[Sandwich]

I'm asking you guys not because I can't decide (I dislike partitions), but because I'm interested in what you prefer.

With me, it went like this:

Way way back when, nobody (including me) had HDD's big enough to partition.

Then came the age of partitioning, when I had a drive for storage, a drive for games, a drive for the OS, etc etc ad nauseum.

Currently, I hate partitions. If I run out of room on my (hypothetical) 20Gb MP3 partition, then what? Why in the world should I limit myself like that? So now I have one single fairly highly organized drive. Instead of a "Downloads" partition, I have a "Downloads" directory, which by nature is not limited in space.

So, anyone else followed this path of reasoning?

[Col. Fishguts]

Multiple partitions. Why ? Since Windows gets slow and messy after a year (tops), I need to reinstall from time to time. So I have a partition for the OS (around 10 GB), which can be formatted without losing the data on the other partitions. Simple as that.
Of course when you use multiple HDs you can live without partitions, but I prefer it anyway for organisatorical/aestethic reasons.

[aldo_14]

I would use a partition for different OS' (if i had the HD space), but that's about it.

[diamondgeezer]

Winders and program files on one partition, everything else on t'other (most games don't need to be reinstalled). And if I'm getting short of space, I just use Partition magic to add an extra GB

[SadisticSid]

Never had anything else than 1 partition per drive unless you need different filesystems. The only other reason is having a backup partition on a single drive system, although I've got an old 60GB in there for that purpose.

[Fury]

Its always better to keep operating system on the fastest HDD on your computer. Almost always this is also the biggest of one of the biggest HDD's you have in the particular computer, meaning it most likely is big enought to be partitioned.

I don't like to have a lot of partitions. Just two is enough for system drive. 10 Gb for Windows and installed applications, thats enough. If a HDD is not a system disk, then its in one partition.

That way you can reinstall Windows and not lose anything important in a moments notice or in a case you can't get OS to boot anymore. And this also leaves all remaining space to anything you put to other partitions.

That's what I prefer, keeping OS in its own primary partition and everything else in secondary partition.

[IPAndrews]

Like Fishguts said. Problem isn't as bad these days as it was with 95 & 98, but it is still a problem.

[Turnsky]

i keep my 40 gig drive for the OS and some important programs..(browsers, that sorta thing) word processing, etc.

my 120gb drive is for my game installs, foxfire, and photoshop.
it's a security thing, really, i can safely scrub my primary drive with minimal concern.

it depends on how many drives you have, really, altho some OS's like to be on their own little slice of HD (i.e separate partition).

[FreeTerran]

i have 2 hdds with 5 partitions

C:\ (Windows) 1.07GB/5.00GB(21%), D:\ (Progs & MusiC) 16.4GB/37.2GB(44%), E:\ (Zoggn ) 30.5GB/60.9GB(50%), F:\ (WaYne) 5.9GB/10.7GB(55%), G:\ (Movies) 28.5GB/37.2GB(76%) {Local total} 82.4GB/151GB (54.5%)

[Setekh]

Of course there's the multiple OSes, that would mean partitions for sure. Apart from that, though, I do like to have two partitions - one for data (like images, downloads, the such) and the other my OS and programs. Makes formatting easier.

[Ghostavo]

I have 3 120GB HDD, so partitions are pointless...

If I had a simple pc, I would still choose a single partition, seeing that in some cases making partitions is a pure waste of space... if the OS had a specific, maximum use of space, in that case it might be ok, but if you want to partition so it doesn't get confused in there, why just not put the whole OS dir as unviewable (don't remember the correct term, invisible?)

[Hippo]

Originally posted by Sandwich


Currently, I hate partitions. If I run out of room on my (hypothetical) 20Gb MP3 partition, then what? Why in the world should I limit myself like that? So now I have one single fairly highly organized drive. Instead of a "Downloads" partition, I have a "Downloads" directory, which by nature is not limited in space.

So, anyone else followed this path of reasoning?

The only patition i have is set up for FRAPS movies, (10Gigs) since they can get into 4-5Gigs uncompressed. That way it forces me to format them so i can keep recording, and i won't accidentally run out of hard drive space with huge movies with indiscrimate names...


Oh, that and i've got a 3gig partition set aside for VirtualRam...

[Stealth]

yeah, since i've been formatting so often, i considered having a 40 GB partition or so just for movies, MP3s, etc. but i bought another hard drive instead.

it would make life easier i'd think

[Fractux]

I've got 3 partitions.

3 GB partition for XP
24 GB for Games / Movies
11GB for Apps / Scratch disk / Music / Storage

It's suited me well enough for my needs.

[Taristin]

I don't have enough HDD space to effectivly partition.

[Cyker]

I have to use partitons as I use FAT32 and try to keep the cluster size as low as possible, which basically means 8GB partitions.

I also have one ultra-large partition for random crap (i.e. mp3s, movies, games etc.).

I would like to use NTFS and just have 2 partitions (One for OS and programs that refuse to go anywhere else, and one for data and nice programs), but the problem with NTFS is that if your OS goes tits up, you're totally screwed (Ever tried to recover stuff or repair an OS on an NTFS partiton? It ain't easy...)

In Linux I started off with 1 big partition, but when I started running low I moved /home onto new HD and then mounted that on /home.
Now it's getting full again so I may mount my user area on a seperate HD

I have grown to love the Linux filesystem

[Gloriano]

Well I don't need partitions because I have 2 HD's 160&80 GB

[castor]

3 partitions:

- OS (small)
- highly "volatile" stuff (large)
- archived/a bit more permanent stuff (huge)

To reduce fragmentation of OS & archived stuff due to "tmp" files.

[Drew]

if i had an extra HDD id put all my games videos and music on one drive and my OS and all my documents on the other. So when im playing a game, one renders things and one runs the OS in the backround. Keeps things more efficient behind the scenes

[Kamikaze]

I use separate partitions, this can be useful to keep important files in their own partitions (separating system files/programs/data in a sense) and because I don't necessarily use the same filesystem across my system. Nowadays I stick /tmp on its own partition with the ext2 filesystem, but I use ext3 (or reiserfs) on most other partitions.

My current computer is partitioned like this:
/dev/hda6             274M  252M  8.3M  97% /
/dev/hdb2             7.4G  5.4G  1.7G  77% /usr
/dev/hda2             2.3G  1.6G  633M  72% /home
/dev/hda7             1.4G  376M  959M  29% /var
/dev/hdb3              16G   14G  1.3G  92% /home/shared
/dev/sda2             1.1G  1.1G  2.6M 100% /home/wine
With a 1 gig swap partition and a small /boot partition