is there any point in partitioning an external harddrive?

Question

what is the point? are there any addventages?

Answer 1

Partitioning divides one hard drive into two consecutive drives. External or internal is irrelevant.

The only purpose behind prtitioning these days would be largely organization than it's original purpose: to make a large capacity drive easier to manage for an operating system with a storage limit. (Splitting a 2GB Drive for Windows 98, for example.)

You won't get more space, and partitions don't answer problems such as Scratch disk use (Photoshop) where two physical drives are needed.

You would partition if you want to keep your programs separate from your music collection with an entire drive letter instead of "My Music". Also, partitioning would be a good idea for a network shared drive, by keeping your system files in C: and completely off the share list, whereas your network partition could be any letter you want and hold whatever you wish to share.

Also: partitioning can be done in Windows only when the drive is empty, unless you're using utility software such as Partition Magic. If you change your mind, you got to move your files somewhere else while you complete partitioning.

Answer 2

Partitioning on an external drive really has no purpose other than organization. Internal drives can still use recovery partitions, and with RAID and mirroring there may still be advantages, but you really cannot use that effectively on a drive that is connected via network or USB.

Answer 3

The point is only what you make it. If you feel it's necessary, do it; if not, then don't. I have an external drive that is partitioned. Advantage? It’s organized and I personally prefer it this way.

Answer 4

I don't think that you need to...My internal hard drive is only partitioned for my system restore so I don't have to use the CD's...