Is what I've done right? Partition question

All my life, I had 40 - 50 GB for C:\ to put Windows on, and the rest is for D: (I have a 500 GB HDD on my notebook)

Recently, I was helping a friend fix his computer via TeamViewer, and I saw the he has a separate partition for everything so I felt jealous and did the same

Now it is as follows:

C: = 40 GB (Windows Parition)
D: = 500 MB (Documents)
P: = 1 GB (Pictures)
M: = 15 GB (Music)
V: = 354 GB (Videos)
S: = 15 GB (My Software Collection)
O: = 40 GB (Other, includes: Downloads, training, comedy, etc)


I dunno I feel this is a bit more organized

What do you think of this new setup?

I left 40% more space just incase I need to copy anything new to these folders for so for example, I am only using 200 MB of my Documents space, but I gave it 500 MB anyway to be on the safe side, same with the other folders

 

Honestly? That's a bit overkill.

I can see reason for having photos all grouped together on the platter, but only for when library thumbnails are loaded or something. Aside from that, I don't think you'll see any performance increase over having just the 2 partitions you started out with.

I have C: (SSD) for OS and essential programs. I then have 750GB for D:, which has Steam, Games, Music, Docs, Pics, Vids, and downloads.

There are those of us who believe in having C: for OS and D: for most everything else, but what your friend has seems more like different filing cabinets. Ok, so you've got these cabinets of these varying sizes. They're now fixed, for the most part. Moving data around becomes cumbersome. You can manage the partitions using some free tools that would allow you to resize and whatnot. But... why?

Oh, another thought... If your drive letters are indicative of physical location on the platter, then you've relegated your software to nearly the slowest moving part of the disc, while your photos get prime real estate. Your videos, which don't require read rates of anything more than the actual playback bitrate (give or take) are also given better real estate than downloads and stuff. Anything you've forced to the center of the platter will yield the SLOWEST read/write speeds. NOT TO MENTION... doing something that requires the head to move from C: to O: that's a lot of traveling and will only serve to slow things down.

No, I think you are way better off in your original setup.

 

I am completely agree with anseio.

I don't like to have many partition on my HDD, I've tried it, and I noticed that was way slower and a bit confusing having more than 2 partition on my laptop.

I have now an SSD that I use only for my OS, and another HDD with 500GB that I partition in two with the same space.
In the first I keep all my data (software, pictures, etc..) and in the second one, multimedia files like (movies, music) and works great for me.

In my opinion 7 partitions are too much for a HDD.

 

Agreed. I've got a 2TB external (200GB on the outside for games, and the rest on the inside for multimedia). Once I separated the two from each other, my games performed much better. That's about the extent of my partitioning desires though. Keep rare and bulky things out of the way, but let everything else manage itself.

 

I don't know about performance, but this setup is kinda, dunno, not very practical. What if you have more than one gig of photos. I keep simply two partitions, 1st is OS, other one is Data, where I have created separate folders for different types of data (movies, music, applications, etc.). Also Windows comes always with organized folders in "My Documents". If you don't want to keep them on OS partition, you can always move them to another one .

 

We have the same setup!
Except mine is an anagram of I AM LORD VOLDEMORT.

No seriously, for sanity's sake, revert it back to simple C, D, E.
I know I would if I had an SSD.

 

That is a lot of partitions. I just have C:/ as Windows and D:/ as my user folder (docs, pics, movies, music, etc.). basically anything I have that I want to keep between Windows reinstalls (that are not programs) are on D:/. The whole point of partitioning isn't to divide everything up as if each partition was a folder, it's just to segregate things like disc fragmentation and I OS reinstalls.

 

For me, C:\OS, D:\Data, E:\Downloads.

E:\ is the general drop zone for everything before it gets sorted into D. It's currently, and usually, a giant mess of files.

 

Exactly what I do. I just keep a large enough partition labeled "storage".

 

I hate partitions, they are a hangover from older OS's and are totally unnecessary on a modern OS such as windows 7. To me they are like a kind of straightjacket in that once you choose the size, you are effectively locked into that choice forever (yes I know there are tools to re-size/delete/move etc.).

Folks, there is a good reason why folders exist with names like pictures, documents, videos!

