Chuck said:
For the life of me, I don't know the perceived advantages of
partioning the drive. I've read a lot of "reasons," but none made
it throught my thick skull. In those computers that arrive from
the manufacturer with the OS in a partition, I have found that
that partition will eventually be too small and cause problems.
Shenan said:
The *only* technical advantage that is hard to argue with is if you
want to store your DATA - nothing else - on the second partition.
The advantage? If you *have* to reinstall the OS and you know what
you are doing - at least your data stays intact - given the reason
for the whole mess is non-hardware related and whatever software
issue that caused your reinstall did not include deleting files
from other drives. *grin*
As far as non-technical reasoning...
Organization. For some people it is simpler to think that all their
applications are installed on D. Their operating system is C. Their
picture files are E. Their word documents are F. Etc... Perception
only - but that goes a long way with human beings -
after all - most things are perception only when you get down to it.
Personally - I make one large partition and install the OS and all
applications.
I buy additional drive(s) and install them as needed - usually in a
RAID fashion.
<last example snipped>
Sorry to disagree, but I'll throw in a contrary opinion here, if I
may:
I don't think that's a good reason for separating data on a separate
partition at all. To me, if your data is important to you, it
always needs to be backed up, and if it is backed up and you ever
have to reinstall the operating system, you simply restore the data
from the backup, even if it's not on a separate partition. In fact,
I think that many people who do as you suggest get a false sense of
security from it and have that kind of separation *instead* of a
backup, thinking that it takes away the need for a backup. In fact,
that's not at all true of course, since things like a hard drive
crash (and other events) can easily destroy everything.
To me the best reason for keeping your data on a partition separate
from the operating system system is to facilitate data backup. If
you back up only data, rather than image the entire drive, with
most backup programs, it's easier to do it if the data is on a
separate partition.
I am unsure where we disagreed. You expanded on the only technical reason I
could come up with for partitioning - you did not disagree with it per se.
I never mentioned backup here - but it was not because I felt it should not
be a matter of concern; perhaps I left too much to assumption there. Matter
of fact the very reason I added the last part of the last sentence:
"... given the reason for the whole mess is non-hardware related and
whatever software issue that caused your reinstall did not include deleting
files from other drives. *grin* ..." implies that said method is *not*
foolproof nor should be relied upon.
While I appreciate the additional information you have added (which may
prevent misunderstanding in the future on said topic) - I do not see as we
had any disagreement here. You just took my explanation to the next level -
backing up data - which should always be in place, partitioning or not.
I never quoted this as a suggestion and was careful to point out, "...you
know what you are doing..." and "...the reason for the whole mess is
non-hardware related and whatever software issue that caused your reinstall
did not include deleting files from other drives..." in the explanation. My
response was to 'Chuck Davis' to help explain why someone might believe it
better to partition their drive. I have seen too many falsehoods on these
message boards such as 'better performance' and 'no data loss if something
goes wrong' without further explanatin that if the something that goes wrong
is hard disk drive failure - that can effect all partitions on the physical
drive to know better than not to include such things. As I stated - I don't
do much partitioning on my personal machines. Now - where I managed dozens
of groups and each one has a different data retention need - yeah -
partitioning is king. *grin*
