Plz advise on no. of partitions for a 500GB HDD

[cimmind]

Hi all. I have just bought a new comp with a 500gb Seagate Barracuda HDD.
Just about to start the installation process.
In need of urgent advice on how many partitions should i have & their size.

My main considerations:
- To keep space free for future use
- Ease n speed of defragmentation (using Auslogics)
- Ease in potential reformatting (My last fall-back option in case of a nasty virus)

What i am mulling right now:
- C drive: 10 GB (for WinXP SP2)
- D drive: 15 GB (for Windows 7 as a future second OS)
- E drive: 25 GB (reserve space)
- Nine partitions of 50GB each

Is there any limit on how many partitions one should have?
Thanks. Speedy responses will be much appreciated.

PS: Another query is that what should i set the partition size as, to have round figure sized partitions of 50GB each {In my earlier 40GB HDD, creating a 10GB partitions made them as 9.31GB logical partitions each}

 

[sminlal]

My own personal policy is: one partition per drive. This simplifies management, means you never run out of space (in a partition) until you've actually filled up the entire drive, and if you defragment the drive it keeps all the files as close as possible to the outermost tracks where performance is best.

In my latest build I used one drive for the OS, one "black" drive for my frequently-used files, and one "green" drive for more static data.

 

[saint19]

Hi newcomer and welcome to the Tom's hardware forum.

I have 2x500B with this partitions:

1- 60GB for OS and documents. (Dual boot)

2- 4x100GB partitions for storage.

The configuration is the same in both disk.