Why do preinstall apps on Y510 USE DRIVE C? [ Edited ]

[jayhawk]

"can't you see that your HDD is parted? "Ford didn't tell us that it has an airbag..." It's wide known fact and a man with eyes can see that."

Sure, I can see now that it is partioned that way, and I like that.  But so far as I know, this is the first laptop system to come from Lenovo or IBM configured that way.  And certainly most, if not all, PCs and laptops from every other PC vendor come with only a C drive.  Most consumers (the target market for the Ideapads) will NOT notice that the drive is partioned with the D for data.  NOTHING in any of Lenovo's documentation shows that. You have to start digging through the system to find that out. 

I think it would be prudent, in order to reduce support calls, for Lenovo to advise its customers of the C and D partion setup, and advise customers NOT to install new programs with the defaults that always go to the C drive for everything.

And more importantly, I think it would be smart for Lenovo to configure their own preloaded programs to avoid filling up the C drive. Unfortunately, Lenovo has not, and I suspect will be paying the price for that with a lot of dissatisfied customers, who are not nearly as capable as you or I in configuring their own systems.  The Ideapads, after all, are aimed at the broad consumer market, not the experienced computer professional or programmer.

If you think it is OK for Lenovo to configure their own preinstalled programs to use (and fill up the free space) of the very limited C drive and not tell their customers of that, you are entitled to that opinion.  It just seems to me that is not a good way to create happy customers.  I am happy with my Y510, but I certainly don't like suprises that cause me to spend unnecessary time diagnosing a problem that could have been easily avoided by a little thought on Lenovo's part.  I want to USE the laptop, not spend time finding and fixing problems caused by Lenovo's failure to match its preloaded programs to its partion scheme. 

I used to enjoy tweaking new computers and software.  (I worked for IBM for 28 years in hardware and software sales) But I'm past the stage in my career where I think tweaking a new computer is fun, now I just want to use it for making DVDs for my family, emailing friends,  managing photos, and all the other productive things that most people use computers for. 

And I'd like Lenovo to succeed, and not waste money on support calls that could have been easily avoided by a little more thought in their preload configuration. 

--Jayhawk




Message Edited by jayhawk on 05-01-2008 01:52 AM

[Hawk521]

Power2Go has a preferences option that allows you to designate where you want it to build its temp files.  Create yourself a folder such as D:\Power2Go\temp and change the preferences in the program to use that area.  Once changed you can then forget it as it will remember to always use that folder for that purpose.

On this subject - does anyone know where in the registry one could change the default drive letter (from C: to D: in this case) so that all future software installs would default to drive D:  ?

[skripatch]

jayhawk, I appreciate your position - it's quite understandeble.
But I can explain what's happening.
CPU's tasks are changing - now it's not only work, and there're more and more tasks to do on it. More difficult not to computer but for user. These tasks require more and more knowledges. Though there's a tendence for computers to be soon like microwave ovens - easy to use and no knowledge to have to deal with them, but in fact you have to know more and more.
It will not be easier looking forward - tasks will be harder to understand and people will HAVE to educate... Finally!

[shoguevara]

Thinks it wold be great if Lenovo would include some small application, that would run at first sturtup and give the user an opportunity to choose most common settings, such as where Temp folders and documents folder  should be located.  Also there can be added options for configuring preinstalled software. That will be very easy to create such application(even I could do that if I had a Lenovo machine) because all the settings are saved in the registry or in configuration files.


Message Edited by shoguevara on 05-03-2008 12:07 PM

[Fulong]

Jayhawk has got a good point. It's one of the many reasons why I don't use the OEM preloaded operating system that comes installed. I've seen this many of times, it's NOT just with Lenovo, but also HP, Dell and Gateway, just to let everyone know.

In fact, when you change the default name for "windows" and for "Program Files" and even "Documents and Settings" many software applications are poorly written in which they either create these folders and insist upon these locations.

Suggestion:

I've found it's just easier to insure that the primary hard drive partition which holds the operating system include the software programs along with the application settings, so the end user can recover and restore back the complete whole system much easier.

It also helps to insure any special settings like your browser bookmarks, email PST files and the sort reside in your other partition (for all your personal documents) which isn't restored at the same time.

This method works best, because it insures all of the customers personal files and personal settings that he or she has created remain in their own "My Documents" remapped to a different partition here.

One does that so easy, by clicking over "My Documents" in Explore and selecting the new partition location.

In addition, I recommend that the primary partition holding the operating system be no less than 20GiB, because you always want room to defrag, as the default Windows defrag insist upon 15% free or suffer slower defragging.

It wouldn't be a bad thing to insure a third partition for keeping copies of all your software programs. This location can also be used for backup images of other partitions. In XP Pro version, it's easy to set the permissions to other users may NOT delete the wrong files or change them too.

If anyone else has a better idea, I'm all ears...

----------------

Ps. If Lenovo would use dual hard drives, that would be super better... in their laptops! Twice the memory storage, and obviously RAID 1 comes to mind, but even basic third party solution can be used for backup here as well.

