Installing OS and programs in different partitions.

Are there any advantages or disadvantages if one installs OS and programs on different partitions on his/her/its system?

Me, I have installed them in different partitions for a long time. I read a little tweak 8 or so years ago when XP came out (I was 13 then ), and did what it said, and have continued ever since, without facing any problems whatsoever. However, I haven't noticed any gains as well.

So, is it good, bad, or the same?

Thank you!

 

it's useless. it can be a hazzle if one time one of the partitions get too small, then you have to rearange them.

i have all in one partition, as stated several times. i had that partitioning habbit as well, good old win98 days it started (as the geeks told you to do so.. they knew something so it had to be good ).

you should have an external uptodate backup and never bother about partitioning on a single disk.

 

I have 5 partitions, and I think I'll keep them all. If something goes wrong, I just have to format the partition which contains the OS, and that's the worst case scenario.

 

if something goes wrong, i just restore.

again, what?

there's nothing wrong about having a certain flow to handle stuff. if it works for you, then you don't neeeed to change (but it still doesn't hurt).

i had that habit years ago, too. i changed. with vista, i did. i learned all from new, and thought "stop the manual fiddling and rearanging of the os. that's what made me manual refiddling it all the time for years. just let it be how it wants to be and then it works great by default". so i use the folders in c:\users\davepermen\ for movies, music, all personal files.


the best thing that happened for me, was getting a windows home server. i never believed how much it changed the computer world for me.


edit: btw, to have something go wrong, you have to disable uac.. *smile* i couldn't resist

 

I have 3 partitions, XP, W7, and one big one for music, docs...etc (everything I back up on my external).

 

There is some advatanges.
One advantages that works for me is: I the program contain some history files. when you reinstalled wins, you wont have to worry about these files.
For example: many game saved files is located under document folder. My document folder is located on D particion. Therefore, when I reinstalled files, I do not have to worry about missing these saved files.

 

For that you have to back-up as well, it doesn't just magically appears.

What if, you back-up data everyday at 6 p.m., and you have some new data that you copied/downloaded/edited before taking today's back-up, and something goes wrong at 5 p.m.? All the new data created/edited in the last 23 or so hours gone?

I CBF to back-up everytime I download a 30MB song.

lul, you make it sound like if someone has UAC enabled, NOTHING can go wrong.

 

well, yes, if uac is on, nothing on your system can really go wrong.

so the only thing not saved by uac is the user data. and if that goes wrong, having it on a different partition doesn't help as well. i need to rely on a recent up to date backup.

and yes, i could lose some not-yet-backed up data. but that can happen any time. home server does daily backups, not more (except manual ones). if i try something freaky, i backup before. otherwise, the chances are so slim (and it doesn't hurt if you have to redownload one audiofile because of some loss actually).
when it would hurt, i prebackup, yes. (like i did backup my vista before installing win7, and then restoring vista afterwards after i killed win7 in 5 minutes of usage )

 

That's not true actually.

And this is not the topic of the thread. Let's keep the advantages and disadvantages of partitioning to the other thread?

 

sure (and it's still true *hrrhrr* i have too less sleep currently, can't stop to argue )


but it raises another point: how often does something go wrong? how important is it, then to have a "fast restore as i only have to restore c: and not d: ??".

and backups normally are at least network-incremental (daily ones are incremental on homeserver, weekly ones aren't, or so, no clue, but always network-incremental), so creating a backup shouldn't take long (and goes on in the background anyways, so it never hurts).

 

the only thing so far that "killed" my os "partiton" was some mbr-fiasco. and a simple restore from boot disk by entering "fixmbr" and "fixboot" solved this. much faster than any restore process (at leat, when booting from stick, not from disk).

i had more full-hd failures => more often, the full backup was needed anyways, and the gains are simply non-existent.

i really suggest a winhomeserver for everyone. microsoft should make such a pedition: one home server for each family

 

I can't think of ANY advantage to separating the OS and programs in two partitions. (Data is another issue discussed elsewhere.) I can think of a BIG disadvantage to having the OS separate from the programs. That would be the registry and "COMMON FILES" directory. Most applications put info into the registry that would require that the OS partition be in perfect sync with the programs partition. If you restored from an old OS backup, the latest apps you installed would no longer work even thought they were still in the programs partition.

Programs and the registry are so intertwined, and since the registry HAS to be on the OS partition, it dosen't really make much sense to separate the OS from the Programs.

Gary

 

yes. about data, it's up to a users option (but that doesn't mean everyone can suggest it's own way as best way ). but apps and system are one, they should be all on the same, all at default place. it's the most simple, and most bugfree thing.

 

Now we are in TOTAL agreement!!! ...big ol' grin...

Gary

 

we where from the beginning. (and i stated that, even. you just didn't agree on this hahahahaha)

i need to get into bed..

 

g'night then!

Gary