Should I partition my hard disk?

On my laptop, I run both Windows XP and Windows 7, each in it's own partition. It can be rather confusing with the drive letters ("C:", "F:", etc.) changing depending which OS I'm using so I just go to 'My Computer' and rename the respective drives 'Windows XP' and 'Windows 7'. I also have a tendency to forget which partition I put a particular file, picture, or whatever in. To solve this, I try to put everything into the Windows 7 Drive (the larger of the 2 partitions) then create a shortcut to that item on the other drive's desktop. 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.

Basically, I ALWAYS partition a HDD (min. 2 / max. 5). 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! I always have "C" drive for system & programs, with "My Documents" being automatically on "D"(target); then either 1 or 2 others depending on the data and the amount. The last partition is ONLY for back-up purposes. "C" is never more than 18-20GB, and the back-up partition is never more than 15GB. With this system, I have never experienced problems, and should "C" become corrupted or crash, I restore it from the other partition. BTW, I turn off System Restore on all other drives/partitions! Hope this helps!

In these days of humongous inexpensive drives, I don't even consider dividing a drive into multiple partitions (letters) except in a notebook computer (where it may not be possible to have more than one internal drive). 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.

Hi Leo,
I bought a new ASUS eee netbook that already had the harddisk partitioned. I don't understand why and I would have preferred just one partition. What would be the reason for supplying new computers with partitioned hard disks?

At present, the disk with 2048GB 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!
shared the so detail article with us.
And I think maybe I will follow the steps you lined if I haven't found a more effcient way.
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 deleted the D drive to get more space on the C drive,but didn`t gain memory.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

Deleting one partition does not automatically give the space to another. You need to use partition management software (or Windows 7's disk manager) to increase the size of the remaining partition.

27-Oct-2010

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 ?

It's OK in that it doesn't hurt anything, but some viruses are known to infect all drives attached to your system.

03-Feb-2011

Hi Leo - good article. I thought that by making smaller partitions you'd reduce cluster size and therefore reduce the amount of wasted space on the drives. In context of size of hard drives these days, is this a reason not to partition? Thanks

@geebs
Partitioning will not reduce cluster size or the amount of wasted space on your drive. In fact, it would tend to decease usable space. If one drive fills up to almost full, some of the free space in the drive might become unusable.