From: jfieber@sophia.smith.edu (John Fieber)
Subject: Re: How should I organize a hard drive?
Organization: Smith College
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 15:40:39 GMT

In article <1992Oct15.045910.22574@leland.Stanford.EDU> dvoelker@leland.Stanford.EDU (David Voelker) writes:
>     I've just acquired a 120MB hard drive, after having none at all.  
>I'd appreciate some advice on the best way to configure the drive, and

I would say to have at least 2 partitions.  One for the system
software and your basically stable applications and one for your
personal work files. 


There is also something to be said for keeping the original setup
of the system directories intact and having your own
customizations separate.  For one thing, it makes upgrading the
OS a *lot* easier.  Also, some things just break when they don't
find things where they expect them.  All your own customizations,
programs and stuff should go somewhere else.  This is simple to
do under 2.0, maybe a little more inconvenient under 1.3.

My boot drive is 40 meg with the "stock" 2.0 installed - only one
or two minor changes.  This is automatically assigned to SYS:.
Then I have a subdirectory called "local" and contains a
duplicate of the standard directories, but not the files; things
like c, devs, libs, s, utilities, fonts, etc.  This directory is
assigned as LOCAL:.  Anything that *I* add to the system goes
into the LOCAL: directories, not the SYS: directories.  

To make it all work more or less transparently, I have a small
script that is called near the beginning of the startup-sequence:

-----8<----------------------------------------------
; local-assigns
;
; This script makes adding extensions to the system easier through
; the use of multiple assigns.  The normal SYS: directory structure
; is duplicated in the directory assigned to LOCAL:.  Any new
; keyboards, printer drivers, libraries, fonts and such should be added
; to the LOCAL: directories.

; This points to the `local' directory
Assign LOCAL: SYS:Local

Assign >NIL: FONTS:    LOCAL:Fonts         SYS:Fonts
Assign >NIL: DEVS:     LOCAL:Devs          SYS:Devs
Assign >NIL: LIBS:     LOCAL:Libs          SYS:Libs
Assign >NIL: L:        LOCAL:L             SYS:L
Assign >NIL: C:        LOCAL:C             SYS:C
Assign >NIL: S:        LOCAL:S             SYS:S
-----8<----------------------------------------------

This way, if I want to add something, I can say something like 

  copy whizbang.library LIBS: 

and it goes into the LOCAL:libs director, and does not clutter
the SYS:libs directory.  Same goes for programs in C: and others.
This makes it much easier to figure out what things are "stock"
and what things are your "extensions" to the system.  Of course,
the big hitch is for 1.3 users who can't assign more than one
directory to a logical name.

After a couple years of hopelessly messy hard drives, I devised
this organization and have been using it for about a month now
and I think it works very well.

As for partitioning your work directories, that is harder to give
advice one.  One thing to consider is making a small partition
for testing of "dangerous" things that could possibly corrupt
your hard drive.  The destruction of such a partition will
probably cause much less greif than the destruction of your main
work partition or system partition.

Also, invest in a good backup program and a pile of floppy disks.
Then work out a strategy for what should be backed up when.  This
brings up another slight advantage to having partitions.  If you have a
distinct "system" partition, chances are it will be fairly static
and won't need frequent backups.  On the other hand, your work
partition may need it often.

I hope this info helps.  I'm sure others have good ideas as well.

-john





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