In fact, having two hard drives helps support virtual operating systems at the same time more, thus a server and a client could be used together in one unit. Since Windows isn't willing to offer the best of both worlds presently.

Don't forget many applications would benefit for having dual hard drives, like Abode Photoshop CS3 as a scratch disk for temporary files.

[skripatch]

Thanks for sharing your opinion - it's valueable.
The idea of remapping "My Documents" folder is not new and sure it helped a lot of people. This is one of not bad things about Vista&XP
You don't need to have 15% free on partition to make defrag, since Microsoft built-in defragger is as bad as it is possible at all. There're many great progs for defrag - I've used VoptXP, Ultimate Defrag and Auslogics.
"Third partition for copies of programs"? And the fourth - for music, the fifth - for Video... If you mean ditributives of software, they can easily be stored in folder on drive D. if you mean copying of already installed applications so you could restore them on windows reinstall, I've got bad news for you. There's such a thing in Windows called registry. It contains tonns of settings of Windows itself and applications too. Just copying files from %Program Files% is not enough - there's a pretty chance that the soft will need to use registry keys, that are just not present after Windows reinstall. So, no reason to keep. You'll need to reinstal. on the other hand, i know some applications and games that can be easily just copied to another PC and they work without any install.
Backup images of other partitions I prefer to keep on 2-3 DVD's, since it's totally unneccesary to keep them on HDD - they take place and in case of the whole HDD fail you're wasted Anyway, Lenovo made it already - the image of your system is on hidden partition at the end of HDD. It's the partition from which the NOVA restore is performed.

Raid in notebook is strange.  It causes noise and heat every time you do something. Twice as neccesary. Also, in random read/write RAID-0 sometimes performs even lower results than a single drive, and RAID-1 is totally unnecessary. Actually, making any RAID probably makes an HDD fail to hurry arriving because for each little file both discs are working.
It worths to hold OS and progs on one HDD and the swap-file and temp folders - on another. This increases the performance significantly.

[Fulong]

@skripatch

Unfortunately, the default bundled defrag application that comes standard in Windows isn't as good as third party solutions. (despite having paid $$$ for it too)

What works best for me is "PerfectDisk Professional v8.0.63". The newer versions tend to be more CPU intensive by defragging in real time the hard drive.

Note: If Windows didn't use NTFS, and had used HFS+ instead, it would have been lucky enough to have a built in (de-fragmented) - on-the-fly ability (given some conditions) as follows:

* The file is less than "20 MB" in size
* The file is not already busy
* The file is not read only
* The file is fragmented (the eighth extent descriptor in its extend record has a non-zero block count)
* The system uptime is at least 3 minutes

On Windows, a (fairly complete) filesystem driver for HFS+ exists as a commercial software package called MacDrive. This package allows Windows users to read and write HFS+ formatted drives, and read Mac format optical disks.

I would hope that PC end users at home don't use partitions like folders. Good point! However, I still suggest that a partition is made for software for a couple of reasons. See if any of these reasons are true for you as well...

1) If your paying for all your software programs, then I'm sure you'll understand the value of taking additional steps of insurance here to protect your investment?

2) If the end user keeps all their backup software programs in their "user partition", that means every time he or she wants to BACKUP their "user partition", it's going to need more time to include all the additional backup software programs... is that something good to do?

3) Also, whenever the "user partition" should need to be restored, it's better to just have the user data and files to be RESTORED than by including all the software programs that were backed up at the same time, right?

Speaking strictly for myself, I have about 60GiB worth of software programs, which I don't need to be backed up as often as the "user partition" data and files.

It's the same with the primary partition used for the operating system, in that I don't want to enlarge the partition volume anymore than required here. That's another good reason to slipstream the service packs into the installation CD, so as NOT to store additional files in the windows directory for having installed a service pack.

XP SP3 replaces and backs up 2,848 files (456 MB) to "C:\WINDOWS\$NtServicePackUninstall$" and it also archives the SP3 itself in "C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386" 2,921 Files (552 MB). Who wants to backup all these duplicated files hogging more space?

Maybe, the best solution here, is to arrange what the end users most often needs to backup their data and files from what isn't used as often?

-------------------

Another good software application for backing up "individual files" or just synchronization is called SyncBackSE V4.4.14.0. SyncBackSE also supports Chinese characters used in the file names and the application is offered in multiple languages as well.

www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/sbse-features.html

-------------------

I use to backup images to DVD too, but this is a painfully slow method taking too much of my time, as compared to a eSATA or USB HDD. And best of all, when backing up to an external HDD you get to edit the backup image if desired and or doing either an incremental or differential backup.

And if one consider to backup a 750GiB HDD worth of videos, to DVD disks, that hold 4.3GiB of data, it's going to require about 162 DVD disk as compared to one 750GiB HDD.

As I see it, the DVD is mostly for selling MPAA films, until direct downloading over the Internet take over. The end user will still require the long term memory storage system, which DVD disk just don't offer enough data storage overall.

