Partitions

[Rub'Rum]

I just bought a new computer with a 1TB hard drive. It's a Windows 7 64 bits machine. Within a few hours of announcing this, 3 people talked to me about partitions (really guys?), and I've read conflicting information concerning the benefits of it (especially with speed).

Is there a reason I should partition my hard drive? There are two aspects in particular that interest me; data safety and the rig's speed for gaming (mostly speed!). But if there are other things I'm not seeing, I'm all ears.

I don't think I intend on running parallel OS and such.

Any proponents of partitions are free to explain how they usually do it (how many drives containing what), and why.

Thanks!

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I'm a partitioner though not to the extreme.

I have two partitions: System and Data. The system one consists of system files (duh) and program files.

Data holds my "personal files," application data I'd like to keep saved between Windows reinstalls (Firefox profile is the main one, though there's a few others), and some portable applications.

The reason I do it is because it provides a clear division & makes backup easier. And organization.

If you have any other questions go ahead.

By the way, here's my D drive --
AppData
Documents
Downloads
DVDs (legal!)
ISOs (legal!)
Music
Pictures
PortableApps
Temporary (I sometimes dump files here when I'm working with them)
Videos

Here's another in-theory advantage, although my info might be a bit outdated -- If you're not going into the SSD territory, I think the first partition (in my case, C) is more to the center of the drive (remember a drive platter is circular). So it would load faster than the second partition But, in reality, you won't really notice any difference.

If you use Vista/7 you can change the location of the User folders. I usually don't muck around with some of them (desktop, contacts, etc). Saved Games goes into Documents and I use junction directories so my savegames get dumped in there instead of scattered around the system drive. Same with some application data (Firefox will let you pick your profile location though).

 

[NedimNapoleon]

I also have two partitions, a Windows 7 OS one and an Ubuntu OS.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I also have two partitions, a Windows 7 OS one and an Ubuntu OS.

He said he wasn't going for multi-OS.

Here's a few disadvantages:

1. If you need more space on a certain partition, it can sometimes be hard to change that without reinstalling the system. Also it can be hard to tell how much space you need at the beginning. At first I started with a half-half partition but now my data partition takes maybe 3/4 of the drive. It might be different on yours.

2. Sometimes a Windows installation will dump the boot manager files onto the wrong partition. Don't know why this happens. But there's a program that'll fix that. Hold on a sec and I'll bring up the link.

 

[NedimNapoleon]

Oh, didn't see that. I remember just using one OS (7) but two partitions, one for downloads, one for OS and games, didn't notice anything abnormal.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

OK, here's the program that will move your MBR to the right partition:
http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

As I said, I don't know why sometimes it decides to drop the MBR onto the wrong partiton. But it can be annoying as I aim for separation of system/application files and the other stuff.

 

[Zelig]

Not worth it, waste of time, just use folders.

I'm at the point with the number of drives I have that I'm using software RAID to combine drives together simply to reduce the number of logical drives I have to deal with.

 

[Souron]

Yeah, unless you're running multiple OSs, just use folders. I'm not aware of any speed increase that's possible from having multiple partitions, but if it's there it's not a huge one. It could hurt speed, since there would be more fragmentation. Anything with the hard drive would only effect loading times, not lag or anything else.

On my system, the only reason I have partitions is because I have multiple OSs.

 

[IglooDame]

On a single-OS machine, I generally set a partition of 20GB for the OS, and the rest as a data partition.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

On a single-OS machine, I generally set a partition of 20GB for the OS, and the rest as a data partition.

I have a 500 GB drive. Since I play a few games that take up a lot of space right now the System partition is 104 GB. (My data partition is a nice even 360 -- remember the gigabye/gibibye thing -- and I didn't want to waste the extra 4 GB).

By the way, I always get a laugh out of my letter system -- D for Data, and there's a P for ... Um I better not say.

EDIT: The P is actually a network drive that's hosted on my own computer. Yeah, I'm kind of silly.

 

[Cutlass]

On a single-OS machine, I generally set a partition of 20GB for the OS, and the rest as a data partition.

What I do, I set the OS partition to 50GB and the rest for data. And have a second physical drive with the same partitions. But my primary data partition is on the second physical HDD and the left over space on the HDD with the OS is for backing up data.

 

[mdwh]

I partition into 2, just as some extra protection for media files if the OS partition gets screwed.

Perhaps it's not really necessary these days (Windows today is not like the screw up that was Windows 9x; and one should have a good backup solution anyway - you all have everything backed up, right?), but equally it doesn't do any harm, so it's there as just a little extra failsafe.

It does annoy me that a lot of laptops/netbooks force you to partition in order to do their flaky "recovery" system, and there's no choice about this, or the size - I'd rather just have the standard Windows DVD.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

My main thing is that I find it provides better organization. I liken it to having two filing cabinets with moderate amounts of folders shoved in side rather than one filing cabinet with a bunch of folders shoved inside.

 

[Zelig]

My main thing is that I find it provides better organization. I liken it to having two filing cabinets with moderate amounts of folders shoved in side rather than one filing cabinet with a bunch of folders shoved inside.

No, it's more like have one filing cabinet filled with folders, versus one filing cabinet filled with folders plus a divider between the folders.

 

[Souron]

You can Just have a folder titled 'Data.' You can then designate a special icon for the folder. Then you can add shortcuts in your favorites or library folders that windows provides for frequent access.

The filing cabinet analogy is kinda weak, because folders can have a tree structure of organization, so the extra tree layer that a separate filing cabinet provides is unneeded, and in fact impedes the system. Better to use the folder abstraction the system provides, than physically forcing the separation of data.

As for the other argument, if windows becomes corrupted, you can still get data off the windows partition.

 

[Mise]

There's no reason to have multiple partitions at all. It's highly inconvenient, because it means that if your "Data" partition becomes filled but your "System" partition still has space, you'll have to put data on your system partition anyway (or vice versa). It just adds arbitrary limits that provide no benefit and only serve to hinder your own use of the physical disk. Absolutely pointless.

EDIT: As for the "filing cabinet" analogy, it's more like having a filing cabinet with 3 drawers, assigning the top drawer to "House stuff", middle to "Bank stuff" and bottom to "Car stuff". What happens if you run out of space in your "Bank" drawer? You end up putting your bank statements into your "Car" drawer... Might as well just start from the top and use dividers.

Or a CD rack with 2 columns, one for artists beginning "A-M" and one for "N-Z". But imagine your favourite artist starts with "P", and you have loooads of CDs in the N-Z column, but hardly any in the A-M column. WHAT DO?!?!?!

 

[Cutlass]

I've been doing it that way for a lot of years. And there's virtually no inconvenience. But then, I used to have a lot of Windows issues, and reinstalled frequently. Using a data partition saved me endless headaches and lost files.

 

[Mise]

Yeah, I haven't had to reinstall Windows in 6 years, and even then it was due to hard disk death. Aside from that, I've never had to reinstall Windows in such a way that would have made data already on the hard drive irretrievable.