What are the advantages of having multiple partitions on a hard drive?

[MichaelD]

I just made two partitions on my hard drive. 5 gig for OS 40 gig for games/photos/etc.
I'm thinking about reformatting to just one big partition and using folders.
What are the advantages of multiple parts, and how do I take full advantage of same? Darn new guy questions...........

Mike The New Guy

 

[Biggs]

I see that huge hard drive partitioning thread resurfacing sometime soon.

 

[jagr10]

THe most common reason for partitioning is for having 2 operating systems (ie. win98 nad win2000). Another reason is for better organization. If you want all your games on drive D and all of your pictures on drive E then it's easier to locate them. Others like to divide the drives between different members of the family.

It's a matter of preference for most people.

 

[smp]

Yeah.. where's SUOrangeman?
Um.. someone correct me if I'm wrong. If you're using FAT 32, then having smaller partitions is more efficient, because the cluster size of FAT32 depends on the size of the drive.. so the larger the drive (or partition) the larger the cluster size is gonna be. I like to have seperate partitions, one for the OS, one for media stuff (mp3's, videos etc.. ), and one for programs.. I even have a partition laid out for my old man. I just like it that way, cause it keeps it organized (you could organize just fine with folders though) and if I ever have to format anything, I don't have to do the whole thing.. I just grew up that way.. if you want multiple OS's.. then you have to partition. I hope that helped.. (where's that crazy long post about this?? anyone have the link?)

 

[Edman]

There is a lot of advantages, when you "multi-partition" a HD, a few ones:

* The system takes less time defragging 10 2GB partition than one of 20GB.
* Also take a less time searching for files in a small partition thant in a big one.
* You'll have more control/organize your files among the HD.


Im my particular case I own an IBM GXP45 45GB HD an I have partitioned it in 20 pieces.

Just a recomendation, use an 2GB partition (the first one) for your OS and only for that, don't let the apps, games, etc.. install theyselfs in this partition, and you will get a great performance.

Regards!

 

[MichaelD]

Thanks for the great replies. I'm a little (ok, a lot) confused though; "only the OS" on the first partition. OK, so that means things like Office 2000, Microsoft Front page, SiSoft Sandra, 3Dmark, games etc, should be on the other partition? How does this help performance? Thanks very much; I want the absolute best perfomance out of my new system and I appreciate the education.

EDIT EDIT EDIT
One other thing, the progams that come packaged with the video driver (Colorific, etc) do I leave those on the C drive? They are integrated with the vidcard driver, because when you pull up the vidcard tabs, the tabs for the other programs are there too. I'm confoooooosed.

 

[Pakman]

If your confused, don't make multiple partitions. It'll only get more confusing as you add more drives. You will see little if any performance gain by partitioning... I personally have 2 partitions. My main one is for OS and all programs that require installation. My second partition is for storage such as MP3's, files I download off the net, movies, etc... If your gonna partition 5gig on primary and 40 as extended, you might as well just keep it as 1 partition. Just my $.02

<edit>
Here is a list of cluster sizes for FAT32
4 KB cluster: 0.5 GB to 8 GB
8 KB cluster: 8 GB to 16 GB
16 KB cluster: 16 GB to 32 GB
32 KB cluster: 32 GB up to 2 TB
</edit>

 

[smp]

I keep all of my programs off of drive c: ... I put em all on another partition. I do this because IMO it keeps the OS bug free, you got lot's off apps on your pc probably, and you don't want them to interfere with the OS.. some of em might be garbage.. I don't know exactly why this is.. but I do notice that my machine runs smooth by keeping the os partition os only.. I have had it the other way around.. and the seek time per partition comment by edman seems correct too. I had some problems partitioning my drive for the first time when I did it.. I did it over like.. fifteen times (no joke!).. but I finally got the setup that I wanted.. my system is smooth smooth (as smooth as 98 can be that is ) .. it's up to you.. making partitions isn't hard.. get partition magic and it's a breeze... I used the dos version of it.. you can also use fdisk, but it's pretty limited.

