Why partition?

After reading some of the other threads I'm just curious.  I know the reasons why we partitioned back in the day, but do any of those reasons still apply or is the only real reason to partition a hard drive to help in organizing the data they contain?  (Spam-bots need not reply!)
 
I guess one more benefit that I just thought of is to be able to defrag or virus check part of a large hard drive easier, but that doesn't really seem like enough of a reason to partition.
 
 

really no point to partitioning at all made sense yrs ago not now.
i am also assuming a good back up plan.

the 2nd partion is slower than the first.

There are a couple of minor reasons to partition:

 - smaller drives mean smaller cluster sizes, which means less wasted space. A disk is divided up into fixed-size clusters and this size is roughly proportional to the size of the drive. A cluster can only be used for 1 file, no matter how small that file is. So if you have a lot of small files, you waste a lot of space on bigger drives.

 - separate partitions can mean shallower directory structures, and searching through deep directory structures can be slow when performing a lot of separate file open operations. This is a problem you can solve with a sensible directory structure though.

Are either of these relevant for digital audio applications? No. Apart from generic file organisation benefits, the best reason for a Sonar user to partition his or her drive is if there is a plan to expand to separate physical drives later. When the new drive is added the data can be copied to the new disk and the drive letters changed to match.

Excellent.  Thanks for the replies.  Most are what I thought, but wasn't sure.

FWIW, I've never liked that some of your personal settings are hidden from most people in the Documents and Settings path (i.e., above "My Documents"), and I also get annoyed with Windows (at least up to XP Pro) always wanting you to put your data along this path.  I'd rather have ALL non-system files on another drive.  I wonder if I can redefine the usual paths in Windows 7?  In other words, put My Documents, My Pictures, etc. somewhere other than where Windows wants them (I currently have a shortcut to my "real" location that stays in each of the standard folders, but that's just yet another work-around).

I partition areas to seperate stowage areas and active live areas of the drives always keeping the first partition for the hard work and subsequent ones for less frequently accessed files.

Kylotan's reason here is a good one too when you want to expand a partition out onto a new drive it makes things easier.  Maintaining, backing up / imaging smaller partitions on terrabyte sized drives is more manageble.

Provided you keep the first partition of each drive for any 'mission critical' files partitions can still aid organisation.

One more thing it can help to keep your windows swap file contigious if it ends up being scattered all over the partition. 

Just set the swap file to another partition other than your system one temporarily. Reboot.  Defrag your main partition then set the swap file back to the main partition reboot again.  Job done as it will create a new contigious file in the newly defragmented space.

craigb


Excellent.  Thanks for the replies.  Most are what I thought, but wasn't sure.

FWIW, I've never liked that some of your personal settings are hidden from most people in the Documents and Settings path (i.e., above "My Documents"), and I also get annoyed with Windows (at least up to XP Pro) always wanting you to put your data along this path.  I'd rather have ALL non-system files on another drive.  I wonder if I can redefine the usual paths in Windows 7?  In other words, put My Documents, My Pictures, etc. somewhere other than where Windows wants them (I currently have a shortcut to my "real" location that stays in each of the standard folders, but that's just yet another work-around).

In Windows 7 hit your name from the start menu.  That should pull up your directory with the usual "Documents", "Music", and other folders.  Right click on them and hit properties.  There's a location tab there that will allow you to redirect them to another path just like you could with XP.  After doing that you will see the item duplicated in the folder, one will be the old default location and the other will be the new path you specified.  At that point you can safely delete the one that points to the default "users" path.

That has the added bonus of allowing older programs unaware of Windows 7 libraries to default to your updated "My Documents" directory path.

wogg

craigb


Excellent.  Thanks for the replies.  Most are what I thought, but wasn't sure.

FWIW, I've never liked that some of your personal settings are hidden from most people in the Documents and Settings path (i.e., above "My Documents"), and I also get annoyed with Windows (at least up to XP Pro) always wanting you to put your data along this path.  I'd rather have ALL non-system files on another drive.  I wonder if I can redefine the usual paths in Windows 7?  In other words, put My Documents, My Pictures, etc. somewhere other than where Windows wants them (I currently have a shortcut to my "real" location that stays in each of the standard folders, but that's just yet another work-around).

In Windows 7 hit your name from the start menu.  That should pull up your directory with the usual "Documents", "Music", and other folders.  Right click on them and hit properties.  There's a location tab there that will allow you to redirect them to another path just like you could with XP.  After doing that you will see the item duplicated in the folder, one will be the old default location and the other will be the new path you specified.  At that point you can safely delete the one that points to the default "users" path.

That has the added bonus of allowing older programs unaware of Windows 7 libraries to default to your updated "My Documents" directory path.

Guess it's time to upgrade to Windows 7!