One single partition or two?

[alegator]

My system drive is a 500Gb with a single partition with 249Gb free space. Would I be better off (faster performance) creating a 2nd partition for files (music, pictures, etc), thus reducing the system allocated space to say 100Gb? Thanks.

[stiltman]

Nope.
Seperate disk will increase performance

[midders]

There shouldn't be any difference in performance, but there are some advantages to using more than one partition.

Personally, I have a 10gb partition for windows (system) and then the rest of the drive for my data and program files (data). This allows for small ghost images of the system partition which can be stored on the data partition and will fit on a single DVDR. In the event of windows shooting itself in the foot, it is a matter of 5 mins to revert to a working system partition.

Multiple partitions also provide slightly better data protection as a failure of one partition can leave another intact.

Sláinte

midders

[DarrellS]

Two drives (or five in my case) are better than one. You can back up your OS on another drive in case the boot drive fails.

You can still find 80GB drives for boot drives and use 500GB and up for storage.

[alegator]

Thanks for the replies. I posted this question because I have about 110Gb of files I seldom access (music, videos,pictures, etc), and I thought that by placing all these files in a 2nd partition that I would be reducing the distance traveled by the drive's head in the system partition, hence increasing performance.
Of course I could move all these files to a 2nd physical drive, but I don't want to have a 2nd drive permanently connected to the system, specially since as I said it would be seldom accessed.
I found this article which supports the idea of performance increase by partitioning the drive:
http://www.acronis.com.au/resource/tech-talk/2004...-introduction.html

[redwudz]

You might get a slight decrease in seek time with two partitions, but I doubt it. You are using the same controller and the same hard drive. To me, a partition isn't much different than a folder. But I do use a large boot drive for archival storage besides having the OS on it on one of my PCs. Since I'm not using the boot for encoding or capturing, the seek and access times don't matter too much. But if I was wanting to do disc intensive work, I wouldn't use the boot drive, even with a second partition. JMO.

[juststarting]

Often wondered about system on one partition and programs on another. When the program is stored on another partition other than C: does the "undo changes with System Restore" function the same? If a program such as Ghost is used, would both C: and the Program partition both have to be backed up at the same time to keep it from getting out of whack?
Sometimes certain programs don't ask where they are to be stored. What about some of the free downloads, such as Give Away Of The Day, should they be kept on the C drive so that the registration isn't lost if a restore is needed?

Your thoughts. . .