Partitioning Your Drive – How do you feel?

[1Bowtie]

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.

 

[Barman58]

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

 

[merkat106]

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....

 

[KazeNoKoe23]

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.

 

[DeaconFrost]

True Image is one that I use and it works just fine for the MBR.

That's a different (and better, IMO method than you originally described).

If I buy a computer that is multi-partitioned, I leave it alone... I believe in OEM recovery partitions

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.

 

[strollin]

I'm from the real OLD School.
I have never partitioned my drive as I never had a need for doing it.

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.

 

[Dave76]

I'm from the real OLD School.
I have never partitioned my drive as I never had a need for doing it.

Your withholding vital information.

What size is/are your current HDD(s)?

Always if it's a 1 drive computer. This way you can put your data and files on the second partition and reload or reimage the OS to the main partition. External drives work for this as well.....but to me, it's worth have the space right inside of the computer and not having to wait for the data to stop copying.

+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.

 

[cartel]

Most people aren't that smart.
Probably have no clue what FDISK is either.

 

[Pusspa]

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.

 

[Tweek]

Since I use a 1TB HDD to hold backups for two computers I partition the backup HDD also.

+1, Nice!

 

[severedsolo]

I partition mine, its just a organisational thing. I have my OS partition and a Data partition on my main 500GB drive. Then my little 160GB is used for backups (thank you Acronis and awesome compression) and a small 4GB partition for my homemade Recovery Partition in case the main drive goes south so I don't have to go rooting around for the disk again.

 

[The Howling Wolves]

I'm from the real OLD School.
I have never partitioned my drive as I never had a need for doing it.

Your withholding vital information.

What size is/are your current HDD(s)?

Always if it's a 1 drive computer. This way you can put your data and files on the second partition and reload or reimage the OS to the main partition. External drives work for this as well.....but to me, it's worth have the space right inside of the computer and not having to wait for the data to stop copying.

+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.

Dave,
I have a 400GB HD( of which 290GB is still free) + 500 GB WD External HD.
I am not a real saver of photo's, music and what few important things I have are on the external and thumb drive.
If you would enlighten me on the advantages I would get by partitioning I am all ears.
I am always open to new and better ideas. Especially from experts like we have in this forum. So Lay It On Me!

 

[Dave76]

THW, It will depend on what the user wants to do with their machine.

For me, prefer to partition all my HDDs.
This allows me to restore or re-install my OS without affecting my data.

Everyone has their reasons and preferences.

 

[jimbo45]

Like all these things it depends on how you use your machine.

But since even with loads of LARGE applications like Adobe CS5 suite and MS office installed Windows 7 won't require more than around 60 GB - so you don't want to allocate a 500GB HDD to Windows - bearing in mind that if you restore then the ENTIRE disk is wiped data and all.

Dividing it up int at least 2 and probably 3 partitions IMO like others have said is the way to go.

You can keep data / backup the OS images etc etc on the other partitions.

Possibly a good idea also is to have a tiny bootable partition which boots up your recovery program should you need to restore your OS image --saves hunting around for a bootable CD / DVD.

By having a restorabe image on one of the other partitions you won't have to re-install Windows from scratch and all the applications and fixes you have applied again. Hunting around for install disks, serial numbers etc etc is a real pain as well as looking for all the fixes / patches / updates installed and INSTALLING THEM IN THE CORRECT SEQUENCE.

If Windows is on a single partition on the drive then you won't be able to save the image anywhere on that drive and sometimes restoring images from an external USB drive doesn't always work on some machines depending on the backup program you are using;

Cheers
jimbo

 

[IownAmoneyPit]

Had to partition the drive on my older computer to duel boot XP and Vista as I only have 1 main drive ( only drawback is if I have to do a recovery back to factory condition the whole drive is formatted & only XP remains )
but easily solved by making images of each drive & restoring both images. I store my backups, media, software installers ect on a partitioned external drive.

 

[hkessels]

My laptop has 2x 250GB HDD which i would like to merge into one partition
How do I do that ?

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

My laptop has 2x 250GB HDD which i would like to merge into one partition
How do I do that ?

Hello hkessels, welcome to Seven Forums!



The only way would be with a RAID array.

Redundant Array of Independent Disks

 

[mitchell65]

My laptop has 2x 250GB HDD which i would like to merge into one partition
How do I do that ?

Whats the make and model of your laptop as I have never seen one with two hard drives!

 

[dgwin7]

I do partition on 3 hard drives drives.

1 hard drive hold 500GB each


Drive 0
====================================
Drive C for Main OS Win 7 64-bit Ultimate clean install.

Drive D for Download stuff like tryout some trial software and check if any files are infected.
====================================

Drive 1
====================================
Drive X for Photo and Video

Drive X for Apps program (like CCleaner, etc) and all drivers for reinstall
=====================================

Drive 2
====================================
Drive X for Game iso, Game emulator stuff (oh yeah mame games)

Drive X for ALL PC Games (Steam, Etc)
====================================

That is my preferences above and 3 hard drives is good enough for me.

BTW, Little advice, Never install any PC games on Main OS drive, more likely heavy fragment, stutter, PC games can cause messed it up on main OS drive.

dg

 

[periboob]

My Dell Vostro has space for two drives, but I have never been motivated to order the special adapter from Dell. Probably costs more than a 500GB drive. The Disk Management utility offers a "spanned volume" choice to make two drives look like a single drive--but I have never used it.

I like my partitions. Lately, (last ten years or so) I have always bought my computers with a small hard drive, at the same time I bought an extra, larger internal replacement. Then first thing out of the box, swap drives and install the OS etc on the new drive. If I ever sell the computer, the old drive goes back in. until Vista, I always formatted 3 partitions, OS/Software, Data, Temp. When the defragging on the fly feature showed up, I stopped making the temp partition.

Back a ways, I lost a HD, and everything on it. Cant remember the years, but it was a 20MB HD.
After that I got backup-fever, and the data partition just makes it easier.