Why even have mulitple partitions?

[AGampher]

I have a Seagate 40 gig on a Fedex truck somewhere headed to my house. I've had multiple drives in one set-up before, but I've never had multiple partitions on one drive. Is there any reason why I shouldn't just leave the new drive at a 40 gig partition? Would there be significant performance gains if I split it into 2x20 or 4x10? If I were to split the drive, what would go on to which partition?

Be a pal, help a newbie. :D

~A

[KaHNZa]

Partitioning won't gain you any performance. I would say 10-15GB for the first partition for apps and OS. ANd the rest for downloads and other files. It depends on how you use your computer.

[RainMaQer]

I find having a 10-15 gig for the os and games is best... if you left it at 40 gigs... that a whole lot of potential fragmention space;)

[Lorddraco98]

The main use of partitioning would be to organzie files.

[AGampher]

Originally posted by RainMaQer
I find having a 10-15 gig for the os and games is best... if you left it at 40 gigs... that a whole lot of potential fragmention space;)

Makes sense about the fragmentation, I didn't think about that. From your post I'm taking it that I should probably keep the games, apps, and the os on the same partition?

[RainMaQer]

I do personally... That way I only have to worry about defraging one partition...:p

[rUfUnKy]

Originally posted by KaHNZa
Partitioning won't gain you any performance. I would say 10-15GB for the first partition for apps and OS. ANd the rest for downloads and other files. It depends on how you use your computer. On bigger hard drives it is recommended that you do partition them for you will receive quicker access times...

[DJL]

How will creating partitions increase access time. Its only a imaginary division of the disk space. There is still only one arm that reads from the disk surface.

[Jeff Bolton]

lots of advantages to partitioning.

1) as others have said, keep the os on one smaller partition and install everything else on larger ones.
2) if you want to double or triple boot you can have multiple os's on different partitions.
3) less time to defragment each drive.
4) takes less time to search
4) makes for a much more clean computer. i have a 40 gig (some of it still unpartitioned) and it serves me very nicely. my friend has a 40 gig in his dell that is all one partition and it is a mess.

my $.02 :p

jeff

[Rooster]

Having mult partitions makes access time faster buy giving it a more specific area to look in

[rUfUnKy]

Originally posted by DJL
How will creating partitions increase access time. Its only a imaginary division of the disk space. There is still only one arm that reads from the disk surface. All data is disbursed in to different areas of the drive so when you partition that drive It creates a smaller area of the disk to work with ... which means a smaller area that it has to search through to retrieve bits and pieces of the data....This is more so true with FAT32 than NTFS ..NTFS handles larger drives better than FAT..

[*JEREMY*]

An extra partion comes in very handy if you need to do a reformat or reinstall your OS.This way you can just transfer all your internet favorites and documents,pictures etc...without losing them or transfering them to removable media.

[Shadow ÒÓ]

handy yes, but you lose slight preformance. Everytime you access your drive, it has to read the partition table firsts. Considering the number of times you access your drive, you can see how that would really add up.

I used to partition drives with all my running apps on one side....all my saved games and saved data on the other. If I lost an OS to a virus or corruption, I'd simply format and reinstall as the data was already backed up on the other side of the partition.

[DJL]

After my first post I have been reading up on partions and disk geo.

I think you will find that access times are not increased. Every time a file is read/written the partition table (possibly tables - if extended/logical partitions exist) then file tables have to be read/updated.

You will get faster transfer speeds near the outer edge of the disk where velocities are greater (than the near the centre). A partition placed in this area will have good transfer speeds. Remember though, not all file systems put the first created partition at the outer edge of the disk.

It is a much better idea to buy a second hard drive. Put your OS on the first drive and games/apps on the second. It is very easy to keep a hard drive tidy if you have well structured directories.

Never put your swap/paging file on a separe partition to that of which the OS is on. This will reduce system speed.

[crash16]

what about a 20Gig Hd would it be to my benefit to do a partition?

[WyrmMaster]

I have my 40 gig set up in 3 partitions. One 5 gig for win 2k misc. programs and apps. One 5 gig for windows 98, i dont have it installed, but thats what the partition is for. And one 30 gig for games and music. The main reason i partition is so i can backup stuff if windows goes tits up and i need to format. It also helps with organization though.

[Yodums]

Partioning drives are very effective in many ways, but you loose some performance but it isn't really noticeable to the naked eye.

You can split the drives 1/3 or 1/2 or whichever and you can divide them into what you want and as something happens ie: Windows goes faulty you won't have to worry.

It also comes in handy when you say you want to dual boot as you don't want to have two OS's on one HDD as it will lead to data corruption.

[crash16]

how do I put multiple partitions on my HD is there a proggy to do it with??

[*JEREMY*]

You can use a program called Partition Magic or read up on how to use the DOS method called fdisk here (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q255867)
Im sure there are other programs but these 2 are all that I have used.

[Kingslayer]

I will play the devil's advocate here.

