[Lunatique]

I performed a merge partition action with Partition Magic 8 (My C drive had 2 partitions--C and D, and I wanted to merge D into C), and now I can't boot up windows. I ran PM 8 from the floppies I created and it tells me there's an error #113. I tried everything and nothing worked. Whatever task I perform in PM 8 it just tells me "Error #4. Bad Argument/Parameter."

I tried to run fdisk to just reformat the damn drive, but it tells me I cannot perform it in standard mode (don't even know what that means. I'm already running fdisk, what other mode could I be in?" I tried to boot from the WinXP Pro CD, but I couldn't get it to read the disc at all.

Help? (thank God I have a second machine connected to the net.)

[rock995]

wrong forum. Norton/Symantec have swallowed PowerQuest. I've had online help w/my v.8 here:

http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/npmagic/npmagic_8_tasks.html

good luck
_________________
it's not about getting what you want, it's about wanting what you get.

[Lunatique]

Already tried it. Didn't help. I went ahead and just reinstalled Windows.

[stacy]

It's better to keep the OS on a partition by itself.

If you have, for instance, a 160GB drive, use 40GB for the Operating System and applications and the other 120GB for data and a work drive.

If you're using an app like Photoshop the scratch drive really should be on a seperate partition anyway....better yet, a seperate drive.

If you use ToonBoom or any animation or video app like Premiere or VegasVideo, running everything on a single partition is an eventual crash for sure.

[B0b]

i'm sure partitions have been covered b4..

hope you backed up ur stuff b4 messing with your partitions Lun..

FDisk won't be able to do anything with a NTFS partition as its a DOS application so the only way around it is to remove all partitions and start over..

this is how i have my system parttioned

C: System (8GB - only small apps installed on this)
D: Photoshop Scratch (6GB)
E: Applications (12BGB -all major apps installed on this)
F: Work (8GB - backed up often)
F: Completed Movies (10GB - finished home movies)
G: RAW stuff (100GB - photos, raw home movie stuff)
H: CDWriting (2GB utilities etxra stuff waiting to go to CD)

U: DVD +R/+RW
V: CDR/RW

[stacy]

B0b,

That's a really good arrangement for others to follow. ...If you do video, you might want a seperate partition for audio files too.

However if they do something like magazine ads with extremely high quality, high res photos and illustrations like I do, then 6GB for a Photoshop scratch disk and 8GB for a work disk is not enough.

Also I use to use a small root OS partition and install most apps on another drive too--utill I was away once and fellow workers had to install some updates and patches and the disks wanted to install to a default path that started <C:\...> so it couldn't find the application and it wouldn't install.

Then when I got back the boss thought I'd removed his precious client tracking software, and I had to spend a half hour explaining a simple thing to a moron who can't find the power switch... it wasn't worth it.

I now make a much larger C:\ partition and let the apps install to the default path.


Cheers...

[Lunatique]

Yeah, hard lesson learned. Never mess with the partitions on the harddrive you installed the OS. I wish Partition Magic's help files would've warned against it.

Anyway, I reinstalled, and now there's less clutter--until I install too much crap again. . ..

I have a pretty good system for my systems currently:


Workstation:
80 GB SATA (WinXP PRO, Programs)

80 GB IDE (Work in progress files for art, music, photography, writing..etc. Also my sample library, instrument presets, audio recordings)

200 GB SATA (Archive drive: Pics, mp3s, portfolio, documents, program install files..etc)

200 GB IDE (Movies drive: 3D movie clips, music videos, video tutorials, commercials, funny sheit..etc)


Webstation:
40 GB IDE (partition 1--10GB: Winxp Pro, Programs. Partition 2--30 GB: Storage)

40 GB IDE (Downloaded files)

160 GB IDE (Downloads in progress)


And for backups:
200 GB IDE (for backing up the Archive drive)

200 GB IDE (for backing up the Movies drive)

[stacy]

Good layout... I'd switch the 200GB drives in the first box though and put the video on the sata. Otherwise, ...excellent...


P.S.
What are you doing in China? Is that mainland China? I thought it was very difficult for Americans to stay in China. It sound amazing!
Have you seen the wall yet? You probably have...

Scan a postcard... better yet post some photos!

[B0b]

Lun yeah messing with partions without prior knowlege or a manual can be hit and miss..

stacy - i do high res photos as well thats why i have a 100GB partition set for photo's and RAW movie Footage

as i back up work while in progress and then when complete (either on CD or on DVD-twice)- 8GB is all i need for my clients..

tbh if u need more than 8GB then you've got to be doing something wrong somewhere.. (ie not backing up enough) even my large format stuff - 60"x40" etc. doesn't take up more than 400-500MB at a time, then once complete gets put onto CD and filed... largest Client folder i've had @ 1 time was 1.4GB in size..

hell i can get a whole magazine into 1.2GB (including working files)

sure 6GB for scratch might seem very small for some people, but i've not needed any more than 3GB and thats with a load of photo's open, a website in development and some vector files that i've rasterised waiting to be placed.. (photoshop using approx 1.5GB of my RAM)

[stacy]

Wow, that's really hard to imagine. Personally I don't know of any 10K ata drives.
The most my VideoToaster[3] ever got from 3 uata 133 drives in raid-0 was 85-90MB sustained. The current 3 Raptors will run at 120-130 sustained all day long.

Yeah, It looks like that would be enough space for you. It just looked a bit short to me. I need to squirrel away at least 6 layouts and sometimes 8, plus the pick-up ads that just change a bit of copy for interest rates or something each time they run, so I need to keep those handy right beside the new one. Then a number of the publications each have different layout specs, so on top of the other overhead I have to keep duplicates with slightly different dimensions for different magazines. And then there are several agents all planning ahead. Each one of them has two or three concepts in development at any given time that can get changed from hour to hour. And, even though most of those ideas don't make it to print, I still have to save them because bits and pieces might be used for other ads that do run. Or, a piece from months ago might be ressurected and used for a finished piece.

Cheers...

[B0b]

ouch - keeping copy from months ago hanging about on ur sys.. hope u don't have a Hard Drive fail!

i guess everyone has their way of working with copy

oh and i see u made the jump from SCSI-160 to Raptors then..

[stacy]

You bet, I keep EVERYTHING I can. If an agent comes in and says, "I've got the perfect idea to finish that BrokerWorld ad we did the mock-ups for last quarter!!!" ...and if I don't have it, or can't find it right NOW, the boss would have one of his famous screaming psycho attacks. A good chunk of our bread and butter is being able to provide support services for clients and agents that other agencys can also do. Sometimes the the only difference between us and them is turn-around time. If I couldn't pull up a request on the SPOT, it could cost us a million bucks.
We have nightly back-up to tape. But combing through linear tape of our huge back-ups could take forever. It has to be NOW.
I'm not sure what the scsi 160 is about. I've never used scsi. I have to run a set of systems that the other designers can maintain if I'm not there. Two of them can change and restripe a sata in an array, but none of them understand how to mount a scsi. If I were to use scsi, I'd use 320s for sure.