Benefits Of Partitioning A Windows Hd?

Discussion in 'SSD and HDD storage' started by Mulsiphix, Feb 23, 2021.

  1. Mulsiphix

    Mulsiphix Guest

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    It is time to install Windows on a fresh PC. I remember reading something, though the details currently elude me, that talked about the benefits of partitioning a Windows drive. Keeping your programs on a separate partition, or maybe it was a separate drive, than your Windows PC. Can anyone tell me the benefits of doing this?
     
  2. Caesar

    Caesar Ancient Guru

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    Most importantly if you want to have multiple OS.
     
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  3. Kevin Mauro

    Kevin Mauro Master Guru

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    Hmm... perhaps having Windows on a separate drive? Far as resources, caching, and such... I can recall folks often recommending a boot drive. Partitioning isn't necessary in terms of functionality if all you need is Windows but can help in organizing things. Still, a stand-alone physical disk for the OS (primary I'm assuming) helps your overall performance.
     
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  4. tsunami231

    tsunami231 Ancient Guru

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    Partions OS drive or having a drive symply for OS is one best thing I ever did. make reinstall of window much easier

    Now all my games and data are save diffrent drive along with all my drivers and software need to do reinstall. now I when I have to reinstalled windows I just just setup windows back to way i need it with in 30 minutes
     
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  5. zipper

    zipper Maha Guru

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    I have all games on an external drive - can easily be used with different systems. I try keep the OS drive as lean as possible. The programs and data are on a different partition.
     
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  6. anticupidon

    anticupidon Ancient Guru

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    As above, separate Windows partition makes reinstalling a breeze.
     
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  7. RealNC

    RealNC Ancient Guru

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    For a spinning hard drive, the first partition is going to be the fastest one. So if in a, say, 4TB disk you make two 2TB partitions, then you should install the OS and your games on the first one. Everything else for which speed is not important should be installed on the second partition. This is because spinning hard drives have faster speed at the beginning of the disk (which is the outer edge of the platters.)

    If you don't partition, then the more full the disk gets, the slower the newly installed games are going to load, because they are placed closer to the inner edge of the HDD's platters. Partitioning an HDD makes sure that whatever data is on the first partition is going be on the faster half of the disk.

    A typical HDD these days has sequential read speeds of about 150MB/s at the beginning of the disk, and about 100MB/s at the end. You want your games to be closer to the 150MB/s region, and partitioning is going to guarantee that.

    All this of course does not matter with SSDs.
     
    Last edited: Feb 23, 2021
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  8. Mulsiphix

    Mulsiphix Guest

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    My OS is pretty customized. Lots of power user software with tons of settings to set. When the time comes to reinstall Windows it is a pretty big ordeal. Even with my programs backed up on a separate partition or drive, I still have to reinstall and reconfigure them all, which requires the same amount of time. I have 1 SSD and could easily buy a 2nd one for the programs if that would result in a speed increase. Adding a partition for Linux and making this PC dual boot might be nice though :p

    I assume you mean your references to platter speed and seek times. Would there be any partitioning benefit still to program speed if Windows and Programs are on the same drive SSD drive?
     
    Last edited: Feb 25, 2021
  9. Mufflore

    Mufflore Ancient Guru

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    As well as making Windows install quick and easy, if you backup your OS, it will be tiny if nothing big is installed.
    My OS backups are less than 20GB.
     
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  10. Mulsiphix

    Mulsiphix Guest

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    Boom! This right here! Now I need to do it. Means I can have more backups lying around in case catastrophe strikes. Thank you Mufflore! By the way, how big is your Windows partition anyway? Want to make sure I leave enough room for future growth.
     

  11. Mufflore

    Mufflore Ancient Guru

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    70GB just in case.
    If you dont use the space, the back up size doesnt increase.
     
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  12. Athlonite

    Athlonite Maha Guru

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    With windows 10 it's now easy peazie to move files/folders to another drive I currently have all the user docs, pics, video and music or save games goto another drive steam will also allow you to move the storage of games to another drive so really the only partitions that should be on your windows boot drive are those that windows creates during install
     
  13. Mufflore

    Mufflore Ancient Guru

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    I leave savegames on the OS drive so they get backed up, they can be be in weird and wonderful places, saves a bit of aggro.
    Losing them would be a right pita.
     
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  14. Babel-17

    Babel-17 Member Guru

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    If using Windows 10 "Backup and Restore (Windows 7)" image producing utility, and installing your game folders to another drive or partition, don't install Steam or your game launchers there as well. If Windows sees your Steam executable (or some other, but not all, game launchers) on another partition it treats that partition/drive as a system partition and will insist on including it in its backup. Yeah, I like my backups to just be Windows and my programs, not my game folders.

    Edit: AOMEI Backupper. a free utility, doesn't care about where your game executables are, and has some nice options. I use it, but I also like the tight integration that the Windows utility has.
     
    Last edited: Feb 24, 2021
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  15. Mulsiphix

    Mulsiphix Guest

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    I assume you mean your references to platter speed and seek times. Would there be any partitioning benefit still to program speed if Windows and Programs are on the same drive SSD drive?



    I could also tell the backup to just backup the data and not the full partition to save some space :D
     

  16. Raserian

    Raserian Master Guru

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    As of last year I no longer reinstall my OS in conventional way, windows 10 installation is transferrable from any PC to any other. I have made clean installation, added all my programs and settings to it, created image with norton ghost and had used it for other computers as well. In mere hour my OS is right there with everything, Win 10 automatically activates itself on licensed PCs, fixes the hardware changes and autoupdates quickly. At worst case I have to update GPU drivers manually. I backup my data drives separately.
     
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  17. RealNC

    RealNC Ancient Guru

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    I can't think of any reason why that would be the case.
     
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  18. Mulsiphix

    Mulsiphix Guest

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    So it is as easy as Windows on it's own partition, Programs and other files on other partitions/drives, and if you run into trouble just restore your last working backup? And boom you are ready to go?

    @Everyone: I'm curious guys, for those of you that are making regular images of your drives, how far back do you keep images of your Windows drive? And how many total images are you keeping on hand? I've got a fair amount of hard drive space but 20GB+ backups will still add up quickly :eek:
     
  19. Raserian

    Raserian Master Guru

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    What I have is single partition image file with size of about 40 GB that I have not updated since because it just contains customized clean installation so I use it instead of reinstalling. I backup my data drives just by copying files to backup media, I only update backup when new user data add up to a larger chunk of new files. I have not been creating much user data lately so I do not do it often. With disk imaging programs you can create image of entire drive with all partitions or just your selected ones. And when creating a new backup you can delete old one if you do not require restoring to specific time frame, I wouldn't bother holding newer and older images together.

    But yes, I have used it to restore my laptop when windows 10 start menu stopped working, I tried to troubleshoot for a few hours and didn't solve it, so I had restored the image and it was done.
    Currently I have SSD and data HDD in my desktop and they only contain single partition per drive. I used to partition drive to system and data partition in the past and now only do it on computers with one hard disk. If its capacity is higher than 250/320 GB it gets split to smaller OS and larger data partition.
     
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2021
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