Partitioning Clarification for two internal drive setup

[Daniel_Root]

Hi all,

First, thanks Peter for such a great book. I am so excited to get my library under control, after reading the whole boos, and taking copious notes I am ready to go.

Here is my situation:

Mac G5 2ghz Dual with two internal hard drives, and one external HD, and 4.5 GB ram.

First hard drive already has my OS/Apps/ and business file on it. Right now I am using about 68 GBs for that, which leaves about 80 GB free. Do I partition this at 80 GB for OS/Apps/Biz files and use another partition for Working Files?

The second drive is a 500 GBs. Do I need to partition that, say 50% for Archive, and 50% Derivatives, or can I just put two folders on the drive?

What about my Photoshop scratch disk? Where should that go?

I have a Lacie 500 GB external for backup for archive/derivatives.

I will use another smaller external for backing up OS/apps/biz files and another small one for backing up working files.

Thanks!

Daniel Root
www.danielrootphotography.com

[Rick McCleary]

Daniel -

I'm probably not the best guy to answer your question about setting up hard drives.  Others more qualified will certainly weigh in.  However, I did want to let you know that your work is beautiful.  Really enjoyed the lyricism of your entire portfolio.

Rick
www.rickmccleary.com

[Daniel_Root]

Hi Rick,

Wow, you made my day. Thanks for the kinds words about my work, now if I can get more clients who feel the way you do about my work. BTW, I went to your web page as well. Stunning work! I really like the feel of your style. Someone once said to me that one's images should look like they were the only one there that could have captured that image. I can see from your work, that you were the only person.

Thanks again!

Daniel Root
www.danielrootphotography.com

[peterkrogh]

Daniel,
Agree with Rick, nice work.

I don't think you should be partitioning.  Give the OS the flexibility to make use of the spare room.

Use two folders for Original/Derivative

It would be helpful to have a more clear list of the drives and how full they are, and what you have on them.  Something like:

Internal Drive, System and Apps, 400 GB, 227 Free
Internal Drive 2 Working Files and Archive 500 GB 89 Free

External Drive for Image File backups 500 GB 24 Free
External Drive for System and App backup 250 GB 20 free

Peter

[Daniel_Root]

Thanks Peter,

I really appreciate your kind words about my work. Thanks.

Internal Drive A 160 GB: System, Apps, Business Stuff. 32GB used  and 120GB free
Internal Drive B 500 GB: Working Files and Archive. 237GB images that need to be brought into the Dam system. 200 GB free

External Drive A 500 GB for images backups: Right now it has a copy of System/Apps/Biz Stuff, and a copy of all my digital images that need to be brought into the DAM framework.
External Drive B 250 GB for System and App backup: 250 GB free (in transit to me via UPS)

As you can see I am just starting out. So I will need to keep my old disorganized filing system intact until I get all of the stuff through the new system.

Peter, GREAT BOOK!

Daniel
www.danielrootphotography.com

[peterkrogh]

Looks like you are on the right track with this.
Feel comfortable with the tasks just ahead?
Peter

[Daniel_Root]

Peter,

Yes, I feel very comfortable. I have outlined the whole book becuase this is the best way for my mind to grasp, digest, and ingest this sort of stuff. I have a few questions still, but I will search the forum first to see if anyone else has had some of the same questions answered before posting.

Thanks for your help.

Daniel Root
www.danielrootphotography.com

[DJ Webb]

Hey Daniel,

Just checked out your website. Nice Photos but horrible URL structure. having lots of .'s and asci code in your url is not good. Is this being auto generated by some software or did you decide on the structure?

[Daniel_Root]

Hi DJ,

First of all, thanks for looking at my work and reviewing the URL structure. I guess I owe you lunch.

FYI, the website was put together and is hosted by Sitewelder. They have several templates to choose from. I choose one of their templates and had them do a few modifications for me based on how I wanted the page to look, feel, and work. Not being a web programmer, I must admit my ignorance that I don't know what you are talking about when you refer to .'s and asci code. Would you mind explaining in layman's terms what this means?

Thanks,

Daniel Root
www.danielrootphotgraphy.com

[DJ Webb]

Hey Daniel.

Your sites down at the moment so i can't go back and grab some examples but...

Basically you should avoid having any special characters in your URLS. This includes spaces full stops (because they are used to signify the start of the extension just like on your computer) and anything you'd normally have press the shift key to use.

These all get converted into ascii/html entities so a space becomes %20 " becomes %22.

