Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ucbvax!sdcsvax!beowulf!holtz
From: holtz@beowulf.ucsd.edu (Fred Holtz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Advantages/Disadvantages to multiple logical drives
Keywords: hard disk partitioning,80386
Message-ID: <4464@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU>
Date: 9 Jan 88 20:01:04 GMT
References: <6768@ihlpa.ATT.COM> <610@wolf.UUCP>
Sender: nobody@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU
Organization: EE/CS Dept. U.C. San Diego
Lines: 21

In article <6768@ihlpa.ATT.COM>, jimx@ihlpa.ATT.COM (Harris) writes:
> I have an 80386 machine with a 130-Meg hard drive that I am about
> to set up as a 3COM PC Server.  What I would like to know is if
> there is any advantage to setting up multiple logical drives
> (D:, E:, f:, G:...) as opposed to just one or two...

The major advantage of multiple logical drives becomes apparent when
it is time to back up the disk.  If you put everything that doesn't
change on one logical drive,  then that portion of the disk need only
be backed up once  (in theory - I would recommend once every few months
just in case the backups go sour.)  You can then divide the rest of
the disk up into areas with different priorities for backups - one area
that is to be done every night,  a once a week area,  etc.

I am not sure how having multiple logical drives affects the effeciency
of disk requests,  but for my own work the advantages would outweigh
anything but a noticable delay  (and I have never noticed any :-)


Fred Holtz
holtz@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU