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Thanks for the thread as this is one of my concerns. I have consistently advocated separating user data and the operating system in separate partitions and do so when ever I am able on systems that I build, repair or set-up for others. I note that many Linux distributions use this strategy. When setting up a new Win7 system I usually allow about 60BG for the OS partition and divide the remaining space as required. Having a separate Temp partition that is excluded for backups can reduce backup space requirements.

Once the partition structure is setup and the OS (re)installed I setup user and content named folders in the data partition(s) eg “Photos” “Movies” “Music”, “Programs” etc. Recorded TV, where applicable, gets its own partition. Lincoln Spector’s PC World article is a simple solution which I will start using, prior to this post I have tended to do this for each user individually. For each logon I install the “User’s Files” icon to the desktop via the “Personalise” desktop right-mouse click menu item, selecting “Change desktop icons”. Clicking on the User named document icon accesses the folders for “Contacts”, “Desktop”, “Downloads”, “Favourites”, “My Documents”, “My Music” etc. Right-mouse clicking each folder and selecting the “Location” tab allows us to move each folder and its contents to the chosen location. The “Tracing” folder cannot be moved and if desired the “Saved Games” and “Searches” folder locations can be omitted from the process. This sounds laborious and is somewhat but once you get into the rhythm is is fairly straight forward. Many users dont want individual logons, just a single system for all. The security model sucks but only if a bad guy gets physical access to the machine, in which case, if they know what they are doing and have enough time, you are done anyway.

For a new install there will be no content to move apart from sample files and for a reinstall I will have already copied the users previous content into the relevant new locations on the data partition(s). One advantage of moving the users folder locations before installing all the users applications is that programs such as iTunes will then naturally point to the correct location in the “My Music” folder library etc without risk of breaking links by moving data locations later. Convincing Outlook to look somewhere else for its data file is fairly simple but dont let it download any mail first or you will have to fiddle around to get the new mail items back with your old mail file in your data partition. For a new install that is still a problem Outlook does not like moving its newly installed mail file. You can copy the new .pst file to the data partition folder you have set up and point Outlook to that file but it wont accept attempts to move the original .pst, or at least I have not come accross an easy method.

It is quite a pain trying to retrieve all a user’s data from a crashed Windows box when bits and pieces are scattered through a monolithic system partition: address books here, mail there, irreplacable user data in an application folder somewhere else, let alone the documents and media files. BTW I usually find a live CD/DVD of Ubuntu handy or failing that pull the hard drive and plug it into a spare box. I prefer the former as it minimises the risk of contaminating the rescue box with some plague or other. I push the data onto a handy USB hard disk. After that the drive can be reformatted and reinstalled with data restored. As required the original drive can be imaged first so it can be looked at later if anything precious has been over looked. It would be so much easier to have all user data in one place from the beginning.

My wish for the next Windows operating system is that it allows setting up user data on a separate partition at install. Windows Server products including Windows Home Server do this out of the box without user interaction. WHS 1 SP3 uses only 20GB for the OS partition although the WHS 2 beta (“Vail”) I think uses 60GB.

Now to backups. I use a self-built Windows Home Server box to backup the three laptops (including a MacBook Pro via Time Machine) and 5 PCs in the house. WHS does daily backups of anything that is still on in the middle of the night, otherwise I trigger a manual backup every week or two. The backups include OS and data partitions but exclude any Temp partitions and only clusters that have changed since the last backup are copied. I can (and have) then restore anything from whole machines, to selected partitions via a networked CD/DVD live disk or if needed files or folders from particular dates by a simple drag and drop process. I have been able to restore files that had been accidentally deleted in minutes and have recovered corrupted systems to full working condition in as little as 30 to 40 minutes.

The backups of all the data and OS partitions of those 8 computers is ‘only’ 353GB currently (and a 1TB hard drive is fairly cheap). WHS also serves copies of all my users media and document files (as distinct from the backups images) which are automatically duplicated across the servers disks and onto a removable drive for multiple redunancy. Most users of this forum would have bits and pieces of hardware lying around with which to build a simple server like this as I did. Of course Linux solutions are also possible and Linux server OS’s have the advantage of being free but probably require a bit more setting up.