Partitioning Your Hard Drive

I disagree only a little bit. Suppose I have C: for Windows, and D: for Data. When I want to do a clean install for Windows I just delete C: and re-install Windows or ghost the partition there. D is untouched so I don't need to backup my music/data, then copy them back again later. Well, I tend to re-install once a year for speed.

I'm a DJ with (approx) 475k(+) song-files on 6 diff twrs each with 3-250gb & 1-500gb drvs. Two or 3 times per year I need to re-format & re-load MicWins' curse on several of my p.c.'s & now, I want to partition to save massive amounts of copying time. I am bldg another twr with 2-750gb Seagate SATA drvs (32mb cache). I have partitioned & installed OS's on literally hundreds of IDE drvs, yet, not one SATA drv (I need to keep moving forward). Any advise??

EDITOR'S NOTE: Partitioning a SATA drive should be no different than on an IDE drive.

Also disagreeing here, Bob. My system is running as good as when it was installed 3,5 years ago. No reformat necessary, just a decent partitioning schema together with decent defrag software and a tool 'eRunNT' (makes a backup of your registry).

Regular registry backups saved my bacon once or twice, I have to admit but putting such a backup back and all problems were gone. My harddisk is divided up into 4 partitions (C=Windows, D=Programs, E=MyData, F=Temporary files and Swap).

It never takes more than 15 minutes to defrag C and D partition (with the most extensive defrag options enabled), because not a lot of files are moved/created/deleted there. I am a software junkie and (de-)install a lot, but as I said earlier...my system runs already for 3,5 years.

When I'm reading my mail in the morning my C and D partitions are defragged in the background and once a month I do a defrag from E and F (after a cleanup ofcourse) at night. This way I don't have to keep my machine running all day and all night, which saves in the power bill, I might add!).

Great article as usual Bob. I used to be into partitions. But these days prefer to use separate HDD. All the advantages, with better crash protection. Can even have an OS for each one if you like, as long as they can read each others file systems, no worries. Just about bullet proof! (: Keep up the good work m8.

Disagree w Bob. I create ~20 GB partition for the system.
Then a separate d: partition for data and documents, as well as an E: and possibly others for random crap.

The C drive is reserved for what I deem my normal and "essential" programs and utilities. All my data is on D:; all documents, Outlook psts, downloads, etc. I install non-essential stuff, like iTunes, VMware, test stuff, etc, on the E: partition.

This works great for me. I admit, however, that for my family I usually just install them into one partition.

I partitioned one of my hard disks into C and D drives respectively. C drive (30GB) holds Windows and installed programs whereas D (470GB) has all my data. Thus it's a piece of cake to do fast automated nightly backups of C drive to a different physical disk.

Disagree Bob, but I'm an experienced user. Keeping only windows and apps that MUST be on the C drive makes my weekly imaging to DVD much quicker and allows me to use only one disk for the image. The other partitions don't see nearly as many changes and thus need backing up/imaging less often.

this was a very helpful article; I was wondering about partitioning, but I forget that Uncle Bill and the elves are making life better for us all the time.

FWIW, I like 2 HDs, one for applications and the stuff Windows generates, and one for data only. has worked for me for years. I had both drives fail sequentially, oddly I had just backed up the data and it fried. No prob.

Month later, the C:\ drive fried. With bookmarks and address books backed up, almost no prob, but a pain to re-install all the little applications I had picked up here and there. Note, of course, that I have bought and paid for Windows and Office in my hot little hands.

I agree 50%. Putting swap or pagefile in another partition in the same disk is not a good idea since its just make the disk head more busy. But putting it into another disk drive is good since its use another disk head to write and read and will increase performance. i also dont recommend to install programs on separate partition as this will also increase seek time.

I disagree for the next 50%. Having only 1 partition on a single disk drive may invite many trouble to come. if some powerloss occur and that only partition that hold everythings is going to corrupt (corrupted mft or boot sector maybe), and chkdsk cant theorically solve that, then the new empty hardisk is waiting (means the data is unrecoverable). all 5-years effort to collect all that mp3 and movie will be such a waste. n i found that having multiple partition but not too many, will help manage the file in the better way, even beginer have the same feeling like this. we set c: as windows only(swap file n programs also) and d: as data only(mp3, movies, installer etc), we absolutely can easily remember on which partition the data resides. we dont have to remember our data in a folder that resides deep in the single partition. this will also decrease the size of mft for 1 partition and will prevent the mft to be easily fragmented. also if the single partition become fragmented, the partition will take much time to be defrag than having multiple partition. we know which drive to defrag and skip the aprtition that is not heavily fragmented. also when a single file become fragmented, the fragment piece will scatter throughout the drive. let say explorer.exe is fragmented and 2 piece in the top, 5 piece in the middle and the other piece separately in the bottom. explorer.exe will take much time to load as the disk head need to travel far from top to bottom of disk just for 1 file.

Guru Bob, When my FAT32 vs NTFS searches yielded (in technical terms) oodles and gobs of hits, and I saw the name Bob Rankin, I naturally checked this article first.

Interestingly, in spite of the article title ("Partitioning Your Hard Drive") and especially the first major section of the article ("How to Partition Your Hard Drive"), the article is about whether to (viz., why NOT to) partition a hard drive: It includes NO information on HOW to partition a hard drive.

For those of us who, after reading and considering your sage advice, still (think we) have a legitimate reason for partitioning a hard drive, could/would you tell us HOW to do so -- PLEASE? (If you have done so somewhere else, and I missed it, I apologize.)

EDITOR'S NOTE: In http://askbobrankin.com/changing_disk_partitions.html I mentioned that Windows has a command line utility called Diskpart, which I recommend for experts. Other commercially available and user-friendly programs for managing partitions include Partition Magic and Acronis Partition Expert.