What are the Benefits/Drawbacks to Using Multiple Partitions?

Hello all. I am a newbie to this site, but have been using Win7 Home Premium 64 bit for a few years now. I have a 1T HD and I have never created any additional Partitions. I have only used about 25-30% of this HD to date, and I have 2 external HDs.

What are the benefits and drawbacks to adding a partition?

Did this (Dell Studio XPS with a 1T HDD) PC already have more that 1 partition right out of the box?

Thanks in advance for any help on this.

Robbie

The file system will assign disk space to folders as needed. Not so with partitions. No matter how much care you use in choosing partition sizes in many cases one will eventually prove too small. The more partitions you create the more likely this will be. Even experts get this wrong. It is possible to resize partitions later but be sure to have a backup of all data, just in case something goes wrong. As sometimes happens.

Be sure to have a good and valid reason for creating additional partitions. With one OS there is rarely a good reason for having more than 2, maybe 3, user partitions. System created partitions don't count. Create as many partitions as you need, but no more.

very clearly, so even I could understand.

Robbie

LMiller7 said:

The file system will assign disk space to folders as needed. Not so with partitions. No matter how much care you use in choosing partition sizes in many cases one will eventually prove too small. The more partitions you create the more likely this will be. Even experts get this wrong. It is possible to resize partitions later but be sure to have a backup of all data, just in case something goes wrong. As sometimes happens.

Be sure to have a good and valid reason for creating additional partitions. With one OS there is rarely a good reason for having more than 2, maybe 3, user partitions. System created partitions don't count. Create as many partitions as you need, but no more.

Sounds like good conservative response. Thanks.

Robbie

I appreciate your input.

Robbie

Your info cleared it up for me.

Robbie

Callender said:

Hi,

Some benefits are outlined here:

User Profiles - Create and Move During Windows 7 Installation

and here:

How to Move Windows 7 Personal Folders Like My Documents to Another Drive

Personally I try to keep as much non-windows stuff as possible off the windows partition. I also have a couple of encrypted partitions for personal data.

Another benefit: System Image Backups can be stored on another partition. That way when there's a problem with Windows it's easy to restore the Windows Partition backup without affecting other data.

You Info helped clear it up for me.
Robbie

lehnerus2000 said:

I have a stack of partitions (C:\ - K:\).

It makes:

• Backing up the OS partition quicker.
• Defragging the OS partition quicker (if you use a HDD, don't defrag an SSD)

OTOH, as LMiller7 pointed out, you run the risk of underestimating the size required for a given partition.