• Welcome to OS2World OLD-STATIC-BACKUP Forum.
 

News:

This is an old OS2World backup forum for reference only. IT IS READ ONLY!!!

If you need help with OS/2 - eComStation visit http://www.os2world.com/forum

Main Menu

partitioning question

Started by os2monkey, 2007.10.13, 09:07:02

Previous topic - Next topic

os2monkey

Hi Everyone,

I have an 80 GB hard drive in a machine running ECS 1.2r only.
I was just wondering how you would recommend partitioning it?

I am somewhat tempted to keep the main system/ bootable partition 10GB or under so I can easily back it up with imaging software I have so that I could restore the system on the fly, but If I did that I would be limiting the amount of software that I can install - the rest of the space would just be used for documents, pictures etc.

Just curious how you choose to partition your drives and why.

Thanks,
David

Saijin_Naib

My setup is a 40gb Western Digital IDE drive with the first cylinder as the IBM Boot manager, and remaining space as my Windows XP drive. This contains all my music, pictures, and videos. My second drive is an 8gb Western Digital IDE drive pulled from a broken XBOX. This is formatted as JFS and is my eCS drive. This contains all my eCS programs. All documents are saved to an external flash drive so they are in no danger of being lost.

melf

Quote from: os2monkey on 2007.10.13, 09:07:02
Hi Everyone,

I have an 80 GB hard drive in a machine running ECS 1.2r only.
I was just wondering how you would recommend partitioning it?

I am somewhat tempted to keep the main system/ bootable partition 10GB or under so I can easily back it up with imaging software I have so that I could restore the system on the fly, but If I did that I would be limiting the amount of software that I can install - the rest of the space would just be used for documents, pictures etc.

Just curious how you choose to partition your drives and why.

Thanks,
David

I have 30GB HD. I've made two JFS partitions. Bootpartition is 4GB and my second partition 26GB. On second partiton I save all my data and install (nearly) all programs that I use. In case I have to reinstall or upgrade to a new version of eCS, all data and all programs are left and ready to use again. So I can't see that you limit the amount of space for software, you can install software on whatever partition you like.
/Mikael

Terry

Good thread question to kick things off.

Could you see trying to explain the simple eCS-OS/2 flexibility as a part of "partition science" to the average Win$oft user?  If you are OS/2-friendly, you can see the wealth of possibilities, then get some experienced & sage advice like in this thread, and then be able to place it into action.

os2monkey

Hi,

Thanks everyone for your comments so far. I am very new to os/2, so have not fully grasped all of the concepts yet such as how the average installation process works (and that's why I assumed programs had to be installed on the main drive). I see that some applications like firefox you just basically unzip and run, some applications are installed from warpin, and some seemed to have installer programs. I assumed the ones with installer programs, like windows, must copy some files to system folders. Is that not the case?
Or are all programs basically just kept in their own independent directory, not copying some files to other system folders? If so that's great..

At any rate, it looks like from what your saying that I have allot more flexability about installing programs on other partitions then I assumed.

melf

Quote from: os2monkey on 2007.10.14, 07:29:50
I assumed the ones with installer programs, like windows, must copy some files to system folders. Is that not the case?
Or are all programs basically just kept in their own independent directory, not copying some files to other system folders? If so that's great..


I don't know exactly. Only thing I can think of is that program objects dissapear if you do a clean reinstall of eCS, but that is no problem, just make new ones. A nice feature is to set home directory (which is done by default). But for Mozilla apps you should add a row like: SET MOZILLA_HOME=X:\HOME\DEFAULT in config.sys. Then all your mails, settings, plugins, bookmarks and so on will be saved in that specified folder. For my part I keep it, of course, in my second partition. That way I can upgrade firefox, thunderbird or sunbird without losing data.
/Mikael

Pete

Quote from: os2monkey on 2007.10.14, 07:29:50
Hi,

Thanks everyone for your comments so far. I am very new to os/2, so have not fully grasped all of the concepts yet such as how the average installation process works (and that's why I assumed programs had to be installed on the main drive). I see that some applications like firefox you just basically unzip and run, some applications are installed from warpin, and some seemed to have installer programs. I assumed the ones with installer programs, like windows, must copy some files to system folders. Is that not the case?
Or are all programs basically just kept in their own independent directory, not copying some files to other system folders? If so that's great..

At any rate, it looks like from what your saying that I have allot more flexability about installing programs on other partitions then I assumed.


Hi

Just to add my thruppence worth:-

I would recommend a disk setup for eCS (OS/2) that has the following structure:-

A 2Gb Boot drive formatted either HPFS or JFS - plenty of room for the base system plus any updates; this size partition can be backed up by existing (and free if you Google for the Reg Keys) Commercial Backup software such as BackAgain without problems. That allows for Restoring the operating system rather quickly in the event of a serious problem.

Any reasonable size partition you want for installing Applications to - 20Gb should be more than adequate

What to do with the rest of the disk space? - Use it as the "Home" directory for all apps that look for a "Home" to store user data in; in fact, use it for storing user generated data of all sorts including Mozilla/Seamonkey/Firefox Profiles. As OpenOffice has a quaint "My Documents" user storage option it is necessary to edit the Registry and find the "My Documents" entry and point it to "Home\My Documents".

If you have other operating systems installed then you may also need to install Boot Manager as a 1st step.


As regards software installers: Some may install files to the boot drive but most should install to wherever you decide.

Having said that there are exceptions: I developed a USB configuration tool (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/system/usbcfgb7a.zip in case you are interested) that will install to the boot drive and create a program object in the System Setup folder if you use the install.cmd included in the package. My reason for taking that approach with this application is that it is a system configuration tool.

However, for those who do not want to install to the bootdrive the readme file does describe how to install manually as well - the application itself does not care where it is installed; it will ascertain that, the bootdrive and locations of various files whenever it is run.

So, my view is that software should not automatically install to the bootdrive without reason and it should be possible to either change the install location in the Installer or allow for manual installation. In either case the docs should have some sort of install/uninstall instructions including any config.sys file changes required.

As you may have discovered by now there are quite a few useful apps/utils that simply require you to unzip to wherever and doubleclick the executable to run - with the option of creating a Program Object on the Desktop manually.


Anyhow, have fun finding your way around  :-)

Pete