Question Is it ridiculous not to have a dedicated Windows partition and a dedicated Data or Games partition on an SSD that is 1TB or larger?

[Dave3000]

I can understand having an SSD 500GB or less dedicated just for the OS and basic apps. However, is it ridiculous not to create a partition dedicated for OS and basic apps and partition the rest for Data or Games if a drive is 1TB or larger if it's your only drive in the system. Also I want to point out that having a separate physical drive for the OS and a separate physical drive for Data or Games increases the chance of having a drive failure in your system because you have one more drive that can and will at some point fail, so if someone says that having 2 physical drives in there system means that their data will be safe if there OS drive fails but it can go the other way around, the OS drive can be safe but the Data drive can fail. It's only safer if both drives are storing the same data redundantly than that is the only way having 2 drives is safer than one.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

With the prevalence of fast internet, for many people redownloading games is a non-issue. I never break up a drive these days.

If I'm trying to keep a local copy of games they go on my server. Client storage should be transient, not relied upon because there are virtually zero safety mechanisms present on a consumer windows box. You're one bad windows update away from the file system getting corrupted and bricking all your partitions anyway.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I don’t really think there’s much benefit to partitioning for a desktop computer.

Storage is storage. :shrug:

 

[CP5670]

I have separate drives for windows and games/apps, 6 in total, makes it easier to do backups and restores. The chance of a failure is higher but that failure is also less likely to take down everything, and I can keep adding new drives over time if I need more space.

 

[mikeymikec]

I haven't done manual partitioning in ages. Once upon a time I thought it was handy to keep the OS separate so that if I decide to wipe and reinstall, I only have to wipe the OS partition and the rest doesn't *have to be* backed up. These days though, installing an OS takes a fraction of the time it used to.

On my server I partitioned the OS off because a partial security compromise (e.g. gaining privs into where website files are located) might make it harder for the attacker to breach the main OS (e.g. difficult to relative path one's way from D to C drive).

I don't purposefully have a multi-drive layout as it doesn't make any difference against drive failure, it's just the way my setup has evolved because it's always been cheaper to have a smaller SSD coupled with a data HDD. Eventually I hope to replace the data HDD with a data SSD to make my system quieter, but unless I start using a single OS rather than the dual-boot setup I've been doing since 2018, I don't see me changing back to a single disk setup at any time soon because there's little or no benefit from it.

On simple single-disk, single-OS setups, I don't do any manual partitioning.

 

[Dave3000]

I have separate drives for windows and games/apps, 6 in total, makes it easier to do backups and restores. The chance of a failure is higher but that failure is also less likely to take down everything, and I can keep adding new drives over time if I need more space.

I don't care if I lose my OS installation due to a drive failure on a drive that just has my OS installed on if my data is stored on another drive. I care about losing my data however. A separate physical drive that doesn't store a duplicate of my data means nothing to me in terms of safety, so a physical drive that just stores the OS and it fails, I could easily reinstall the OS on a new drive, it shouldn't take longer than 1 hour, including the drivers and Windows updates. I don't even backup my OS installation, only important data on my data partition to an external SSD that would not be easily replaceable. SSDs smaller than 1TB is getting phased out, it's now common that some manufacturers only start at 1TB for their smallest capacities for a recent series, for example, Samsung for their 990 Pro and 9100 Pro Series NVMe drives. Not to mention that it's common for entry level to mid-range motherboards to have only 1 M.2 slot that's the fastest one on the motherboard or linked to the CPU lanes and the other M.2 slots linked to the chipset lanes and a lower Gen in some of those motherboards. I used to have a separate 1TB 990 Pro just for the OS and Apps and my 4TB 990 Pro for everything else, but I decided to just partition my 4TB 990 Pro to 250GB for OS and Apps and the rest for everything else and move the 1TB 990 Pro to my secondary system, again partitioned at 250GB for OS and Apps and the rest for everything else. The benefit of this is that I have my games and OS installed on the NVME installed on the fastest M.2 slot in the system even it it's the same Gen, the CPU lanes one is a little faster still than the other M.2 slots that are linked to the chipset lanes. I also just need to worry about one drive failing than 2 drives failing on each system.

 

[CP5670]

I have the same 1TB 990 pro drive for the OS. The OS drive has the user/local accounts folders which has a lot of important data. The other drives have game installs and contain some important things too, but I schedule backups for them less frequently. I always migrate the OS across hardware, and roll back if something goes wrong. I haven't actually done a fresh Windows install since 2010 or something when Windows 8 came out. The issue is configuring everything to my liking with numerous registry edits, settings and config changes I did over the years and reinstalling all programs and tools would take forever.

 

[mikeymikec]

A separate games partition - it hasn't been said so I'll say it - the install footprint of many modern games these days means you'll need all the TB you can get, which IMO renders the topic of "should I partition" pretty much moot. My brother mentioned that a Call of Duty game has a 250GB footprint, BG3's footprint is nearly 160GB, etc.

When I migrated from a 250GB Windows/games drive to my current 1TB drive, I thought I'd catch a break from having one modern game installed at a time Kinda sorta.

 

[mindless1]

Things that take time to tweak to my liking, and are subject to implode, go on the same partition. This includes windows itself, and some apps. This partition has an image backup made monthly, or right before I do something potentially risky like do a bunch of windows updates (which I do in larger batches, never just letting windows auto-update a thing at a time, constantly).

