Never
Always
Sometimes
I have a 500 partitioned for os and data, then 1 tb partitioned in half for music and pics, then a 250 for junk and backup, then a 500 external for more backup, but back in the old days when defrag was done manually the os was on a small drive so it didn't take all day oh how we've progressed.
The way I was taught to set up a backup routine for commercial sytems was as follows
The OS is backed up weekly and before, and after, every major change.
With data this is backed up daily, using a grandfather / father / son system of media so you always have the last three days of data.
At he end of each month the last dataset is archived (this is retained for six months with the six month archive actually held for 7 years to meet UK company data retention law), and the media replaced (recycled media may be used from old archive tapes, but only if the media is within 80% of it's nominal life)
All active tapes are held in a separate building on-site in a fireproof safe and monthly backups are cloned and held in both on-site and off-site safes.
As you can see data security can be a serious consideration
If I buy a computer that is multi-partitioned, I leave it alone... I believe in OEM recovery partitions
But I don't partition to clean drives. Had enough of partitions in the mid 90s. To keep the operating system separated from my data, I use multiple drives either internal (which seems more cost effective) or external....
I don't bother partitioning my Raptor because it's only 150 GB and that space will get eaten up pretty quickly. 7 x64 alone takes up near 15 GB plus my games take up a fair supply as well. I have an internal 320 GB drive that I use for downloads, and an external 1 TB drive for pure storage, so partitioning hasn't been necessary or useful for me for a while.
That's a different (and better, IMO method than you originally described).
Until your drive dies and you realize you didn't have the discs made. My first step with any OEM system is to make the recovery discs, put them in a safe place, and then reclaim that space. On some systems, I've seen a 20 GB partition set aside to hold 3 GB worth of recovery data.
I think I must be from an even older school because back when we first started seeing bigger HDDs we had to use multiple partitions because the OS (DOS) couldn't use the whole drive as a single partition. It actually got to the point where it was wasteful since you could have plenty of free space but it was split up between many partitions but not enough space on any single partition to store a large file.
Nowadays I prefer multiple drives, 1 for OS and another for my data.
Your withholding vital information.
What size is/are your current HDD(s)?
+1, agree
I always partition my HDDs.
If you put your OS in a smaller partition, say 40 to 60GB, it will not have to search the entire 250GB, 500GB or 1TB, less disk thrashing.
These days the time saved might be negligible.
With your OS and personal data in separate partitions, backups are easier due to different schedules, restoring a backup to an OS partition is easier.
Backups should be on another physical HDD. Since I use a 1TB HDD to hold backups for two computers I partition the backup HDD also.
Most people aren't that smart.
Probably have no clue what FDISK is either.
i used to have two partitions on my main hard drive to keep my data safe in case i wanted to reinstall the OS, but then i discovered when a hard drive fails (and it has only happened once so far), that you lose everything anyway. Now with external drives so cheap, i just have one partition on the main drive and keep backups on the external drive.
+1, Nice!Since I use a 1TB HDD to hold backups for two computers I partition the backup HDD also.
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