Partioning my external media drive

Should I partion my external hard drive? I use the drive primarily to store TV Shows and Movies. I was wondering if partioning it (as it is now) as Television and Movies would make sense? I did it the first time to organize the different media items but now I dont really see the point.

I am going to reformat it because I removed the partions for gaming and music as I got another external for OS and Gaming. Right now im just on the fence...what are the benefits? To partion or not to partion?

 

You already mentioned it: organization. It can allow you and anyone accessing your system the ability to more easily find/copy/replace/delete items without effecting you entire drive.

In a way, it also offer a way to enhance security should you need it. I partition every drive at least 50/50 except my backup.

 

Thank you, I shall start the partitioning process. How would it offer enhanced security? Never heard of that before with externals.

 

I usually don't partition my externals if they are only meant for data storage. I organize everything neatly in folders and sub-folders instead. That way if there is one category that grows in space faster than the rest, i won't run out of space on one aprtition although that is easily fixed with gparted. I do run multiple drives in most of my computers though so that is akin to partitioning. SSD for OS and a couple fo programs, HDD for the rest of the apps and games and another HDD for all my media files in my desktop. My laptop has a dual drive config as well, each drive with one partition. I set the permissions to access the drives and folders accordingly when i setup the computer if there will be multiple users.

 

Neither did I. But at one time I was entertaining the idea and wanted to know if I could encrypt a partition. Eventually, I determined that I didn't presently need it and dropped further investigation, but I briefly recall that it was available with TrueCrypt.

 

tijo are you saying you dont partion your media files? So you dont separate TV Shows from Movies? and so on so on? The security thing sounds interesting. May have to try that.

 

I said it before, good old folders instead of partitions.

Let's say i want to access game of thrones season one on my desktop, the file is located on E:\Libraries\Videos\TV Shows\Game of Thrones\Season 1\Episode # - Episode Title

Similarly, i have

E:\Libraries\Documents
E:\Libraries\Music
E:\Libraries\Pictures

All of those also include relevant sub folders and i backup my libraries regularly to an external drive in case something happens.

The Windows 7 Libraries are set to include the matching D:\Libraries\* folders

 

Well you see I have a 500 GB Internal and my External is 2TB. I store all my Media on the external and only a few things on the internal. Maybe the latest episode or something but most of the shows I watch are on the external. Do you think I should still use folders are partion? I know everyone has there personal preference but im on the fence and would try out the folder deal.

 

Here's the thing: I have this program (AA CS6) that caches to my flash drive. It not a perfect scenario, but its the fastest drive and what I have.

However, I still use a portion of this drive to store files. One section does it's thing with the cache and the files are always separate, safe, and intact. So unless you have a necessity like that, files are the convenient natural way to go.

 

Thank you for your input. It greatly helped my decision to use folders.

 

For strict DATA drives, I too recommend a single partition - no point having to jump to two or more different partitions to find the file(s) you need.

What I do recommend though (with Win7...) is to partition the drive to the smallest capacity possible that can still hold all your current data. This helps ensure that even the data drive is performing as optimally as possible for me.

If/when I need to add more data to the drive, it is a simple matter to go to Disk Management and Extend the partition a few GB's or so.


To give a concrete example:
I have an external USB3.0 2TB HDD.
I want to put just under 1TB of data on it (let's say 950GB).
I format the drive as NTFS and partition it to 1TB size. Now, I copy my data to the drive, leaving 50GB 'free space'.
A day/week/month later; I need to add ~100GB of data to this external.
I go to Disk Management and Extend the volume by 100GB.
I then copy my ~100GB of data to it.


(I also defrag my externals using PerfectDisk 12.5 after I add any new data - this greatly increases the performance of the external drive while also making it less noisy and cooler running too - and, I think more reliable, imo - this is also the way that I 'stress test' my external drives to see if they are failing in any way, BEFORE I need to rely on them).


Hope this helps.

 

It helps me with my DATA 2TB but I wanted to know any options for my MEDIA 2TB.

 

Media is data too, right?

No change at all...

 

Yes your right. I am in the process of moving my files back onto the drive. Pleased with having a single partion so far.