Circuit City sells a WD 500GiB External HDD for just $80 dollars as compared to a DVD writer and 116 DVD disk required to backup the same amount of data only once.

www.circuitcity.com (As of 26th of May)

Don'ty take this the wrong way, I'm just NOT sure what you mean, when you said, "Backup images of other partitions I prefer to keep on 2-3 DVD's, since it's totally unnecessary to keep them on HDD" and then state it's okay that Lenovo does do the exact thing your against by keeping a copy of the operating system as an image in a partition on the HDD. The fact that Lenovo uses a hidden by Windows partition does NOTHING to safeguard the data from a hard drive failure as you stated.

-------------------

"RAID 1 offers real time mirroring of your data" automatically by design. That's something useful, right?

No need to make daily backups, if you even do that, and or sit around each time creating DVD disk which become obsolete and worthless every time you make a change.

Point here is just DVD disk are never real time, and are always requiring the need of redoing the backup over and over. How many DVD coasters do you own, right? (LOL)

Also stating that RAID 1 is noisy or it causes heat issues is "suggestive", as it all depends upon the hard drives being used and the hardware used, right?

That's because RAID 1 is only a method used to mirror data, and NOT the hardware causing the heat or noise, right?

WD offers environmental "GreenPower" HDD (ENERGY STAR 4 compliance) that save 40% energy (your money) and are acoustically quiet and long lasting units.

www.westerndigital.com/en/products/greenpower/index.asp

Truthfully, even my older WD Scorpion HDD is very quiet. The only times I ever hear any noise at all, is when the Laptop fan is either powered down or off! Meaning, the Laptop CPU cooling fan is noisier than the HDD. I would recommend this model 120GiB PATA unless you need something bigger like a 500GiB SATA type.

And why shouldn't Lenovo Laptop's be fitted with the option of using two internal hard drives? Even if you don't want to use RAID 1, it still serves for additional data storage, software application performance and certainly for backup!

--> "A drop in eSATA HDD would be just GREAT!"

By the way, if Lenovo actually does use my idea, would I get paid? Or rewarded with a new Lenovo Y510 Manufacture Model 59013272?

Hinting, Hoping and Wishing...

[mikepasta]

Fulong,

Well said!

skripatch,

I agree with the idea of partitioning, to an extent. The only thing that I back up are my user files. I do have a full disk image, however, stored on a separate HDD. I append to this every 2 weeks or so. My user data is backed up nightly. This is why I got rid of my D partition and reclaimed the space to my C. If I have any issues, I can restore my last full backup, restore select files and/or programs, or only my data. A partition to store users files is actually quite unsafe for the average end user. It usually leads to a false sense of security. "Hey, no problem... I backed up my data to the D partition", wrong answer in the event of a HDD crash! Been there, don't wanna go back again!

I do like the fact that Lenovo has finally reversed the C and D partition sizes. The average user should not have to have a degree in computer programming to turn on and use their machine. People expect their computer to work, as is. You should not have to go in and tell all of your programs where to store data. Now that the C drive is big enough to hold Vista, all the programs, and all the temp data, (including the ability to write to a DVD!!), the D drive should be used to store user data. i.e. pictures, music, videos, movies, documents, etc. Of course, you still have to back up your data. In the event that a user has to restore their C drive... no problem! Push the OneKey recovery then reinstall all your programs. Your data is safe in D.

[skripatch]

Fulong, mikepasta, that's really interesting to read!
These posts explain the difference between our countries and our minds!
Really, placing abckup of system on hidden partition helps only if you want to restore system after software crash, not the hardware one. I suggest it's based on suggestion on fail-safe HDD's, which are as rare as dragons are (never saw both anywhere but movies).  Also, it's not a pleasure to loose all soft and settings installed. My opinion - this type of backup is made for howsewifes that are not techy. Still, it's much more reasonable than no backup at all.
    What is my opinion on backup? It must be hardware-independent. I use Acronis to backup my installed system with drivers,tweaks and soft and then put it down on 2 DVD - two copies of same thing. Now I'm sure any kind of software problem and much of HDDproblems can make my system unoperable not more than on five minutes. But what to do with all other data? I hold it on another HDD - on eSATA one. Also I have some old HDD's and just once a month add some information on them from my eSATA 500gb drive and put on the shelve. They're old and not safe to use - crash is near, so I use them by minimum - just to make a backup. In my opinion, using a new HDD to hold backups is just a waste of money, which of I, as a student, have not much. This is, by the way, is the typical thoughts way in our country. Hold system backup on DVD and DATA backup - on old HDD or not to hold data backup at all.
Also I tweak system so that all unnecessary files like those you mentioned of SP3 and else are just deleted.
 
Raid is always heaty and noisy, because it uses all HDD's included. In case of two HDD for each file written/read it makes twice noise, 1,5 heat and reduces lifetime of both HDD. Using 5 HDD makes 5 times more noise , 2,5 more heat and reduces lifetime of all 5 drives. It's just logic and my experience - used once. No RAIDs since that

[Titan]

skripatch,

two words:  Rosetta Stone®