Partitions

[Modeps]

Since the beginning of time, I've been partitioning my drives to be basically "OS & Apps" on my C:. "Games and Media" on D:, or whatever. Now, there's never been a technical reason for it. Basically just organization... so I ask you, is there a reason to have a bunch of partitions as opposed to just one large drive?

 

[Blain]

...so I ask you, is there a GOOD reason to have a bunch of partitions as opposed to just one large drive?

 

[fluffmonster]

separate OS partition if you like to reinstall the OS a lot and don't like to move your data around in the process?

 

[Modeps]

separate OS partition if you like to reinstall the OS a lot and don't like to move your data around in the process?

Right, but any positives other than stuff like that? Fragmentation? Performance?

 

[Blain]

Performance would decrease.

 

[degibson]

Partitioning prevents bloat -- it works as a pretty strict quota

 

[Nothinman]

Since the beginning of time, I've been partitioning my drives to be basically "OS & Apps" on my C:. "Games and Media" on D:, or whatever. Now, there's never been a technical reason for it. Basically just organization... so I ask you, is there a reason to have a bunch of partitions as opposed to just one large drive?

Directories are for organization, not partitions.

 

[hal2kilo]

Directories are for organization, not partitions.

Was about to say the same thing.

 

[Emulex]

limits damage - reduces block size. besides you can grow partitions easy these days.

 

[Blain]

Partitioning prevents bloat -- it works as a pretty strict quota

That makes no sense.
Are you hitting the pipe today?

 

[Mr.Peepers]

I would think by keeping the OS, programs and most frequently accessed data in a small partition (the first) would minimize the maximum distance the heads have to move for accessing the same. This would decrease the average access time during everyday operations over a system where this information is scattered all over the HD.

 

[Nothinman]

limits damage - reduces block size. besides you can grow partitions easy these days.

It limits damage in a few corner cases, but not most, and NTFS uses 4K blocks by default for just about any partition size now so those aren't really advantages.

I would think by keeping the OS, programs and most frequently accessed data in a small partition (the first) would minimize the maximum distance the heads have to move for accessing the same. This would decrease the average access time during everyday operations over a system where this information is scattered all over the HD.

In theory, but with all the things the OS does to minimize I/O the difference usually falls into the statistical noise.

 

[C1]

Anyone who is finds it convienient to mix data and OS leads a trivial life. Dealing with large amounts of information will begin automatically to result in even organizing information genera by HDD.

Keeping OS in its own partition thus has many advantages. Keeping programs separate from archival data is easier to manage. Data areas are frequently being manually changed (creating folders, adding or deleting data, etc.). The OS area is predominately managed by the OS. Keeping data change process away from OS area supports system reliability.

Smaller allowed OS partition - requires image as backup and smaller is less time and space for backup Less time to keep managed (Faster clean up and defrag) [note: data partitions in general dont need defrag and even attempting defrag of large data partition would take many many hours and possibly days]

 

[LokutusofBorg]

The only benefit you get from using partitions is the ability to easily format and reinstall without worrying about losing your data. All of the other stuff mentioned here is either marginal (as Nothinman said) or is false unless you go with separate physical drives.

I personally used to use quite a few partitions. It always came back to bite me in the ass.

I now always have two physical hard drives with a single partition on each. I install Windows and all programs to their default locations. I redirect game installs to D:\Games and I tell Windows to redirect the Location for all my personal folders to the D: drive as well (e.g. D:\Documents, D:\Downloads, etc.).

 

[C1]

The only benefit you get from using partitions is the ability to easily format and reinstall without worrying about losing your data. All of the other stuff mentioned here is either marginal (as Nothinman said) or is false unless you go with separate physical drives.

Not really. What happens when you run multiple operating systems like I and many do? Best protocol is to ensure different OSes are isolated in their own partition, hidden from each other and that archival data are in their own partitions for common access.

Otherwise, like I said, anyone who finds it convenient to mix archival data and OSes leads a trivial life (eg, like games and email).

