Become a Patron of Ask Leo! A partition is nothing more than a way to organize the physical space on a hard drive. We typically think of a hard drive as a single disk, but partitioning allows you to split a hard drive so it appears to be multiple different drives. In addition, most contemporary computers or Windows 10 installations come with additional hidden partitions. This discussion is only about the partitions you see in Windows File Explorer when Windows is running.
It depends on you, your data, how you use your computer, and its hardware configuration. I used to recommend defragmenting periodically. If you have a specific reason to partition, then by all means, go for it. As I said when I started, there are many different opinions on partitioning. You may feel differently than I do. Subscribe to Confident Computing! Less frustration and more confidence, solutions, answers, and tips in your inbox every week.
Download right-click, Save-As Duration: — 2. One reason I never partition is that you may partition enough to hold Windows and your programs plus some room to grow.
As for organization and backup, I keep all of my personal files in my OneDrive folder and its subfolders. My OneDrive folder is designated as my Documents folder and Downloads, Pictures, Music, and Video are subfolders of the OneDrive folder so everything is automatically backed up in addition to my Easus Todo system image and nightly incremental backups.
Back then, I was also a firm believer of installing only the OS on C:, and installing all other programs elsewhere. Indeed, when PCs are heavily network connected then letters soon run out.
I have two 2-terabyte external drives that I use for backups. I robocopy changes weekly to A:, then robocopy changes monthly from A: to B:. That gives me two extra drive letters to work with that would otherwise be wasted. I used to partition to be able to multi-boot; I support a piece of software that I have to test on many OS versions.
My Acer came with the drive partitioned into C and D. A year later that 3-year-old Acer died permanently though. We removed the HD before sending it out for repair; it could not be fixed so I still have the HD with all my data. Why to partition, Leo?
Your hard drive is a filing cabinet. Yes, you have created folders in it. But this drawer might have , folders in it. Good luck looking through all that!
It could be perfectly alphabetical, but the sheer size of it makes it unwieldy. My partitioned drive has drawers C:, D:, E: and F: where I can store folders related to work applications in one drawer, multimedia files in a second, games files in a third and so on, making it much easier to find things without having to search a single drawer the size of a small country.
THAT is why we partition drives. I organize things in folders anyway, not partitions. Definitely partition. I typically install my OS I run Windows and always clean install instead of upgrading. Once I have customized my settings and installed all patches and applications I create an image of my C partition. Eventually after a number of months, performance starts to degrade as garbage piles up Windows has never done a good job with garbage collection.
At that point I replace my C partition with the previously made image, apply all outstanding patches then make a new image. I like partitions!! I keep! The hard.. My Vista laptop came with two partitions, and a hidden one for the OS Restore. The second visible partition was for data. The C, E, and hidden drives drove me nuts and the second drives were always confused.
I gave up, killed the partition nonsense, reformatted and installed new. Partitions are outdated, unnecessary, and usually cause later problems.
I use my C Drive to run the computer and try to keep it small. I for Opus programs. At the end I have five drives that are external drives. With this setup, if you have an unrecoverable crash you can just reformat and reinstal Windows and lose none of your data.
If you just have the C drive and are not particularly computer savvy you are likely to lose all your data. I have always used just the one partition but recently decided to go for two partitions; one for OS and installed programs C — second for data only G. I store full system images on external HDD, and that system gives me much smaller images to work with.
Means quicker creation and restoration times plus uses less space on external hard drive. Doing it this way the folders can grow to any size instead of dealing with the problem of one of the partitions outgrowing its size. In 30 years I have never lost my D, E or F drives partitioned 2 drives but many, many times have had to re-install my c drive backup.
In most cases file corruption or virus attacks will happen to the main drive not to general program areas. I have only ever backed up my c drive and always to a usb drive with perfect results.
With the speed of modern drives it is not necessary to partition a drive. If you have never had a hard drive fail, then you are about due. They all have mechanical moving parts and will eventually fail. I would never trust my important data to just one location. I work for a HD manufacture and have talked with hundreds if not thousands of people who have lost their data because it is not backed up.
Backup is a fraction of the cost of Data Recovery. I want to just have my hard disc with one C partition how do I remove D and save all data to C at the same time. Well, to each his own opinion.
After managing backups on dozens of office computers for several companies over the last 15 years, I have learned this: Almost any single partition hard drive can be salvaged using a variety of methods. The only times I have seen catastrophic loss of data was on hard drives with multiple partitions.
Ask anyone who has lost mission critial data. Once that happens, they often become converts to single partitions. Internally, I would use the second HD for all of my personal data and suchlike, including a Downloads Folder with separate Sub-Folders for each downloaded ancillary, whether those be programs or files. Still internally, I would have automatic back-ups to the original HD, which would also contain the usual programs, systems etc such as Windows. Generally those main systems such as Windows have some form of Recovery such as CDs, without a need to backup.
Externally, as I am actually running, I have been forced to use the internal HD for all of my personal requirements including the Downloads Folder; and as supplied, it has a D: Partition with the general Systems, Windows etc. Whilst it is fairly easy to find out the range of standard programs such as Windows, required to do a Recovery, it is more difficult to keep track of all those miscellaneous programs, routines etc garnered over the years.
This is where the Downloads Folder comes in to play, being an inherent Aide-Memoire of those programs. I have four hard disks in my computer. Partitioning just the first one 1TB as C: and D: was advantegous for me because the system files and some software that insisted on C: were causing frequent fragmentation problems and if left as a whole, every defrag would have taken hours. Now with C: sized as MB, defrag takes only about minutes.
