Hello, I have one laptop with 750Gb disk space. I have no partitions and I save all my important files in C/ . I wonder if its worth it to lose time / take the risk of failing partitioning. Right now if my windows fails I will just reinstall the windows and my important files will still be available on C/. What do you think ? Should I make another partition ? If so EaseUS is safe enough to partition OS partition ? I remember once I did that was a total failure after partition losing all data from C.
Purpose of HDD partion
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delellod123
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- Jun 5, 2012
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C: is your partition. no need to add another. Unless to install another operating system or for you to organize files. In that case, just creating a folder is equally effective.
- Oct 30, 2004
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Partitioning simply makes life easier. Do you put all your clothes in one place or do you have a sock / underwear drawer, shirts drawer, pants drawer, etc. Some reasons to partition.....I'll go all out and use as many possibilities one might consider for most users
1. Speed - A HD is twice as fast at the outer edge as it is on the inner edge, so do you want things randomly placed all over the place or do you want the things you use most at the fast end and the things you rarely use at the other ? Your drive is 3/4 full now and you just got a new massive game..... you want that new game you just bought with umpteen GB of textures loading at the fastest possible speed or the lowest possible speed.
a. So putting the OS on a small partition (say 128 GB C:\ ) at the outside edge will have your OS files at the fastest part of the drive.
b. The next most critical thing from a speed standpoint is the machines use of temp and swap files. A small (D:\) partition = 32 GB will suffice .... If you use a swap file (as most do), it will sit here and never be fragmented as it would in a single partition drive. It's presence during program game installs also wreaks some minor havoc as it force game and program files to be spread out all over the place cause one day it's on one spot and another day it's in another.
c. Next it's decision time .... you want your games or programs loading faster ? I'll use games in this example. Set aside the amount you need for gaming on E:\
d. If games went on E:\, then programs go on F:\
e. Then we can store data at the back end on G:\
f. And finally backups (say image of C:\) on H:\
So now the things you want to go the fastest are on the fastest part of the drive and the things you don't care about are on the slowest part of the drive.
2. Backups - Instead of searching thru you HD looking for individual folders to back up, this is now very easy.
a. Have back up program run daily for Data partition, to set up click the one folder (partition)
b. Back up the other partitions (or not .... nothing there is irreplaceable) only when you add a new program or game.
c. Image the OS say monthly to the backup partition; if OS gets fudged, do a restore.
3. Upgrades - You want to upgrade, just format C and Reinstall / Upgrade OS. Since you didn't format the entire drive to do the install, everything else remains intact.
a. Install programs over themselves at original location to set up registry on new OS install; all program customizations, modified toolbars, etc will remain intact.
b. many games will still work, if not repeat as above.
4. Another minor speed tweak you can do is format the temp files partition to FAT32 instead of NTFS or GPT. The extra file protections of NTFS / GPT are valuable for files that matter but temp files don't. So not needing file protection, you can lose the overhead associated with NTFS / GPT and pick up a little speed along the way as to Temp / swap file usage.
1. Speed - A HD is twice as fast at the outer edge as it is on the inner edge, so do you want things randomly placed all over the place or do you want the things you use most at the fast end and the things you rarely use at the other ? Your drive is 3/4 full now and you just got a new massive game..... you want that new game you just bought with umpteen GB of textures loading at the fastest possible speed or the lowest possible speed.
a. So putting the OS on a small partition (say 128 GB C:\ ) at the outside edge will have your OS files at the fastest part of the drive.
b. The next most critical thing from a speed standpoint is the machines use of temp and swap files. A small (D:\) partition = 32 GB will suffice .... If you use a swap file (as most do), it will sit here and never be fragmented as it would in a single partition drive. It's presence during program game installs also wreaks some minor havoc as it force game and program files to be spread out all over the place cause one day it's on one spot and another day it's in another.
c. Next it's decision time .... you want your games or programs loading faster ? I'll use games in this example. Set aside the amount you need for gaming on E:\
d. If games went on E:\, then programs go on F:\
e. Then we can store data at the back end on G:\
f. And finally backups (say image of C:\) on H:\
So now the things you want to go the fastest are on the fastest part of the drive and the things you don't care about are on the slowest part of the drive.
2. Backups - Instead of searching thru you HD looking for individual folders to back up, this is now very easy.
a. Have back up program run daily for Data partition, to set up click the one folder (partition)
b. Back up the other partitions (or not .... nothing there is irreplaceable) only when you add a new program or game.
c. Image the OS say monthly to the backup partition; if OS gets fudged, do a restore.
