Best way to partition? I stink...

bull2118

Member
Apr 7, 2009
59
0
66
at this computer stuff. I partitioned 10g/b for my OS and the rest as one big partition for files etc. My thinking was that the OS just sits there and I set everything (pics, music, games, browser downloads etc...) to write to the the big drive. Apparently windows still downloads stuff to the C drive as default as I am getting a low disc space warning and errors. Luckily I am getting 7 (and knew I was going to) and can start over.

1. Should I even partition or is this kind of disc management beyond my skill/effort.
2. What kind of partitioning do most people recommend.
3. Is software better now to make partitioning less useful/needed? Or maybe more needed?

I am constantly impressed with the level of knowledge and help from you all here at anandtech and thank you in advance for any help.
 

mpilchfamily

Diamond Member
Jun 11, 2007
3,559
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There was no need to partiion the drive like that. You get no benifit from having your files on one partion and the OS on another on the same drive. If you have 2 seperate drives and one is faster then the other then its good to have the OS on the fast drive and your data on the slower drive. Or if you where going to dual boot the system then you would need to seperate the drive.
 

davidrees

Senior member
Mar 28, 2002
431
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Unless you have a very specific reason that you can clearly articulate for setting up partitions on a relatively new Windows computer, it is generally better to go with a single partition. Using multiple partitions can increase the amount of head travel in a drive and result in poor performance and possibly a reduced life - but the performance issue is the best reason to avoid the practice.

One reason people used to partition in the old days was to avoid the loss of precious hard drive space to sector slack - ie: a larger hard drive might have 4 or 8k sectors (or larger) and on a system with 8k sectors, if you store 9k worth of data, you consume 16k of storage space. Using partitions made the sectors a lot smaller and reduced this problem a lot. We actually still experience this issue, but the cost of storage is so cheap that most people don't give it a second thought and I often use 32-64k sectors to improve performance.

In fact, I am using a 500GB single platter drive formatted to 90GB and set to 64K sectors to be my C: drive (Windows and productivity) This kind of format gives a marginal increase in performance at the expense of capacity.

If you have one drive, just put it all on C: and keep it organized - I am a chaotic person by nature but even I keep my data in folders named /GAMES and /MEDIA/MUSIC/MP3 etc.

There can be a performance advantage to using 2 hard drives. I use a second hard drive for games (enormous Steam folder) and stuff like that. It's easier to keep that stuff in a G: drive (G:\GAMES\Steam etc)
 

Necrolezbeast

Senior member
Apr 11, 2002
838
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I partition my main drive just in case of windows committing suicide, or just the need to reformat... I keep all my games on the 2nd partition and all media on another HDD. For the most part this is done out of habit, I have enough storage space available that I could just back my games up and not worry, but I've been doing it this way since my first build back when 30gb was a huge and expensive HDD and all my patches/mods/media were downloaded via 56k. But to answer the question, since Vista I have always given the Windows partition a good 50gb just so I never have to worry about clearing temp files, burning DVD's and un-rar'ing huge files can fill up a 10gb partition way too fast
 

jdjbuffalo

Senior member
Oct 26, 2000
433
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If you've got files you care about then I usually recommend two physical drives or two partitions if you're sticking with one drive. The reason is that if Windows crashes hard (since Vista this is getting to be pretty rare) or you get a virus/malware (common for the less tech savvy) you may have to reinstall Windows. Now if you've got everything stored on one drive (not partitioned) then you'll have to backup all that information to another drive so that you can wipe the drive and reinstall Windows.

My standard recommendation would be to go with a 250-350GB (about the smallest you can buy) for $40- $50 and a 1+TB for your movies, music, games, etc.

If you've got money and want a good increase in performance then I'd go with an SSD in the 60 - 120GB range for your main drive. They will run between $150 and $450.

If you just want to use one drive then I'd recommend a 1+TB drive partitioned with 50-100GB for the main OS and the rest as a data drive.
 
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