I found out that D: and other drives need defragging only once or twice a year which can be done overnight.
Another advantage is the infections and searches are usually in C: and scans are much quicker this way. It is also easy to back up all the drive to a fraction of one of the 1. I used to have several partions but now have the same 3 on each of 3 hard drives in 2 removable caddies:- C for OS and programs. D for downloaded Program installation files and E for all my data. I regularly clone the whole of drive 1 to drive 2 using Paragon Drive Copy. Then remove it and insert the drive 3 to which I copy the following week or so.
All 3 drives are fully bootable. I also have a tendency to forget which partition I put a particular file, picture, or whatever in. This is also a very easy way when you install a program, yet make it accessible from either desktop. Hope this helps some of you. I have been doing this for years, and as I have my own company with quite a bit of work, I can honestly say, that this is very good!
The last partition is ONLY for back-up purposes. Hope this helps! As Leo pointed out, multiple partitions in a single physical drive do not protect you against hard disk failure and, yes, since it may cause files you need concurrently to be physically distant from each other on the hard disk, due to partitioning, it will slow down the computer being that hard disk reading is one of the slowest things a computer does. Certainly, Windows files are being used almost constantly.
If you place your data files in another partition, the reading mechanism will be jumping all over if you happen to need to scan a large database. What would be the reason for supplying new computers with partitioned hard disks? At present, the disk with GB can be seen everywhere with the expansion of computer disk space, so to partition a hard drive with a large amount of space become more and more urgent.
How to partition a hard drive? Maybe use 3rd-party partition utility. So kind of you! The more useful information I have found throuth the article—Guidelines on how to partition a hard drive by Creating, Deleting, Formatting and Resizing Partition. Share with you all. Hi,I deleted the partition on my hard drive,i deleted the D drive and i was left with the drive labelled C. So far so good!! I thought if i deleted the D drive,the capacity i was deleteing would be transferred to the C drive,so doubling the C drive.
Why has this happened,i have restarted the Samsung NC10 but still no gain in the C drive. Thanks Alan. Is a partition useful against virus attack? I think to duplicate data in D and E disk-partition so if one is attacked, I have the back-up here in the same hard drive. Is it OK? Hi Leo — good article. In context of size of hard drives these days, is this a reason not to partition?
In fact, it would tend to decrease usable space. If one drive fills up to almost full, some of the free space in the drive might become unusable. I find partitioning very useful in organising major types of data such as: documents, software, movies, recovery, projects. Its also very useful because when the system goes down, only c: drive is affected none of the data. I also have a second internal hard drive for backup of the first drive. Menu Menu. Search Everywhere Threads This forum This thread.
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JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. Previous Next. BlahBlahYouToo Lifer. Jul 10, 12, 3 0. Last edited by a moderator: Sep 30, Campy Senior member. Jun 25, I have both my drives as 1 big partition. Works fine. Davidh Platinum Member. Jun 20, 2, 0 You should be able to use it in one big partition. I've heard you can increase it a little by partitioning it according to platter count. I just leave my 3 platter 1TB drives in one partition and it works fine.
Feb 6, 17, 60 Perhaps you want to run Linux alongside Windows, but your computer can't handle a virtual machine. You can create a new drive partition for Linux without touching your existing Windows system. Alternatively, you could install an older version of Windows on a separate partition for backwards compatibility purposes. Another multi-platform use for partitioning is to work with multiple file systems. While you won't need to do this with your internal drive, it can make external drives more useful if you use them with multiple OSes.
Making one partition FAT32 or exFAT would work with pretty much any platform, while you could still keep a separate Mac-friendly file system on another partition.
On the flipside, there are several reasons you should avoid partitioning your hard drive. Here are a few of them. If you're not careful, having multiple partitions could lead to a data loss disaster. While Windows shows separate entries for each partition you've created, those partitions are all still on the same physical drive. Because of this, if your hard drive fails, is destroyed by a natural disaster, or otherwise stops working, you'll lose everything on it. This could be a shock for a new user, who's used to every drive in the This PC window representing a separate physical device.
Thus, backing up your data in Windows , no matter what partition it's on, is crucial. You need to have multiple copies of data for a proper backup. One of the biggest hassles when you have several partitions is keeping them straight. With any more than three or four partitions, you'll likely lose the organization benefits just trying to keep track of them. And even with an extra partition or two, you'll still have to set up Windows to save your files and software on the other partitions.
This is more complex than saving everything on one partition, making it unnecessary for most people. Additionally, the complexity of having multiple partitions introduces more chances for a mistake. When formatting one partition, you might accidentally erase another.
With one disk partition, you don't have to worry about overall disk space, aside from filling up the drive completely. But with multiple partitions, you can end up in a situation where you're cramped for space on one partition but have plenty of free space on another.
The limited space also means you could run into surprises. For instance, a major update to Windows 10 could require more space than you have free on its partition. You'd then have to remove some games from a separate partition, shrink that partition, then extend the one with Windows installed. Thankfully, Windows makes it pretty easy to shrink and extend partitions, so you're not locked into your initial sizes.
But resizing partitions frequently is inconvenient. Many power users like to partition for the reasons listed above, which is great. But for the average user, it's often not necessary. Typical computer users don't typically have enough files that they need a different partition to manage them. And they don't often install other operating systems, negating that benefit. While partitioning isn't overly complex, it also introduces some potential for issues for a novice user.
Compared to the low benefit, it's generally not worth the effort for them to partition.
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