 

[Nothinman]

Not really. What happens when you run multiple operating systems like I and many do? Best protocol is to ensure different OSes are isolated in their own partition, hidden from each other and that archival data are in their own partitions for common access.

Otherwise, like I said, anyone who finds it convenient to mix archival data and OSes leads a trivial life (eg, like games and email).

There's no way to "hide" a partition without physically unplugging the disk it's on. Those things telling you they're hiding partitions are just changing the type so that OS won't automatically find them, you can still find and mount them with virtually no effort.

And if you're using multiple OSes you should be using virtualization anyway, dual-booting is a PITA and totally unnecessary these days. The only exception could be direct access to hardware for debugging drivers and such but some hypervisors allow passthrough access to PCI devices to guests so that would be the better solution.

And making assumptions about someone's computer use based upon whether or not they like to complicate their lives with dozens of partitions is retarded.

 

[Emulex]

sorry i meant cluster size. 4K cluster means 1 byte file uses 4K. if you had a million 1 byte files you would waste alot of storage. if you arrange all your writeable files to a separate partition it is likely that during an unexpected system restart the partitions which had read only data (o/s, movies+mp3) would suffer near zero damage where as the partition that was writing heavily when the system abnormally ended could have more damage that could or could not be repaired by chkdsk. since each partition has its own maps/mft - one large partition could have severe damage but with multiple partitions you would be pretty safe on the partitions that were not actively writing data when the pc crashed,lost power, got accidently reset.

I think with vista/win7 they did do some improvements to NTFS - but you guys remember the old fat32 days - man a crash or power loss could lose you some critical system files easy lol.

Modern baremetal software backup (the restore function) is more complex with multiple partitions and now windows 7 has its private partition and your main partition - you have to restore each partition and mark the correct partition to boot - so yeah i can see why it may be easier to just have one big partition.

 

[Nothinman]

sorry i meant cluster size. 4K cluster means 1 byte file uses 4K. if you had a million 1 byte files you would waste alot of storage. if you arrange all your writeable files to a separate partition it is likely that during an unexpected system restart the partitions which had read only data (o/s, movies+mp3) would suffer near zero damage where as the partition that was writing heavily when the system abnormally ended could have more damage that could or could not be repaired by chkdsk. since each partition has its own maps/mft - one large partition could have severe damage but with multiple partitions you would be pretty safe on the partitions that were not actively writing data when the pc crashed,lost power, got accidently reset.

Yes and 4K clusters are the default for NTFS for volumes up to 16TB so you're not getting any savings there unless you manually create all the filesystems on your system. And that 1byte file will be stored in the MFT so a full cluster won't be wasted. Pretty much no one worries about slack space these days, it's just not relevant anymore.

Your idea about separating write-heavy and read-mostly files has some merit, NTFS handles dirty shutdowns pretty well. I can't remember the last time I lost data that way.

I think with vista/win7 they did do some improvements to NTFS - but you guys remember the old fat32 days - man a crash or power loss could lose you some critical system files easy lol.

Modern baremetal software backup (the restore function) is more complex with multiple partitions and now windows 7 has its private partition and your main partition - you have to restore each partition and mark the correct partition to boot - so yeah i can see why it may be easier to just have one big partition.

1995 called and they want their data organization and integrity guidelines back. The small, boot partition for Win7 shouldn't need to be restored if you're imaging the OS because it's just the boot loader. If you tried to restore an image right after a SP install that might cause a problem, but otherwise you shouldn't need to worry about it.

 

[mv2devnull]

... so I ask you, is there a reason to have a bunch of partitions as opposed to just one large drive?

Multiple operating systems.

For example, Fedora counts as two: one system volume (~8GB) for current version and one for the next. No need to overwrite on upgrade. Boot loader and user data naturally get their own volumes.

"Fast/slow partition"? I'd rather use (fast) SSD volume and (slow) HDD volume.

Flashback: I did receive a PC once. It had a whopping 80MB drive. It had been partitioned to three: 32MB, 32MB, and rest. That was the best that MS-DOS 3.x could do. However, it had MS-DOS 4 installed ...