Hi. What are the pros and cons of partitioning a hard drive? How much of a performance hit will I take if I choose to partition a 750GB (7200rpm) hard drive into 5 or more partitions? Some people say that it is better to put XP into its own small partition while others say that XP will somehow manage the contents of your hard drive better on a single partition. Are either of these things true? What should you do with the pagefile?
The advice I’ve had is to create a partition for your pagefile, but not for windows…
So you have one for your page file and a second for everything else.
Creating a partition for your personal data is a good thing if it makes it easer to make backups (the partition is small enough to fit on a single DVD-R), easier to install a different OS (I don’t know if this is true for Windows like it is for Linux. Obviously, if installing a new version of Windows blasts all of the partitions it isn’t going to help you.), or easier to manage the computer (if you fill up your own partition the rest of the OS still has disk space enough to run, and you have a chance to trim the fat). You really have to know your own usage patterns.
This is a bit of hobby horse of mine which I’ve posted about before, but for a typical personal computer I don’t see any benefit in partitioning disks. The more you partition a disk, the more likely one of the partitions will fill up, which can be very inconvenient - and annoying, when inevitably you wil have lots of free space on the disk, just on a different partition.
The supposed benefits of partitions seem unconvincing. For example, it’s already easy to divide backups into DVD-sized chunks regardless of how big the partitions are. Page files, meanwhile, can easily be given a fixed size. Some say that partitions can protect you from rogue software writing all over the disk. OK, but (a) that is extremely rare, (b) what’s to stop it destroying partitions too?, and © such concerns are better addressed by having backups.
Backing things up to DVD requires constant maintenance while partitioning does not. It costs more money, you have to keep track of what’s on what disc, and when it’s time to restore your data, it’s a pain in the ass swapping all those discs around. Disc backups are out.
If you’re really interested in backups and having your data protected, get a spare external hard drive. The things are dirt cheap now.
But still, a separate data partition will provide some protection for your data. It will be easier to wipe a corrupted windows install and keep your data, and if you ever need to go in and recover things, it will be easier to find.
When I had Windows, I had two separate partitions: one for all my data (movies, music, documents) and one for the OS + software (word, photoshop, etc.) Before I tell you why, let me say this: I used to have a job repairing computers. I’m pretty good with them. I can install a damn fine network, run a competent server and troubleshoot about any problem your average user will have.
That said, my favorite way of “fixing” windows problems is to delete the whole damn thing and start from scratch. This is amazing easy when all your data is exactly how you left it on a separate partition.
Really, if you have a desktop, running out of space should not be a concern for you. Storage is cheap.
To be clear, I never said that. I said partitions help prevent you from filling all disk space. With the way I use disks, that is a valid concern for me. As I said, you have to know your usage patterns.
Almost forgot: In most cases, the OS prevents random programs from destroying partition tables.
A fine time to realize you should move some of the data to another storage medium and free up some space.
It isn’t as easy as using dd to blast a partition from one disk to another.
In most PC OSes, the default is a swap partition and it’s easier to go with it.
On Windows, it’s nice to be able to hit Ctrl-Esc, R, D:\ to get close to my documents’ folders, without having to navigate through all of the levels of Windows directories to get there. And, as Derleth said, it was always a lot easier to resolve Windows problems by blowing away the C:\ partition and leaving everything else in its place. These days, though, I just use a fresh copy of the original VM image to start from scratch – takes about 10 minutes to copy from my backup drive. Fastest… Windows… Reinstall… Ever!
On my Macs, I just like having /Users as a real root level. Yeah, I could use symlinks, but they don’t always get respected by the OS (see the fstab LABEL directive if you want).
In both cases, I just prefer the organization that’s offered by having a meaningful distintion between / and /Users (and the Windows’ equivalents). I have a swap partition on my backup server, but mostly because the Linux installer wanted it by default. I don’t worry about relocating it on my desktop machines because I have plenty of real memory that drive thrashing hasn’t been a problem for years. Well, it becomes a problem if I accidentally start up a second VM, but I try to not do that.