Patitioning External Hard Drive?

I've just got an external hdd and in the manual it says to partition the drive, why would you do this? My Dad mentioned it the other day, something about bad sectors and that you wouldn't loose everything if one partition was to go bad?
I understand the reasoning for partitioning internal drives, separating the OS from data, just not external.

 

Some times when you get a drive it is RAW, meaning it can't be accessed or written to/read from

By partitioning, you change a part of the drive (size depends on you) to a format that the computer can understand and read/write from.
It can also detect that memory as usable or already used.
(correct me if i am wrong, not 100% sure if this is the right way to explain)

To partition in windows, go to control panel, administrative tools, computer management, and choose/click on disk management
This shows you all the disks connected to the pc and their state
If it shows as RAW you must partition it (if not already partitioned) and format to NTFS/Fat32

Also, most branded drives come partitioned and formatted so you don't have to do this yourself

Hope this helps

 

You do it in order to gain performance and in order for it to be easier to reinstall windows without sweeping the whole drive clean when windows has crashed or won't co-op so you don't have to backup everything on the drive before re-installing..

You can install windows on the first part of the hard drive (where you have the best performance on the hard drive) and on the other part of the hard drive you can use to save important files, movies, music, games, applications or whatever you wanna store ANd just have windows let alone on a smaller partition. Also this is better as defragmentation will not be spread out through the whole hard drive etc.

 

^^^^^^^^^^^

I think he meant external drives, beacuse he says he knows the point of partitioning the normal internal drive but not external

 

I have a feeling formating the drive is what you mean. You don't have to partition it to use it.

 

Hehe i totally missed that I got a mild migraine atm (was worse earlier today), so i missread there

 

No worries, we've all been there

Get well soon man

 

RaYYaN thanks for the info, the ext hdd that I have is a 1TB WD Green and and icybox enclosure, so I need to partition/format before use.

What are the benefits of partitioning an ext drive?

Michel.K no worries that you re-read my post I appreciate the reply and actually learnt something new, I didn't know that you get better performace from having the OS at the front of the hdd and also about the fragmentation so cheers.

Yer I was just wanting to know really if partitioning the drive is a good thing to do.

 

The drive MUST have a partition that you can format the disk

Since you made the disk yourself, chances are that there are no partitions
A partition shows up as one drive in my computer, so partition the drive into as many parts as you want, based on how many drives you want, and the size of each.

To partition and format the 1TB drive into one partition (shows as 1 drive in my computer) do this:

1-Go to the control panel
2-Open Administrative Tools
3-Open Computer management
4-Choose Disk management so it opens:

5-Click on the drive and make a partition (or more) depending on how many you want (right click to choose options)
6-Once the drive has been partitioned, right-click on the partition and choose format.

Your all done, now you can put data on the drive

Hope this helps

 

RaYYaN thanks for that, I know how to do that part, I am trying to find out what the pros are for creating multiple partitions.

 

There are no "actual" pros
It depends on what YOU want.

Personally I have one partition, because I like having all my data in one place
(it shows up as one drive in computer) and everything is there
Some people set up two partitions in the same drive and copy all the contents of one partition to the other, so there is a backup on the actual drive
A friend has a partiton for his music, one for game, movies and one for his dad's files

It's all based on your choice

Hope this helps

 

Data management: You can delete/change or whatever each partition without affecting the others. You might want to create a different filesystem on a partiton for instance. Or encrypt it. Or securely wipe it etc.

Most folk don't need or bother. Too many partitions can get messy, especially if you have several drives connected at once.

 

Thanks for your help lads, think I'll go for one partition.

 

no worries

One is good, I like to keep it simple