Windows 7: Benefits of Data Partition?

Hi I just installed Windows 7 64 Professional.
I thought I would be able to combine partitions during the install, but couldn't.
Now I'm at Disk manager and I'm wondering if I should keep my Data partition or combine it with the OS. (They are on same hard disk).



I heard it really didn't make any difference on Vista, but I was wondering what you guys think. (In terms of performance, fragmentation, etc).

(my hard disk is 5400rpm SATA)

The only advantage that I can see is if you need to reinstall, but most folks image their drives/partitions which cuts down on the need to reinstall ..

I cannot speak for others, but I am happy with 2 partitions. I have C for the OS and I have my backup drive. I do not see any noticeable increase in performance with more drives, but then I do not have those many programs, etc on my computer.

I personally like to keep things separated and organized.

Running At least 2 drives is best IMO, making a partition for the OS and major apps, maybe, Music or Videos on the rest of the Drives partition.

And second Drive for pagefile, Games, Documents ... or something along that line.

With just 1 physical drive, it will help to keep the OS and main apps on a seperate partition from all your other media in the sense of:

1. keeping fragmentation down on the Os itself.


2.easier to back up with something like Acronis, as you need only back up the OS (40Gb or so) partition.

3.in the event you must do a clean install, if you moved all media/data the second partition, all your movies, music, pics will still be there after you re-install.

(keep in mind, moving the pagefile as i suggested above will do more harm than good perf. wise with only 1 physical drive)

The down sides:
1. You'll take a slight performance hit, as the HD must seek to a slower part of the drive to access the media.
(nevertheless - I still think its worth the small perf. hit keeping the OS separated from other DATA, the pros outweigh the cons IMO)

2. you're still unprotected if the HD itself fails. Youll loose all obviously.

Thank you wishmaster. Since there is no right or wrong answer, it is good that the poster gets both sides.

+1 and a +REP Brilliant post!

ZeshanA

Thank you everyone.
I decided to keep it separate.

I don't agree with there being any performance gain with moving the pagefile to any other physical disk unless it's a disk dedicated to the pagefile alone, although this is a contentious point with many (and has been for many years!)

I think keeping your drive formatted to say 35Gb for the OS and having a seperate larger partition for 'my documents' is a great idea - in so much as reinstallation or cloning and restoring an OS image are much more practical.

What remains to be said is that entrusting data to one physical disk requires you to remember that if the disk fails you risk losing everything; therefore it's far more of an advantage to have two physical disks and a third/NAS for mirroring, syncronised data and OS image backup archives, and so on...

No partitions here and I'd rather buy a cheap 7200RPM second hard disk and use that, backing up all to a NAS as has been mentioned.

35GB is too small. you want your programs on the same partition if you plan on imaging it for restoring later. no sense in just imaging the OS since Windows 7 takes 20 minutes on a current machine to install. The apps are what is going to take the time, so those should be installed in the default folder and then imaged after all your apps are installed.