 

Thanks for the replies. I downloaded the Macrium trial version, and I'm perplexed about cloning. Here's a screenshot: Ignore for the moment the fact that there's no destination drive listed yet. There's some seven partitions on this computer (why so many I have not a clue), and presumably all seven would be necessary to exactly clone it to another SSD, but the program gives instruction to copy or drag partitions to the destination drive.

Does this mean that in order to do an exact clone, i.e., one must literally drag each partition to the destination drive one at a time? If so, this seems like a clumsy way to have to do it.

 

No, once you have a destination disk, the COPY SELECT PARTITIONS link in the middle will be clickable, you hit it once and it will copy all partitions to the destination disk.

See:

Macrium Reflect Installation/Usage Guide

For the love of God that thread is right below your thread! Watch the video, towards the end is I show you how to restore, similar to what you have in that screenshot above.

 

Thanks. Will do. I guess my mistake was not having a destination disk, otherwise I might have made that discovery, if one had been available and displayed in that window. However, I am examining Macrium on a computer other than the one I ultimately want to use for, and I am also waiting for drives I ordered to arrive.

I am curious Ultra Male, have you tried O&O Disk Image14?

 

I have a license for it but haven't tried it yet as I am not to keen on having any backup software installed as they have lots of background services running.

I have an ISO of the Macrium Reflect Home Edition which I burned to a USB Flash Disk. The Home Edition supports backing up and recovering without needing to install Macrium and it even supports cloning to dissimilar hardware (like to another computer for example)

 

Are there any instructions anywhere as to how to get Reflect onto a USB flash drive as you have done without first downloading and installing the program on the computer? Or, does one have to download/install, and then remove the program from the computer once it's on the flash drive?

 

That's what a disk looks like when pc is delivered from manufacturer. In addition to the main boot + OS, it got partitions for OS recovery, drivers, programs etc. Allows complete reset to 'as delivered off the aseembly line'.

Keeping it like that is a choice, but the prefered path is cleaning things up with a fresh OS\drivers install. See http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/windows-10-clean-installation-guide.781178/

 

Personally got no problems whatsover with using a full, normal Reflect install, totally invisible in practice until called upon to do it's good work. The negligeable, small services could surely be disabled, have never bothered even trying.

 

Thanks for the replies. Will study the thread about fresh install.

 

My advice on this is don't partition a single drive is better. And if your talking about recovery if all the data is one the same drive even partition you will still loose it regardless or not be able to recovery the data. To do that you need a separate HDD/SDD that store the date/file so if the main drive fails your data/files are protected. That how I do my setup.
1. Main drive O/S and software installed
2. Second or .....more are to keep the data I create and since they are only accessed when needed they are more protected from damage or lost data because the main drive failed.

As anything more partition guarantees no protection compared to separate physical drives.