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.

As long as both partitions are on the same HDD, there probably won't be any significant increase in performance.
Having a partition for the system (meaning Windows, installed programs) might be good for backup, since you can format only that partition and keep the second.

I've tried both setups and haven't seen any noticeable performance gain with windows when having separate partitions (on the same drive).

Personally I'd never partition a hard-drive.....I don't see any advantages to it.

It won't protect your data against crashes or anything as its the same physical drive.

I'd always just leave a drive as one single volume

It wouldn't be much faster (if any) as all data is still on the same physical drive, the harddisk head still has to make roughly the same amount of movement. You might have some benefit though, as your system files are less fragmented over the entire drive.

I would do 2 partitions, but mianly for a different reason: Should your OS get messed up you can format that partition without loosing your media.

Edit: I'm slow.

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

Well I guess theoretically there could be some sort of performance gain because of a smaller MFT, less fragmenting etc.
But as I said, it probably won't be noticeable at all on an average computer, considering how fast HDDs are nowadays.

quote:

---

Originally posted by alegator
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.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by alegator
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.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by alegator
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

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by djdannyp
It won't protect your data against crashes or anything as its the same physical drive.

---

(I speak out of experience... way too much experience tbh, ... damn HDDs )

quote:

---

Originally posted by CookieRevised
Except that it would indeed be more convenient to have seperate partitions for your system and for your data:

quote:

---

Originally posted by djdannyp
It won't protect your data against crashes or anything as its the same physical drive.

---

On the contrary! It will protect your data more than when you only use 1 partition. Reason is simple: 2 partitions mean 2 MFT's etc. When a crash occurs it usually means that a certain part of the HDD can't be accessed anymore or that the MFT is messed up or whatever. So you would still have the other partition.

Physical crashes where they entire drive would be messed up rarely occur. Usually it are messed up tables and file systems.

... And all other stuff people said...

(I speak out of experience... way too much experience tbh, ... damn HDDs )

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by djdannyp
Personally I'd never partition a hard-drive.....I don't see any advantages to it.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by SonicSam

quote:

---

Originally posted by djdannyp
Personally I'd never partition a hard-drive.....I don't see any advantages to it.

---

yeah because nobody ever installs multiple operating systems on 1 hard drive

Windows 7, Windows XP, Xubuntu

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by segosa
You can't install different operating systems on different partitions.

---

quote:

---

Not only that, but you also can't split up your OS and data over two partitions so that if the OS messes up you can format its partition without needing to back up data.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by segosa
I can't believe the sarcasm dripping off my post wasn't obvious..

---

indeed it wasn't. Keep practicing...

CookieRevised....it was a joke.

Also "configurated" is not a word.

quote:

---

Originally posted by CookieRevised

quote:

---

Originally posted by segosa
You can't install different operating systems on different partitions.

---

erm, that is exactly how my laptop is configurated atm, with 1 physical drive, 4 partitions, 3 different OSs on 3 different partitions (4th partition is data).

quote:

---

Not only that, but you also can't split up your OS and data over two partitions so that if the OS messes up you can format its partition without needing to back up data.

---

I do this all the time on my PC...

---

The way I usually set up my Windows computers is with two separate volumes -- one for system + applications, another for data including Windows user profiles.  There are several methods to moving the profiles; the easiest is changing the default user profile location by editing HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList before you create a new account.

This is the obvious way when building a computer with multiple drives and/or RAID.  Most people have a limited number of applications they want to install, but a lot of data. 

The system volume doesn't need a lot of space, doesn't need redundancy (OS and applications can be easily reinstalled if a drive fails), but the total performance of the computer depends on it and it should be fast.  This is where one would want to use a smaller high performance hard drive like the WD VelociRaptor, solid state drives, or even a few of the above configured in RAID0 for top performance.

The data volume doesn't need to be as fast, but it needs to be large and possibly redundant (if your data is worth the added cost and you don't want to lose it to a drive failure).  This is where one would use large slower drives like the WD Caviar Green, in RAID1 or RAID5 configurations to provide redundancy (when there is more than one).

This isn't over-engineered.  If you push your desktop computer hard and have a lot of data, this is how you would ideally want it.

If you are working with a single drive, the performance vs. size and reliability considerations do not apply, but you may still want to partition it according to the same principle.  It makes it easier to reinstall the OS should you need to, as well as simplifies backing up data if you are going to do that. 

The only downside to partitioning is people new to the concept often estimate the relative sizes completely wrong for their needs and end up running out of space on one volume while wasting lots of it on the other.  Most often they overestimate the required size of the system + apps volume by a huge amount; it really doesn't take much.