file transfers, drive and an upgrade(Help my woes!!)

[nlightningmusic]

Hi guys, I need to format and partition a 2tb hdd that's filled to 535gb. My only other drive is my main system drive which has exactly 556gb free. It seems like everything will go pretty, smoothly, but I have a few questions:

- Is it okay to make a new partition on the same drive as the OS? And can this be deleted/rejoined later?
- What is the best free software I can use to get this done?
- Are there any precautions I should take? I don't to risk losing anything on the 2tb hdd, and I also don't want my main drive to become corrupted or something.

 

[esco_sid]

As far as on consumer level i cannot recommend partitioning hard drives unless its for dual boot purposes.
As far as doing all of this windows can do it in disk management so don't need any software.

 

[USAFRet]

Hi guys, I need to format and partition a 2tb hdd that's filled to 535gb. My only other drive is my main system drive which has exactly 556gb free. It seems like everything will go pretty, smoothly, but I have a few questions:

- Is it okay to make a new partition on the same drive as the OS? And can this be deleted/rejoined later?
- What is the best free software I can use to get this done?
- Are there any precautions I should take? I don't to risk losing anything on the 2tb hdd, and I also don't want my main drive to become corrupted or something.

1. Why do you want to partition this drive?
2. As far as 'precautions'....you should ALWAYS have a viable backup.
And for any partitioning, you should have a backup you made 5 minutes before you started messing with the partitions.

 

[nlightningmusic]

As far as on consumer level i cannot recommend partitioning hard drives unless its for dual boot purposes.
As far as doing all of this windows can do it in disk management so don't need any software.

With that in mind, should I just sort of go ahead and copy everything over to the main drive from the 2tb drive? Is there even any point in partitioning the drives? (I do audio recording and I thought it might be cool to have a dedicated 500gb partition on the 2tb drive for project files that could easily be backed up on a drive of equal size)

 

[boosted1g]

If you only have 556gb of free space you will be risking a lot putting 535 gb on it, you should not fill your drive more then 90% full.

So just to make sure understand you right, you have Drive 2 (your 2tb hdd) and Drive 1 (your OS drive) and you want to make a partition on Drive 1, then copy Drive 2 to Drive 1, format Drive 2, and copy data back to Drive 2?

 

[nlightningmusic]

If you only have 556gb of free space you will be risking a lot putting 535 gb on it, you should not fill your drive more then 90% full.

So just to make sure understand you right, you have Drive 2 (your 2tb hdd) and Drive 1 (your OS drive) and you want to make a partition on Drive 1, then copy Drive 2 to Drive 1, format Drive 2, and copy data back to Drive 2?

Exactly, adding that I want to partition Drive 2 afterwards (for storing a program's project files).

 

[USAFRet]

There are easier ways to do this.

FreeFileSync or SyncBackFree will back up specific folders, on a schedule, off to another drive.
No partitioning needed.

 

[USAFRet]

With the low cost of physical drives nowadays, partitioning is not really that useful.

A new 1TB HDD for $50, to hold your project files would work well.
Macrium Reflect Free will do an image of that drive contents off to a different drive, on whatever schedule you choose.

 

[nlightningmusic]

There are easier ways to do this.

FreeFileSync or SyncBackFree will back up specific folders, on a schedule, off to another drive.
No partitioning needed.

Seems like it may be cleaner as far as navigation goes to have it partitioned.
On another note, Windows has been saying for months that my ext 2tb needs to be scanned/fixed. Is there any point in doing this for that purpose?

UDPATE: I've been able to increase my free space on my 2tb drive by about 120gb. How about now?
I'm just not sure - I have (and will have) a lot of different drives a lot of different possibilities for what I'm going to do, but I HAVE to focus on a clean and easy-to-use/-backup filesystem for my project files first and foremost.

 

[USAFRet]

A basic maxim of a partitioned drive:
Whatever partition you are messing with right now, is marginally too small.

You can if you want. I much prefer individual physical drives for different functions.

My main system (5 drives)
#1 - OS and applications
#2 - Photo work
#3 - Video and CAD work
#4 - Games, docs, random stuff that does not fit into the above
#5 - cache space for photo and video applications

NOTE: These are all SSD's, ranging in size from 120GB(#5) to 960GB (#4).