Partitioning is a waste of time. Will you get a better seek time. Yes, but do you honestly think your actually going to notice a few milliseconds? If you can actually register milliseconds with any part of your body, sell your computers and buy a ticket to NASA, they will have much interest in you....

Now for the apps and games on different partitions. Installing these on a different partition is a waste. Why? Because if you have to format the partition with the OS on it you still have to reinstall your apps and games. Wonderful things the .dll files.

You want faster speeds from the outside of your disk, defrag more often.

Easier to transfer your favorites and other personal information when it's on another partition instead of removeable media? What if you suffer a complete failure of the drive. That partition you have been using as a backup is now worthless and unaccessable.

Organization? Well instead of one harddrive with all your data on it, you now have multiple hard drives to search for that little file you cant find at the moment.

[CAMS]

Originally posted by Kingslayer
I will play the devil's advocate here.

Partitioning is a waste of time.

I disagree. I do agree about seek times, defraging, though it is quicker to defrag 5gb than 40+.

I create approx a 5gb partition for OS, Office and utilities. It is very handy to then image that to another partition/disk. A complete restore now only takes 10-15min.

Also all those utitities, Windows Updates and personal doc's, xl's, MP3's, AVI's, jpg's etc are safer being on a seperate partition.

Yes they should be all backed up but not everybody has a CDR or uses it regulary.

Games, I put them on another partition, yes I know they wont work if I restore C drive but I still have the save game folder & settings.

If I have to format and reinstall I can be back playing the same stage of the game very quickly.

So time has been saved and not wasted by partitioning.

[3DMike]

Smaller partitions also means the cluster size can be smaller, this lets you get a few wxtra Mb of space on any given drive. Not as important now as it was a few years back, but something to note nonetheless.

Mike

[Kunal]

Trust me its not fun defragging a 80Gb hard drive. I'm not to bothered about loosing 1% performance, the main reason's for me partitioning are degrag times, minimizing data loss, and organization. Quite a few partitions ;)
Drive1 - 18Gb 10K U160 SCSI
C: 9Gb Windows
D: 9Gb Apps1

Drive2 - 18Gb 10K U160 SCSI
E: 9Gb Apps2
F: 9Gb Games

Drive3 - 10Gb 7200 ATA66 IDE
G: 10Gb MP3

Drive4 - 27.7Gb 5400 ATA100 IDE
H: 27.7Gb Movies

Drive5 - 80Gb 7200 ATA133 IDE
I: 20Gb TV-Friends
J: 20Gb TV-Trek
K: 20Gb TV-Drama
L: 20Gb TV-Comedy

Just a few :) (broadband is a bad thing lol. Also I do backup, but I host files as well so I need them ondrive)

[WyrmMaster]

Originally posted by Kunal
Trust me its not fun defragging a 80Gb hard drive. I'm not to bothered about loosing 1% performance, the main reason's for me partitioning are degrag times, minimizing data loss, and organization. Quite a few partitions ;)
Drive1 - 18Gb 10K U160 SCSI
C: 9Gb Windows
D: 9Gb Apps1

Drive2 - 18Gb 10K U160 SCSI
E: 9Gb Apps2
F: 9Gb Games

Drive3 - 10Gb 7200 ATA66 IDE
G: 10Gb MP3

Drive4 - 27.7Gb 5400 ATA100 IDE
H: 27.7Gb Movies

Drive5 - 80Gb 7200 ATA133 IDE
I: 20Gb TV-Friends
J: 20Gb TV-Trek
K: 20Gb TV-Drama
L: 20Gb TV-Comedy

Just a few :) (broadband is a bad thing lol. Also I do backup, but I host files as well so I need them ondrive)

Now thats a little much for me, i would get confused, "now was that on drive D: or drive F:, or was it L:"


AHHHHHHHHH

[Shadow ÒÓ]

Originally posted by DJL
Never put your swap/paging file on a separe partition to that of which the OS is on. This will reduce system speed.

actually, putting your swap file on another drive and having that drive on a different IDE channel speeds up performance since you can both load apps as well as read your swap file at the same time. If they are on the same IDE channel, it'll only read one drive at a time.

Originally posted by 3DMike
Smaller partitions also means the cluster size can be smaller, this lets you get a few wxtra Mb of space on any given drive. Not as important now as it was a few years back, but something to note nonetheless.

for each partition you add, you lose disk space. You won't gain space, but instead lose some, and with multiple partitions, this can add up to hundreds of megs.

[phungilax]

Originally posted by KaHNZa
Partitioning won't gain you any performance. I would say 10-15GB for the first partition for apps and OS. ANd the rest for downloads and other files. It depends on how you use your computer.

I would have to agree. Its all about organization really. I have 3 partitions: OS, DATA, and PROGRAMS. I find the organization a lot better and when you reformat it is a lot easier. Such as if i want to keep my data, all i gotta do is format C: and E: and go from there. Again it all depends on how you use it.