How should I partition my hard drive? Should I even partition?

I am wondering how I should partition my 320 GB Hard drive. I would like the C drive to have the OS, school stuff like Word and Powerpoint, utlities, maybe around 15 GB of music, etc. I would like the other drive for games, movies, etc. I guess I could move music over to the other drive. Basically, I want as much space for entertainment stuff as possible. Heres the laptop

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220520

 

partitioning will help you improve your system performance a little bit , also its so usefull to put ur OS on a drive and put your data on other drive(s) so when windows go down your don't don't go down, you just reformat and install the OS on the c drive
if you will use vista i suggest a drive c:/ with about 60gb if u use XP about 30gb is really good
pm me if u need help partitioning , AND ALWAYS BACKUP UR DATA B4 PARTITIONING

 

Ok, thanks for the advice.

 

I would go with 2 partitions, 1 for your OS and programs, then one for data, such as movies, music, work etc, I personally move all of my user files onto the data partition aswell, that way if i need to re-install, i lose nothing, just a habit i've got into to.

 

i sorta got 2 and a half. i got vista, which is my default, and i installed ubuntu with Wubi so the bootable Linux OS sits on the same drive with vista. then my other partition has xp, in case vista crashes on me .

 

Partitioning the hdd will slow down your average throughput of your files. If you install OS every week but don't want to "backup" your data, then use 2 partition, otherwise, 1 partition on a HDD will be better.

 

I'm sorry but I dont think I understand what you are saying. What do you mean by "install OS every week"? Are you saying that I should just go with 1 partition for my laptop?

 

2 partitions is better if you intend to format your computer occasionally. This way, as long as your data is in the 2nd partition, it is unaffected by reformatting your OS.

 

If you install OS very frequently and you don't backup, you should have 2 partition, one for your OS and your programs and one for your data.

If you have backups and you don't install OS very often, then partition isn't for you and should be avoided to achieve best performance and space utilization efficiency.

 

On a drive of that size (320GB) two partitions is a feasible choice (especially if you ever need to re-install the OS). The size of the first partition is dependent on your OS choice and primary applications.

For example, if you use Vista Ultimate x64 with 4GB of RAM (generates a 4GB hiberfil, 4GB swap file, plus reserved space for system restore/vss) and have some really large applications like Visual studio then you will need a large primary partition (likely 80GB+). However, if you have a lean XP install and tweak hibernation/swap/system restore then you may be able to get by with as little as 20GB for the main OS.

 

i don't agree with ya , its not only his choice to install windows every some time , what if the windows went down , 1 partition will be too hard to get data from it b4 a new install of windows.
2 partitions is good

 

Here's what I've said.
Originally Posted by jackluo923
If you install OS very frequently and you don't backup, you should have 2 partition, one for your OS and your programs and one for your data.

If you have backups and you don't install OS very often, then partition isn't for you and should be avoided to achieve best performance and space utilization efficiency.

 

Well, unless I have some serious performance issues, I will probably not format on a regular basis. I have formated everything on my desktop comp a few times over a few years only because the performance of it was so bad to the point where I didn't know what else to do. I only plan on backing up my school files. Even then, I plan on using my 4 GB flash drive for school. Most other files, programs and games, I might just have the installer files handy on my desktop computer just incase my laptop has issues.

 

There's very little benefit from partitioning your drive if all of your information is backed up and you don't do a whole lot of tweaking/reinstalling. It's really just a security measure in case your OS install goes bust, or you like to play around with your OS.

 

Wait so if I want to install windows 7 tonight. and I have all my data on drive d. Can I do a clean install of the c drive without losing any data on my d drive and then transfer it over and reinstall all my drivers and applications??? Thanks for the info. I really want to make win 7 my primary, but have been waiting to buy an external to transfer all my data.

 

does anyone know if it makes sense to partition when in raid 0?

 

Yes, that's correct. A reformat of your OS partition won't affect your data partition, so you can still access all of your files without losing them due to the fresh install.

 

Even if you back up your data regularly, I find partitions make things more organized and easier to do any sort of back up or repair. A lot of users who don't tweak or install stuff, still run into issues w/ spyware or viruses and experience general slowing down of their computer. If your data is in another partition, then you have no worries about reformatting your OS drive.

 

If you're already doing backup regularly, your backup should be organized in folders on the backup device. So what's the point of having partitions on the backup device?

 

Either I misunderstood or you did. I partition the HDD in my notebook to OS/programs and data. I back up the data to another HDD. That way you still retain your data if you format you OS/program partition. If there is a catastrophic hard drive failure then you still have the other HDD as back up.

 

I just backup to my home server, and have one partition only.

if there is any failure, no matter what, i just restore. doesn't matter if i ****ed up my os, or the ssd failed. i don't care about the potential speed gain of only restoring my os, and not my data. chance to have this case is very low, and it should happen close to never.

having two partitions means more work, and possible cases where one is too small and you have to resize (and suddenly lose all the speed gains you may have had on a restore), and non-standard user rights management on the second partition (for your user data).

everyone needs an external backup. chance for hdd failures are quite big. bigger than non-reparable os failures in my experience (at least with vista. xp had the talent to die quite regularly. all 3 months to 1 years, depending on system).

most os-bugs are easily solved with a fixmbr and fixboot.

not partitioning means less hazzle. it means using the os 100% the default way it was designed, all user data where it belongs etc. that means the most easy life. and with an external backup, the most easy and most save life.