The normal way to signify a space is either a - or a _ there's lots of discussion as to which is best for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) but i wouldnt worry about it too much. Either is much more readable to the human than %20 and thats the goal of URLs they need ot be readable by the human. If they can read (and remember) your url they can tell their friends about it.

At the moment anything past your index page would be really hard to tell someone. lots of ...'s and html entities.

[Daniel_Root]

Hi DJ,

Sorry to be so web language challenged, but I still don't understand what you are trying to tell me about my web site. Can you explain more in basic terms how this effects the performance or searching ability?

Maybe if I tell you what the purpose of my site is and what I want to achieve from it, that might assist you in breaking down your feedback in such a way that I can understand your concerns in layman's terms.

I know that most people who hire photographers like me, I do mostly editorial, sports, and I also am available for advertising to agencies or clients wanting a more photojournalistic approach. I really don't expect agencies or clients to "Google" me. I use a contact-based system that generates possible leads. I then contact them with an email and a link to my site. I also make cold calls from references, and then I give them my website address. So I really don't expect to find work from a potential client who did a search on photographers. I also have a listing on PDN, which has generated a few jobs. I am a member on Sportsshooter.com, and Photoserve as well.

So in short, my website is there for people who I have contacted either directly or indirectly, to see my work.

Does this make sense?

Thanks again for taking the time to share your expertise with me. I really do appreciate it.

Best Wishes,

Daniel Root
www.danielrootphotography.com

[ChrisTrauzzi]

Daniel,

Fantasic photos... I love the image on your home page.

I think what DJ is trying to say is that if I go to the ".. global sports" page on your Web site, the URL (web page address) is:

  http://www.danielrootphotography.com/fmsetgallery.html?gallery=..%20global%20sports

It would be better if the URL (Web page address) was:

  http://www.danielrootphotography.com/fmsetgallery.html?gallery=GlobalSports

The shorter the URL the better but I don't think you'll get much shorter then then above.

This is because you've named the button/page ".. global sports" which has two spaces.  Web addresses cannot contain spaces, so they are converted to "%20" in the web page address.  This is neither attractive or effective (for a variety of technical and non-technical reasons).  There is the chance that if you wanted to e-mail a client a link to a page within your site, their e-mail program or Web browser would not properly recognize the %20 and they would get a broken link (and not be able to see the page you're directing them to).

Similarly, Google (and other engines), when indexing your site will not be happy about (but not necessarily have a problem with) the %20 (and other similar) transformed characters in your URL.

The questions is -- in the interest of cleanliness and good form -- can you do anything about it?  If you built the site yourself using Web tools, you can likely resolve this issue but renaming the file names of the pages.  Most Web site building software use the file name to construct the URL.  You want to aim for one word (or connected word:  GlobalSports) file names with no spaces or special characters.  If you are using an online tool to build your site (where the tool is doing the work for you), you might not be able to easily correct this problem.

Cheers!
Chris.

[DJ Webb]

Chris replied superbly before I could.

Thanks for taking the time to rephrase Chris.

Daniel does that make more sense?

[arcterex]

Hey Daniel, just wanted to go back to the partitioning if that's not resolved yet.

I'd recommend against partitioning the 500G disk, simply because it's not as flexible and if your originals partition fills up, you end up shooting yourself in the foot for expandability.  Also I don't think partitioning is nearly as important these days as it once was.  I remember back in the day having different partitions for..... well, some good reason at the time, while nowadays I try to get as little partitions as possible, simply because files expand so much and so often that I'd rather do my disk organization by folder.

The scratch disk should go on the drive that photoshop is NOT on (from what I've read).  Even if that means it goes into the disk with the source images, I *think* that you're trying to avoid the churning of the system/photoshop disk conflicting with the disk cache.  I'm not sure if when PS is doing stuff it's reading from the source disk or from it's own memory cache or the os memory cache.

Anyway, I think that disk corruption and filesystem corruption isn't the issue that it used to be and you don't need to partition data and OS off for those reasons, now you put them on separate disks for speed.

Anyway, hope that helped (assuming you hadn't found out adequate answers on your own

Alan

[Daniel_Root]

Chris,

THANKS SO MUCH! I really appreciate how you made sense of of all of this for me. Thanks to you and DJ for taking the time to help me understand this issue. I will try to see if I can come up with something different.

Also, thanks Alan for the help as well. I have the partition thing under control now. If any of you guys are ever in Portland, Oregon, dinner is on me.

Daniel Root
www.danielrootphotography.com