 

[Noriaki]

Sounds cool to say that I have an M drive, that's half the alphabet.

smp: You are correct, the smaller the partitoin size the smaller the cluster size. There are advantages and disadvantages to differing cluster sizes though....so this may not even be something you want.

There are lots of reasons I do it.

[*]I have two IBM 75GXP drives, I have my OS and Apps loaded on one, and use my Vmem on the other. Along with this comes the fact that the first tracks of the disk are the fastest, so I have a small (~390MB) partition at the beginning of my 2nd drive for a 384MB Pagefile.
[*]I have full installed Windows 98SE on one drive and just about nothing else with it. Just Windows, Drivers and Required system files (/WINDOWS and /WINDOWS/SYSTEM etc...folders). Then I make an image of that drive onto one of my other partitions (by image I mean Norton Ghost or in my personal case PQ Drive Image). By installing my apps and games to different drives I don't capture them in the image so it saves a bunch of time and space. I do this so I can restore the Windows image and have that fresh install feeling, without re-installing everything. But it cleans up my system files organization, if I install any apps that mess something up...just delete the appropriate folder off my E:, and restore my C:...and so on....
[*]Defrag is alot easier/faster on smaller drivers
[*]Just general organization...I find that having a 45gig drive not chopped up things get lost and it's hard to tell if I have any wasted space or not....
[*]Multiple OSes, and I have some data that I want shared between them, and some that's private.

Those are my main reasons....If I think of more I'll add them later.

 

[chansen]

Probably the most referenced thread at AT:

SUOrangeman's Dissertation on Partitioning and Multi-booting

Enjoy!

Regards,
Craig

 

[MichaelD]

Lots of great replies. I really like the technical stuff and the different rationales that you guys listed. Great job. Thanks very much.

One more and then I'll leave you alone! What is a &quot;drive image&quot;? Why would I want one and if I only have 2 partitions, do I need one? Still learning......

 

[Noriaki]

PowerQuest has a product called Drive Image, and Symantec has a product called Norton Ghost, they are both for backups. When you image a partition you make an exact copy of all the data on it, you can put this copy anywhere you like. You can put it on CDRs, ZipDisks, another hard drive, even floppy disks if you want (though you'd need alot of them).

It's primary purpose is to have a backup of your system files.
I use it in a slightly different way though. The programs on my computer haven't changed much in 6 months. But Windows seems to get clogged up with temp files and useless junk over time...maybe from installing and uninstalling programs...I dunno....windows just seems to get sluggish after a few months of use...so I have an image of my main windows drive. Then if things get sluggish, I restore that image and it's like a fresh install, but everything is restored exactly how it was when I made the image. I don't need to re-install all my programs, or tweak all my settings or anything.

 

[MichaelD]

Noriaki,

I think I understand. If I ghost an image of my C drive onto my D drive (same physical drive, different partitions), would it be like installing the OS onto the D, or would it be like just putting a folder there?

 

[Noriaki]

Think of the image like a Zip file sort of...it's an archive with a whole partition stored in it. But it keeps exact file position information (so it can rebuild your boot records) and things like that...so it's a little more accurate than a zip file.

 

[SeaHarp]

I'm kind of confused, but I'm real new so more replies would be appreciated. If you put an operating system on a small partition, how do you get other funcions to operate in other partitions w/out an operating systems. Go easy I'm kind of new, and also I'm looking to learn and plan on partitioning this in a RAID 0. Lets keep this thread going.

 

[aircooled]

Partioning isn't for everyone. I do it for the added protection. If I crash the windows partition I can just wipe it clean and reinstall without loosing my data, etc. I takes a little discipline and getting used to. WHen installing programs you will always have to remember to change the default location from C: to the proper partition drive letter. If this is too much trouble for you, or if there are other users that might be installing stuff you might just want to stick with one big C: When I build systems for friends &amp; family I just set them up with one C: drive.

 

[SeaHarp]

Dont the other partitions need an operating system?