Hard Drive Partitions

[nwimbledon]

What's the latest best practise when configuring a single drive system. I have a 1TB NVME SSD. Clearly I need a primary Partition for windows. I have a bunch of media and other files that I will keep on a separate partition. I was toying with having three partitions in total

• Primary Windows Partition - 120GB
• Partition to Hold User Documents that I will locate MyDocuments, MyPictures etc on - 120GB
• Media Partition to hold Media Files (Photos, Music) 760 GB

I share the desktop with my wife and we each have our own user account.

By the time I run out of space the cost of SSDs will hopefully have dropped and I'll buy a big one to put Media files on

Any other suggestions? Is the second partition a good idea or should I just make the primary partition bigger and leave the Myxxx folders in the default place.

I am very interested to hear views.

 

[Scott]

I wouldn't recommend partitioning the primary drive at all. In fact, I don't recommend partitioning any drive nowadays where possible.

With an M2 drive you want Windows, any programs you use a lot and any games that you play regularly.
For media such as documents, music, movies, etc... you want a conventional HDD, cheap & cheerful but has no impact on performance.
For media such as photos, SSDs can be useful but you would want a cheaper secondary one IMO.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Partitioning isn’t really relevant these days, it was there with HDD’s as you would start to lose sectors and could protect an area of the hard drive platter by separating it, so if you lost one partition it wouldn’t necessarily affect the second partition.

SSD’s don’t work that way, you wouldn’t lose sectors as there are no sectors, the drive either works or it doesn’t, but they’re so resilient these days that drive failure is very rare.

but yes, if you want to separate data from OS, then you’d have a separate data HDD or SSD.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Furthermore, if you're looking for data HDD's for desktops, personally, if you're getting one after having it built, then I'd highly recommend the WD Red series, they're designed for always on NAS operations, so built to higher standards than a standard HDD, they're quiet and good speeds. I've got 3 in my system and have never had a problem.

 

[ubuysa]

I'm going to disagree with the learned people above.

Partitioning any drive when you only have a single drive makes absolute sense, but you only need two partitions; one for Windows and programs and the other for all your user data. The BIG advantage of this partitioning scheme is that it allows you to reinstall Windows or restore an image backup without losing all your user data. Although there is a tiny performance hit with partitioning a drive, in a single drive system two partitions makes very good sense indeed from a management and recovery viewpoint.

By the time I run out of space the cost of SSDs will hopefully have dropped and I'll buy a big one to put Media files on

Your photos will benefit a lot from being on an SSD, they will load much faster and with no 'screen painting'. Your music will not benefit from being on an SSD at all, because it's played in real time so the faster buffer load from an SSD will not be seen by you at all. By the time you run out of space on the HDD keep it for music (and videos, they're played in real time too) and buy an SSD for your photos.

 

[Scott]

FWIW I totally agree with the above when completely restricted to 1 drive. My point is that I wouldn't restrict yourself to one drive on the basis of storing documents that don't require SSD speed (Photo's not withstanding).

You could create a 2nd partition for image storage but I would personally purchase a conventional drive to store everything and then, when prices come down, purchase an SSD for your images.

I enjoy dabbling with photoshop etc and I have a HUGE image collection (Mostly of my kids, 30k+ photos) and they are all held on a conventional drive. I don't notice any real lag when viewing them, to add I actually view them over my network as well and there's still no issues with lag. However, when I have a photoshop dabble I always copy my working images to my second SSD to work with and prevent any lag.

£40 on a conventional HDD does away with any partitioning requirements IMO.

 

[ubuysa]

FWIW I totally agree with the above when completely restricted to 1 drive. My point is that I wouldn't restrict yourself to one drive on the basis of storing documents that don't require SSD speed (Photo's not withstanding).

You could create a 2nd partition for image storage but I would personally purchase a conventional drive to store everything and then, when prices come down, purchase an SSD for your images.

I enjoy dabbling with photoshop etc and I have a HUGE image collection (Mostly of my kids, 30k+ photos) and they are all held on a conventional drive. I don't notice any real lag when viewing them, to add I actually view them over my network as well and there's still no issues with lag. However, when I have a photoshop dabble I always copy my working images to my second SSD to work with and prevent any lag.

£40 on a conventional HDD does away with any partitioning requirements IMO.

And I wouldn't argue with any of that. From a purely performance point of view the ideal would be one drive per file - but that's just silly (and not supported!)