Hard disk partitioning

  • Thread starter Thread starter Andy
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Andy

I have seen in a certain article that it is not advisable
to have more than 4 partitions on a hard drive. Is there
any specific disadvantage in having, say 5 FAT32
partitions on a 120G HD. I am thinking about the
difference in cluster sizes : 4K (more efficient
utilisation of disk space?) against 8K. Any enlightenment
would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
 
Andy said:
I have seen in a certain article that it is not advisable
to have more than 4 partitions on a hard drive. Is there
any specific disadvantage in having, say 5 FAT32
partitions on a 120G HD. I am thinking about the
difference in cluster sizes : 4K (more efficient
utilisation of disk space?) against 8K. Any enlightenment
would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Click to expand...

The main criterion in selecting the number of partitions
is structure vs. growth:

- If you create many partitions then you could have one
partition for each member of your family (and one for
the dog too!). However, if some require more room than
anticipated then you'll have a problem, because the
size of each partition is fixed.

- If you create just one partition, and on it one folder
for each family member (now you can include the
hamsters too!) then you won't have any issues with
the various space requirements. On the other hand,
if you should decide at a later stage to protect your
installation by creating an image file then you will find
it very hard indeed: There is no room to park the
image file.

My preference is for two partitions:
- Drive C: - Windows, applications
- Drive D: - Data

If and when Win2000 goes bad, I blow drive C: away
and start afresh. My data won't be affected.
 
Thanks Pegasus. That resolves my doubt. I am more
concerned about the backup issue. For ease of backup, I
will opt for the smaller sized partitions. Thanks again
for your various postings on various NG which enable us to
learn a lot (Dave Patrick also).
 
Actually you are limited to a MAX of 4 partitions per drive. You may
however subdivide an extended partition into multiple logical drives. If
you are using NT to format the partitions the max FAT32 drive size is 32
gig. Also there is a 4 gig file size limit in Fat32.
 
I have a win2000pro system with two hard drives, one with 4 partitions,
the other with 5. They work fine. I use mostly NTFS partitions, but I
don't think using FAT32 would make a bit of difference.

As Pegasus suggested, from time to time a partition will prove too small
for my purposes, usually when I want to stuff a lot into one of its
folders. When that happens, I move one of the other folders to a different
partition, thereby freeing up space in the over-stuffed partition.

Moving a folder from one partition to another is problematic if the folder
or some of its contents are linked in some way, e.g. a reference in the
registry, a shortcut on the Desktop. In that case, I use Magic Mover from
the publisher of Partition Magic.

An alternative to moving folders is to resize the partitions using a tool
like Partition Magic.

BTW, I have no connection to the publisher of Partition Magic. I merely
purchased it years ago, along with subsequent upgrades.

HTH,
Richard
 
Moving a folder from one partition to another is problematic if the folder
or some of its contents are linked in some way, e.g. a reference in the
registry, a shortcut on the Desktop. In that case, I use Magic Mover from
the publisher of Partition Magic.
Click to expand...

It's nice to know that there are _third party_ fixes to some of these stupid
design flaws in Windows. Thanks for this info.

/rant/
An OS should automatically update its registry / ini files / whatever/ when
programs are deleted or moved. Building an OS that doesn't do this is Really
Really Stooopid. And It's not just Windows that suffers from this design flaw
- OS/2 suffers from it too (though not to the same extent - you can move a
program from one drive to another without breaking its links), so do all
versions of DOS that I know of. Time for a major upgrade, IMO.
/rant-/
 
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