[black_hull_coastie]

My hard drive is on its way out. I was going to upgrade to a faster one and i had a question about partitioning. Is this in effect like having 2 or more hard drives? ie: if you get a virus while running on one partition, does it effect the others?
Next question...... I was looking at getting a DVD burner to replace my CD/RW drive and somebody mentioned something about my bIOs being able to handle it. What do i need to know???

mark

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Having 2 partitions is very similar to having 2 seperate hard drives. If you get a virus on one partition, it is just as likely to infect the other partition as it would be to infect a second hard drive. In other words, in either case, your C drive/partition is the most at risk from viruses but it is possible for one to spread anywhere else in the system, whether thats a second partition, second drive or floppy disk etc.

I don't see any reason why your bios shouldn't be capable of supporting a DVD burner. The only limitation (as with CD burners) is the max data transfer speed your system can support. As you know, if you try to burn at a speed higher than the system can transfer the data at, you risk buffer underrun.

[Samm]

Having 2 partitions is very similar to having 2 seperate hard drives. If you get a virus on one partition, it is just as likely to infect the other partition as it would be to infect a second hard drive. In other words, in either case, your C drive/partition is the most at risk from viruses but it is possible for one to spread anywhere else in the system, whether thats a second partition, second drive or floppy disk etc.

I don't see any reason why your bios shouldn't be capable of supporting a DVD burner. The only limitation (as with CD burners) is the max data transfer speed your system can support. As you know, if you try to burn at a speed higher than the system can transfer the data at, you risk buffer underrun.

[black_hull_coastie]

Thanks again samm

I guess what i was getting at with the multiple hard drives/partitions is (i think we talked about it before) using one for stuff i prolly shouldnt be doing in the first place (ie kazaa etc) and the other for stuff i know is safe like gaming/email/banking etc.

anyone have a favorite DVD burner? I was looking at the lightscribe (hp i think?) looks kinda *neat*

mark

[Samm]

Firstly, I wouldn't keep any bank details on the system at all.
But if you do have a certain amount of sensitive data, then I would advise you do the following :

Use the first (C drive) partition for windows obviously & programs.

Have a another partition just for Kazaa/file sharing and downloads. Do not share anything else other than folders on this partition.

Have a third partition for any sensitive data/important stuff.

Depending on the size of your drive, you could also create seperate partitions for games, swap file, CD burning etc, one partition for each. But don't go beyond a max of 8 partitions in total on a single drive.

I have 3 drives in my machine (2 IDE & 1 U160 SCSI drive). My drive letters go all the way down to M, not counting the optical drives! In the past I actually drive letters assigned all the way down to V but decided that was getting silly so reduced the number.

[black_hull_coastie]

I dont keep any details actually "on" the computer. Im just worried about "catching" anything that might be able to watch me when im on my banks' web sites.

so when you talk about the 3 partitions.... Is just the 1st one bootable or all of em? or are they just used to store data that can be accessed from the first partition? I suppose i need to do a little reading on my own anyway, but the help on here is so good!!!!!

mark

[Samm]

Only the first partition needs to be bootable because you only have one op system installed.
You would create a primary partition (bootable) which would become the C drive & would contain windows.
Next an extended partition is created which fills the remaining drive space. This is not assigned a drive letter, it just contains the rest of the partitions excluding the primary one)

Then you create the logical partitions. These will be assigned drive letters D, E, F etc depending onhow many you create.

The logical partitions are generally just used for data storage although it is possible to install software/games etc in them. If you do this, some files installed by the program/game will still be placed on the C drive, in the windows system folders etc but the bulk of the files will be placed on the logical drive that you specify.

Windows components such as the swap file (virtual memory), Temporary Internet Files folder, temp folder, My documents etc can be relocated to logical partitions if you wish. But you can't simply just move them there, you have to instruct windows to move them.