1 TB Data Drive: Should it be partitioned?

[hipster doofus]

I bought a new 1 TB internal hard drive to supplement the 320 GB in my PC. The smaller drive contains the OS and all program files. My intention is to use the 1 TB drive strictly as a data drive. Not all the data will be permanent --- some may be erased, moved, or altered in some way.

Here's my dilemma: the last time I attempted to defrag a 1 TB hard drive, it took the whole darn day. So with this new drive, I'm thinking of dividing it into three partitions. In this way, the defrag times can be manageable. (i.e. defrag one partition at a time).

Would I be making a mistake in splitting the 1 TB drive into multiple partitions? I have spent some time Googling the issue, and it seems that the majority of people don't partition data hard drives. Some have even called it an "archaic" practice that hampers drive performance.

Any thoughts?

 

[Translucency]

This comes down to personal preference also, but generally you should try to avoid 'fragmenting' your storage space into several partitions. If you want to seperate data from eachother, use folders instead.

This way, the free space is shared among all data, so you don't have to put fixed capacities on specific data types. This also prevents a filesystem from becoming full. Filesystem fragmentation becomes rampant if you write it full; always make sure 15% stays free. With one large partition and using folders to seperate your data, fragmentation will hardly be a problem to performance for normal usage. This is assuming you use at least NTFS because FAT is horribly outdated.

One valid counter-argument might be that from a data security standpoint, it would be better to have multiple filesystems instead of just one. So that filesystem corruption would be contained to only part of the data; not all. But these kinds of arguments only go for users who are serious about data security and generally does not apply well to home users.

 

[jsc]

I put two 1 TB drives in my newest computer. I have mostly a mixture of video and graphics files on them. I didn't partition. And because it's not my only computer, I'm not concerned with how long a drive takes to defrag.