 

This has been argued ad nauseum in other threads. Suffice to say there are two camps - each stronly opinionated. My firsthand experience says that the Win7 defragmenter and file management is not good enough on its own. If it were, then my friends wouldn't be complaining of how sloooooow everything has become. Simple separation into C: & D: and everything kicked right back up.

I used to think that partitions were a lifelong committment. Once C: was set, it could not be changed; because D: could not be moved at the beginning of the partition. Turns out there are quite a few free partition management tools that can handle this task with grace and ease. I've been using EASEUS Partition Manager (free version) and have been able to move the wall between C: and D: with nothing more than the standard risk disclaimer of possible data loss.

 

Windows 7 defragmenter does a good job. Your friends might want to upgrade their hard drives, the bigger the HD, the lesser the file fragments.

 

If you're a notebook user, one giant partition is all you need. If you're a notebook abuser, as many NBR tweakers are, data separation for the sake of easy OS reinstalls when you've f-ed your machine to hell is necessary. This is regardless of defrag or usage of the folders within Users. (Sidenote: I hate having to take ownership of files that I happened to save in Users. I specifically avoid saving files in there because that whole system is a real PITA.)

 

Ok I guess everyone say that this is wrong

I have just spent the whole day setting up my folders (docs, pics. vids, downloads, etc) in Windows to point to those partitions and shared each one of them on the network

It was a tedious task, so ill leave it till the next time I format and will go back to the C / D setup

I guess y'all are right to backup now I have to go to each partition separately and copy its contents to my external HDD



I hate my friend he made me jealous and I wasted my full day

 

You contradict yourself in the same statement. IF Win7 defrag did such a good job... ON the HDD's that it was installed on, then why would they have to upgrade their HDD's? You can't come out and tell me that the service is just fine and that the hardware is the issue. I don't get how you think that Win7 defrag can be so great when it reports that it had just been run, but any other analysis shows that there are over 30K fragmented files AND there are user data files all the way on the outside of the platter where vital OS/program files should be instead.

 

Personally, I would not base my partition scheme for 'performance' reasons(well, it is a side issue). I would still partition my disk(if it is large enough say 500G) into C: D: E: where C: is the windows, D: is occasional access files(photos etc.) and E: is only for ISO(or rarely touched thing)

The C: would not be too large, around 100G as I would occasionally do a image backup and 100G is still manageable size. This save me LOTS OF time if my disk go belly up.

In other words, my main purpose of partitioning is to make disk imaging into manageable size. As for the defrag, it is a 'who cares' and just let windows do it, may not be the 'fastest' but I don't see scentific evidence that it is noticeably slower either.

 

You need to run the defragmenter manually because the auto run will only start after a certain idle time (but stops upon system activity), so it will never a get a chance to complete the defragmentation fully. So, you are literally fooled by the "last run time", unless your system had been idle for a considerable time (hours).

Getting a bigger hard drive will never allow the fragments in the first place, so you don't need to defragment frequently.

 

Again... you've said that Win7 defragmenter is perfectly fine, yet also state that it's clearly NOT fine because its idle-time process is easily interrupted. You then recommend that people run the tool manually?

OK, so exactly HOW does this make it a good defrag process? If its background running is so subject to interference, then it shouldn't be an option, right?

Again, recommending a bigger hard drive does not address the fact that Win7 defrag is sub-par compared to several free tools out there.

 

LOL, just ignore that coolguy he is not cool at all and has no idea what he's talking about

 

Well guys, I just discovered that I HAVE to reformat and restore my backup files again.

Reason is, I have shared each of these drives like the M drive which is for Music on my netowrk, but if you try to access that folder from any other drive it says no permissions although I have granted read permissions to everyone. But if I share a folder individually it works fine.

This was such a bad idea

formatting now bye bye

 

You can use partitions to retain all of your files between Windows reinstallations. Major plus right there, no need to backup onto an external drive and wait hours transferring all your movies.

That's a good idea, never thought of that. I just use my desktop for downloads and stuff.

 

That's exactly the idea and why I have a "storage" partition. Plus I dual boot and it's easier to grab stuff in my "storage" partition from both OS, rather than dig in one OS partition from another OS partition. It's better for indexing and no admin popup that you get sometimes when trying to open a folder from another OS.