Partition HDD or NOT?

What are the benefits of partitioning a hard drive? I have my OS, firewall and virus protection on C: drive only and all the heavy programs like Photoshop and Photo mechanic etc.on D: drive, but I can’t really see a difference in performance. It just seems the same as dumping all programs on a non-partitioned drive.

Thanks in advance for your replies

Lex

Sony FS750
XP Pro
1.86GHz M Processor
2Gigs DDR2 RAM
60GB 7200RPM HDD

 

Well the benefits is that if some day your windows gets dam*ed to hell. You can always re-install your partition without having to re-install all your programs.
I dont know how this works though, I mean when you reboot, the registry information for all the programs delete or what?

 

There isn't much of a difference.
I have a second partition on which I install heavy programs that are comprised of around 100,000 files and some 3gigs each, which usually increase the runtime of my weekly virus scan (I exclude that partition from the scan). Other than that no benifit.

Its always a good idea to keep important stuff on a partition of their own in case of a system failure, or better yet on an external HDD.

 

I agree. I keep my C: partition large enough that I can install most programs there (20gb tends to work well), and store everything else on my G: partition or H: drive (this is with my desktop, obviously, my current laptop's hdd is too small to bother partitioning).

 

I use 2 partition.
One for programs and he other for storage data.
So with a clean install i don't have to burn everything everytime on DVD for backup.

 

Thanks for the replies.

Lex

 

How is installing programs to a seperate partition going to work? They end up integrating with your Windows install anyway, and often break if you reinstall Windows and try to run them.

 

True for most apps, but not for most games.

 

PErhaps because games don't use the registry?
I also thuoght installing on another partition would cause apps to fail when Windows was reinstalled.

Personally, I prefer a second (logical) partition for my data so a reformat does not wipe out that data.

 

Some do, but not as much. I've seen some games that wouldn't work if not "installed" properly, but they had a .REG file in the game folder - just adding it to the registry did the trick.

 

Frankly...I don't bother with partitions anymore. I've got one on my notebook cause I'm still running the factory setup(with some uninstalls of course), that has a recovery partition.

I'm still creating my final image file. I always do mine off a separate hard drive(the recovery image) with every program I need already installed.

External hard drives are cheap enough that I just designate a folder system for my important data(everything is stored under it, in an organized fashion) and then it's backed up onto my external drive at my convenience(and system critical data is burned off about once a month).

Partitioning for organization is about the same as a folder.

 

The typical reasons for partitioning are seperating data. For instance, if you plan on formatting your hard drive every so often or ... something... it'd be convenient to put your personal files, media files, that kind of thing, on a seperate partition from windows and your programs.

I've got a couple partitions on my laptop (actually four) so that I can dual boot linux and windows, and have them share a home directory for document and media files and the like.

If there are differences in performance / storage, they'd be minute.

 

how about games that you play online? Im 99.9% sure that they all use the registry because of their serial keys.

 

I wouldn't know, I don't play online games. Besides, a key can be kept in the game's internal config files rather than in the registry.

 

Simply put it's just a good way to organize files and folders on a computer.

Usually people make partitions and use them like file folders, one for games, movies, etc, and others for business, home use, and the like.

Lots of people also use partitions to separate files for storage with the OS and programs.

You don't have to use partitions, but it can be good for some people. I personally don't partition my drives.

Cheers,
Mike