Since I don't want to waste much drive space that could be put on a separate partition, and don't want my partition backups to be unnecessarily huge to monthly backup things that don't change month to month, that partition isn't much bigger than it needs to be, typically about 100GB still leaves a fair amount of free space. Everything else goes on either a 2nd partition, or the rest plus two copies of the partition image of the OS partition goes on separate 2nd/3rd/etc SSD or HDD.

Games recently played and some static apps (that I can just reinstall and use, no configuration needed) go on a separate partition or SSD in same system but much of the rest and a lot more is on a NAS with a redundant offline backup.

As far as # of drives vs failure, I think I only had one SSD ever fail, some early era (Zalman?) 32GB SATA. It didn't completely fail, just corrupted somehow, so at a mere 32GB not even worth the bother to reuse. It wasn't in use long enough to hit a write cycle limit. I even put 7 leftover 240GB SSDs into a couple of RAID arrays, several years ago and no problems yet.

... but like all my other SSD upgrades, those 7 will end up replaced with higher capacity, hopefully/probably before they fail.

Then again it was a different era, I don't necessarily need so many in a RAID array, just had a great price at the time for the bulk 240GB I bought.

 

[511]

so i have my 2TB ssd partitioned with one 600GB and the rest in a different partition is there any reason to keep it partitioned or should i go back to single partition with 2TB. I have 2 Drives 1 is dedicated to arch Linux with all the config for that on that drive and one for Windows i created the partition for games and stuff but now i am thinking of going back to a single partition.

 

[bba_tcg]

so i have my 2TB ssd partitioned with one 600GB and the rest in a different partition is there any reason to keep it partitioned or should i go back to single partition with 2TB. I have 2 Drives 1 is dedicated to arch Linux with all the config for that on that drive and one for Windows i created the partition for games and stuff but now i am thinking of going back to a single partition.

Personally, I dislike dealing with drive letters. One of the things I like about Linux is the tree structure of the file system utilizing mount points.

 

[mikeymikec]

so i have my 2TB ssd partitioned with one 600GB and the rest in a different partition is there any reason to keep it partitioned or should i go back to single partition with 2TB. I have 2 Drives 1 is dedicated to arch Linux with all the config for that on that drive and one for Windows i created the partition for games and stuff but now i am thinking of going back to a single partition.

I think the question you have to ask yourself is why you partitioned the 2TB SSD in the first place; by the sounds of things it's a data drive (as opposed to a drive booting an OS), then ask whether your reason for partitioning it makes sense in light of the artificial, arbitrary storage capacity limitation it imposes.

>20 years ago (pre easy removable storage) I used to run Windows with a C (Windows), D (Apps, Data), E (Backup) drive layout, with the notion that if I want to reinstall Windows then there's very little I need to back up from C drive, and E's existence to separate backup data (read as install files etc) from 'live' data, then I realised that there was little reason for me to wipe D drive and even if I did, E drive wouldn't be big enough to take what needed backing up, so I got rid of the third partition.

 

[511]

I think the question you have to ask yourself is why you partitioned the 2TB SSD in the first place; by the sounds of things it's a data drive (as opposed to a drive booting an OS), then ask whether your reason for partitioning it makes sense in light of the artificial, arbitrary storage capacity limitation it imposes.

>20 years ago (pre easy removable storage) I used to run Windows with a C (Windows), D (Apps, Data), E (Backup) drive layout, with the notion that if I want to reinstall Windows then there's very little I need to back up from C drive, and E's existence to separate backup data (read as install files etc) from 'live' data, then I realised that there was little reason for me to wipe D drive and even if I did, E drive wouldn't be big enough to take what needed backing up, so I got rid of the third partition.

It's both a data drive and OS drive the second SSD is permanently taken by Linux.

 

[mikeymikec]

It's both a data drive and OS drive the second SSD is permanently taken by Linux.

Unless you have a good reason for the second partition, I would just have one Windows + data partition.

 

[511]

Thanks it's PITA but doable not to mention both are BitLocker encrypted

 

[mikeymikec]

Thanks it's PITA but doable not to mention both are BitLocker encrypted

Do a search for device encryption in the start menu, or control panel > bitlocker, and disable the encryption?

Unless you really want that?

 

[511]

Do a search for device encryption in the start menu, or control panel > bitlocker, and disable the encryption?

Unless you really want that?

Yeah IK it just ake a lot of time and moving stuff here and there took an hour lol

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I keep my OS install on the boot disk (with installed software) as a separate disk device and I put my data on a separate physical disk. These particular drives in my system are NVME and SATA SSDs respectively. It seems unlikely that they are going to fail this year, next year, or at some time later when I might possibly have replaced them anyway.

Instead, I rely on an automatic, scheduled backup solution. In my case right now, and since about 2016, this has been Macrium Reflect and I actually paid for the lifetime licensing. As long as I have these computers, they are good. But Macrium has moved to a subscription-based software licensing model, and I don't think it bodes well.

Of course, there is other backup software available. What I do with this at the moment is to configure it so that each drive is backed up separately to a different image file. You could keep them both together -- which is what I'd done until last week, but somehow I like this approach better. The backups are created and stored on a 5TB 2.5" Seagate Barracuda in a hot-swap bay. When my house is evacuated for a So-Cal wildfire, I can just grab the disks and go with them. Taking my laptop with me, of course.