[Grey Wolf]

What are the actual benefits of partitioning a hard drive?

I've been wondering this for a while. I actually tried bringing this up in the Q&A thread, but that descended into chaos. I also can't find a straight answer online, with people suggesting everything from a single partition to complex setups with a half-dozen partitions.

I'm asking because I'm building myself a computer for college in about a month or so, and I'm planning on putting in a 120GB SATA hard drive. So, would there be any actual benefit to partitioning the hard drive?

[Flaser]

I usually always use 2 partions at least if the computer only has a single hard drive.
The reason is I use one of them as a backup / installation partiotion. I keep a copy of all my stuff, the installation files of windows, all the system updates, drivers, web d/l-ed software, codecs ect. ect. on that partition.

It makes it organized and actually backing it up (onto mobile storage) is easier.
You may say this is unnecesary you can keep it ordered anyway.

The real benefit comes if your system partition craches - it makes re-installation a breeze since you have all necessary files at hand.
It also means you can simply format your system partion and ensure a clean start when installing the system.

[Hippo]

yeah, its more orginization and seperation then anything AFAIK...

[WMCoolmon]

Mostly from a backup/organizational POV. It's also necessary if you plan on running multiple OSes (Although you can partition a drive after you've been using it).

There may be some speed benefits. I think partitioning may control the *physical* location that files are stored on, so if a program were to save a file, it would be more likely to be in the immediate area, rather than next to your OS config files. However, I might be completely wrong about that.

It also lets you use multiple filesystems...although unless you're using extremely old programs or another OS, this is probably a moot point, since you might as well just use NTFS for everything.

[Flaser]

...unless you're into old/-er games like me.
A fat-16/32 partition comes into hand than.

[Scuddie]

Actually it is more of an inconvenience to multipartition your drive if you are running only one OS.  NTFS and ext3 are both excellent filesystems.  If you want to utilize multipartitioning, but have no reason to do so at this point, I would suggest partitioning 80GB of the disk, and leaving the rest blank.  If you need that storage space later for any reason, just use Partition Magic to add to the primary partition.

Anyhow, you can't use a disk without partitioning it first .

[WMCoolmon]

I disagree. Multipartioning can be VERY handy, if used properly. I've got almost all my installed things in the D: drive; if I want to get at a specific program's files, I can do so with five clicks and a scroll. If you put everything on one partition, you have to look in Program Files and sort through all the MS crap. You can do the same for 'projects' stuff.

And of course, there is the backing up thing as well.

[Stealth]

for linux it's always good to have more than one partition.  keep backup files on one partition, the operating system on another, testing on another partition, etc.

[Scuddie]

That's where I also disagree.  Installing programs on different partitions from the OS ensures that whatever is autoloaded will be referencing on a seperate drive, and that is very inefficient.  I tried doing that once, but it took longer to load everything at startup, as well as loading any reference libraries.  Plus, going through all that MS crap?  I know of only three folders that WinXP creates; Documents and Settings, Program Files, and Windows/WINNT.  With the amount of crap on my drive, that is but a grain of salt.  But whatever suits you, should be used by you.

[Bobboau]

make a 10 gig partition for the os, and a 110 gig partition for 'stuff'

[IceFire]

For a while I had 2 hard drives and now I can't live without a C and D drive for HHDs.  Even when the first old drive decided to make a loud racket and I took it out...I decided to keep two drive leters.

I've got 12GB on C and 44GB on D.  Great drive too...Seagate Barracuda.  Silent...no noise.

When life decides to be nice to me again and maybe grant me a job or something, I'll probaby buy a second drive, and partition it into parts and put a Linux install on one of them (which I understand would mean that I'd have 3 partitions ).