New Hard Drive? Big? Small?
 

NEW HARD DRIVE? BIG? SMALL?

OP-ED...

If I had to do it all over again, just in my case, I would not have installed a big mother of a hard drive that necessitated the use of a NTFS. I'd have gone for a number of smaller drives that would have allowed me to install other versions of Windows and have had fewer problems...at least that is my opinion...I miss 98SE...

Like most, I got caught up in the myth that bigger, faster, etcer., is better! In some cases that is true. And I await to be corrected. All of the probs I've had, related to XP or my computer, really only started, AFTER I bought into the myth that the largest hard drive I could find, would solve all my problems. For my needs, it has been a bad decision...RAM yes, as much as you can handle, but hard drive ??? I am looking for a correction in my new thinking.

Smaller drives, say under 30Gb, as I understand it, will allow for FAT32, and all the joys that come from being able to work in DOS. If you get over that range, then you need to bump up to the NTFS...

"FAT32 or simply FAT - limit of 4GB per file (and has difficulties with disks over 32GB in size) but can be read and written by both Macs and PCs. Acronym for "File Allocation Table"

For more information about file-size limits, check out the following Microsoft articles:
"Limitations of FAT32 File System"
Limitations of FAT32 File System
"Windows NT File Size and Partition Size Limits"
Search Results
"Description of the FAT32 File System in Windows XP"
Description of the FAT32 File System in Windows XP
"Limitations of the FAT32 File System in Windows XP"
Limitations of the FAT32 File System in Windows XP

Thanks to Dave, over at: Windows Article - Welcome

So, before you run out and buy that big whomping hard drive and all the bells and whisles, ask yourself...what do I REALLY need...and can I get just as much pleasure out of a smaller hard drive, a number of them in fact...up to 4 in a computer on one mother-board setup?

Disadvantages and advantages, from my perspective...just a >short list< for me...
1. formatting and losing everything on a single drive of one partition...
2. ditto, but on more than one partition, because I did not know what I was doing...
3. alternate boot repair methods...
4. killing obstinate files... < I really miss this function...bummer
5. working in DOS completely...without the gymnastics...
6. the chances of 4 small drives all going belly up at the same time are romote
7. and therefore the chance of losing a major bit of work on one drive is remote
8. partitioning of large drives is fine for some, but for me, I always seem to botch something up along the way and lose my work
9. etc.

I've said this many times, if whatever you are doing is so important, keep burned copies of it on two separate sets of discs ;)