3. Upgrades - You want to upgrade, just format C and Reinstall / Upgrade OS. Since you didn't format the entire drive to do the install, everything else remains intact.
a. Install programs over themselves at original location to set up registry on new OS install; all program customizations, modified toolbars, etc will remain intact.
b. many games will still work, if not repeat as above.
4. Another minor speed tweak you can do is format the temp files partition to FAT32 instead of NTFS or GPT. The extra file protections of NTFS / GPT are valuable for files that matter but temp files don't. So not needing file protection, you can lose the overhead associated with NTFS / GPT and pick up a little speed along the way as to Temp / swap file usage.
- Oct 30, 2004
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We went that way out of necessity because of AutoCAD. It was Autodesk that sent out a product bulletin on the FAT32 tip and we noticed that right away .... though the impact has lessened in recent years. AutoDesk forces a lot of writes to disk and it having the temp files at the front of the drive is in fact quite noticeable. Any demanding program (PhotoShop, video editing, etc will see a very noticeable impact here.
The most noticeable impact is in item 1.b on minimum rather than average transfer rates where the smaller partition size enormously reduces head movement which is why having the temp files spread out over 32 GB instead of 2 TB has such a significant impact.
In gaming with 30 GB's games becoming the norm, regions can have hundreds of MB's of textures to load..... if region transitioning can drop from 9 seconds to 6 seconds, I find that noticeable and it doesn't cost a dime. Look at it this way .... booting Windows on a HD (21.2 secs) takes only 1.36 times as long as as it does from an SSD (15.6 secs) and adding a SSD is all the rage..... pulling a game off the inside track of a HD takes twice as long as the front edge. You won't have it at either edge so you will never see 2 X speeds but avoiding going 1.50 times slower is a worthy effort for a fe minutes of ta time I think.
But even if there were no speed impacts, the ability for format and replace the OS with a fresh install w/o having to format the entire drive makes it worth my time alone .... saves me a day of effort.
As for whether the cloud is safe, ask Jennifer Lawrence
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/jennifer-lawrence-mary-elizabeth-winstead-hacked-how-safe-are-your-cloud-photos-and-data/
I back everything up to an in house server, my laptop and a series of external drives that I store off site, swapping them out weekly. Backups of data partitions are done daily..... rest monthly.
The most noticeable impact is in item 1.b on minimum rather than average transfer rates where the smaller partition size enormously reduces head movement which is why having the temp files spread out over 32 GB instead of 2 TB has such a significant impact.
In gaming with 30 GB's games becoming the norm, regions can have hundreds of MB's of textures to load..... if region transitioning can drop from 9 seconds to 6 seconds, I find that noticeable and it doesn't cost a dime. Look at it this way .... booting Windows on a HD (21.2 secs) takes only 1.36 times as long as as it does from an SSD (15.6 secs) and adding a SSD is all the rage..... pulling a game off the inside track of a HD takes twice as long as the front edge. You won't have it at either edge so you will never see 2 X speeds but avoiding going 1.50 times slower is a worthy effort for a fe minutes of ta time I think.
But even if there were no speed impacts, the ability for format and replace the OS with a fresh install w/o having to format the entire drive makes it worth my time alone .... saves me a day of effort.
As for whether the cloud is safe, ask Jennifer Lawrence
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/jennifer-lawrence-mary-elizabeth-winstead-hacked-how-safe-are-your-cloud-photos-and-data/
I back everything up to an in house server, my laptop and a series of external drives that I store off site, swapping them out weekly. Backups of data partitions are done daily..... rest monthly.
This is exactly why I have my OS on a dedicated partition: C:\
There are a lot of ppl here on Tom's that routinely recommend to set up drives with only one giant partition. I think that this is bad advice for the reasons that Jack enumerated above.
Yogi
A small partition for storing the drivers needed for a base image on your PC is also worth it, saves hunting down a thumbdrive or a disc or ten just to get drivers.
For an OS partition, always leave a few GB of space for the inevitable updates.
christinebcw
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- Sep 8, 2012
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RCguitarist
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- Apr 2, 2013
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Best solution: Buy an external hard drive and backup all files you wish to not lose to it. After that, just do a weekly backup of any new or updated files to it. That's what I do and when Windows 7 committed suicide on me a month ago, I lost absolutely nothing. Just reinstalled windows and then copy and pasted all of my files back.
- Oct 30, 2004
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One major problem .... it doesn't work. Programs make registry entries during installation. You can't copy / paste those.
And tho we have less restrictions now but another reason more people partitioned was actually to reduce wasted disc space or what we used to call "cluster slop"
Rather than retype .....
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/244686-32-best-partition-200gb
And tho we have less restrictions now but another reason more people partitioned was actually to reduce wasted disc space or what we used to call "cluster slop"
Rather than retype .....
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/244686-32-best-partition-200gb
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