Partitioning

ronboronbo Connecticut
edited August 2008 in Hardware
Can anyone tell me the advantages or disadvantages of partitioning a drive? I always partition a large drive into 3 or 4 partitions. My nephew never partitions a drive not matter how big it is. He just installs them and makes folders in them to store his stuff. I thought by partitioning a large drive into smaller partitions it will be faster to defrag when you have to. Well he never defrages at all. When his computer starts running slow he just formats the OS and starts again. I am starting to wonder myself about defraging. Last time I defraged using O&O defrag I got "invalid partition table" after the defrag and had to reformat and install windows again. I don't know if the defrag did this or if the drive is starting to go south on me? I never had this problem using Diskeeper so I might go back to that program again. But is there really and advantage gained by partitioning into smaller partitions? Thanks for any reply....

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited August 2008
    It's good to create partitions because you can isolate your operating system from most of your valuable files. The only thing I have to back up to reformat is my Firefox profile, while everything else of value to me remains intact on the second partition. I give Windows 5GB, and all the remaining space I do with as I wish.

    Generally I do not recommend any additional partitions because there's no telling how you're going to use the recreational space. Just leave it as one big glob and organize it all under folders.

    As for defragging, I admit that I have not in years. I don't really see the point in it since I do very little file shuffling. For your issue, I'd chalk it up to a fluke or a crappy program.
  • ronboronbo Connecticut
    edited August 2008
    Thanks much for the reply Thrax. 5 gigs for windows,wow. I thought I was being stingy by giving it only 39 gigs. Tell me, do you create a separate program files to install programs in or do you use the one in C windows? I will agree with you on a crappy program for defraging. I heard O&O was good but I should have stayed with Diskeeper because it never gave me issues.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited August 2008
    Like I said, I have two partitions: C:\ and D:\

    For C:\, where Windows is held, the only other files on that partition are programs and updates that would not let me install them anywhere else. For example, I have Adobe CS3 Master Collection installed, and while the majority of the 10GB Photoshop & Dreamweaver install is on D:\, it dumps a ton of files to C:\ as well. All my games go to D:\Games, all my applications to D:\Programs, all my files to D:\Pictures-Misc and and all my archives to D:\Zips, so on and so forth.

    Even after months and months of usage, the C:\ drive still has 1GB left, which is plenty.
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