what are the cons of a partition hard drive?

Question

I am thinking about splitting the hard drive into 2, 60 gigs each.

I heard if you have programs or games it would slow them down, is this true?

What other bad things about partitioning...

Answer 1

Partitioning slows down the boot process because you have two master file directories to read. Once the disk has been examined and its parameters loaded to memory, there is no further speed penalty. Games run just fine on partitions. It is system reboots that take a (small) hit on partitioned drives.

The pros are that you can choose a smaller allocation unit (a.k.a. disk cluster factor). This reduces the slack space on any given file. If you have lots of small files, slack space addes up. You can also segregate your data to a particular partition based, say, security requirements. Or because you are an obsessive-compulsive organizer. Any of a number of reasons here. For instance, on my system, I have a C drive and D drive that are partitions of the same physical drive. The D drive holds my original Windows release kit so that I can do option changes and such. Being on another drive, there is less chance of accidental deletion.

The cons are the overhead at startup, the extra space consumed by the extra master file directory and related structures, and the smaller disk size that acts to limit the largest file you can build. But at 2 partitionsof 60 Gb each, I doubt that will be an issue of any magnitude. Smaller drives more quickly reach a point where defraggin becomes a good idea. Smaller drives probably will not be used equally, so one of the drives will need "cleaning" (space reclamation) more often than the other.

Answer 2

If your computer is several years old, consider buying a new hard drive for the fresh install of the op. sys..

When re-installing the o.s., allocate 15gb (15000mb) of space for the op. sys.. Format in NTFS. Then, after you boot, you can allocate / format the rest of the hard drive under disk management;

>(r-clik) my computer
> manage
> disk management

Allocate +/- 15 to 20 gb of space for each partition, format in NTFS.

Install additional software (printer, wireless adaptor, office suite, web browser, widgets,etc.) to a partition. AVOID installing to the partition that host's the op.sys..

download to a partition, install software and all other files to another partition

With only the op. sys. on the hosting partition it will be easier for your computer to run the op., and easier to run everything else.

And, with your files and software on other partitions, your stuff is already in back-up, and the next op. Sys. Re-install will be already half done and much easier to do and you will only have to format the host partition and not the whole hard drive

pg

Answer 3

i do no longer comprehend the decrease to style of cases which you would be able to re-partition a tension yet i might wager that it fairly is interior the 1000's of 1000's. partitions are "utility divisions" of a no longer common tension. a no longer common tension is an electric powered/mechanical gadget and has a constrained lifetime. Why waste it. make certain what you like and make the set up.

Answer 4

The biggest con in my opinion is that, if you lose your single hard drive you lose all your data no matter how many partitions you have.
Sure you can have data recovered but that costs a lot more than a second storage drive.

Answer 5

The main one under Windows is that whatever you load to the second drive, all it's library and registry entries are added to C:. This means it is very easy to run yourself out of space on c:. At this point the machine will seriously slow down, or even become unusable.