Do more partitions = lower performance?

[billytale13]

As the title says, if you have more partitions, does that affect the performance of the computer/hard drive? Thanks in advance!

 

[MouseGolf]

No. The more partitions you have on an HDD, the less work the "head" has to do to find, move and write information. However, if you make an image backup to the same HDD to one of it's partitions (not advised) the writing process will be slower. Always install a second internal HDD in your Tower/Case. This makes creating an system backup a breeze. Windows 7 has it's own backup utility but there are many on the Internet.

Solid State Drives (SSD): You will not see any slowness in performance if you partition the SSD. There is no head or mechanical parts - just cells.

 

[billytale13]

Alright thanks. I have always had 2 partitions at the most, and was just wondering if making a 3rd partition might have any effect on my PC.

 

[MouseGolf]

You're welcome. Keep any eye out for lower prices to come for SSDs. They speed-up your computers performance a lot.

 

[rraod]

The best practice for a single OS on a system would be to have two partitions. First one for OS and second one for data.

For more than one OS (multi boot) you can have additional partitions for each OS.

For windows only system, do a cleaning of windows partition with CCleaner (Use it judiciously, you can leave out the registry cleaner in it) and a regular defrag (once in 10 days) of all the partitions should improve the system performance.

 

[MouseGolf]

Well, that would be so for advanced users. But the gist of the topic is what a regular computer user would do with a enough knowledge to use either the snap-in "Manage" in Windows or third party software to customize their HDD or SDD.

You are absolutely right in what you said but 99% of computer owners around the world are going to install their apps/programs on the C: Drive.

 

[billytale13]

Lol luckily i'm in the 1% . I was wondering because I have my programs in C: and my data in D: but I have been recently thinking of dividing my D: drive into two halves, one for games and whatnot, and the other for school/work, and was just wondering if it will affect the performance in any way.

 

[MouseGolf]

Truth is, with today's processors and RAM, you just need a backup HDD or SDD and make a C: Drive backup image once or twice a week (I do it every night).

Bottom line: Run your Malware scanner, Anti-virus scanner then do a System Image Backup. You'll be so happy you did! There is even a wonderful free program out there called EaseUS Todo that has excellent features.