Partitions on a 160GB harddrive

[pelleplu]

I'm going to get a 160GB harddrive soon, and I was wondering if there will be any problem using it as one big partition? I'm going to run WinXP and use NTFS as filesystem (of course). I was thinking about partitioning my 80GB with one 6-7GB partition for windows and applications, and then the rest of it for data, as well as the entire 160GB drive.
How does that sound? Would it be more optimized if I used more smaller partitions? I really don't like having many partitions One for windows, one for music, and one for the rest of my data

 

[DeeK]

There really isn't much reason to go with many partitions. In fact, I don't really understand the idea of having the OS and apps on separate partitions. I've heard people say "well, if one partition gets hosed then the other stays fine", but IME things are more likely to go wrong with the entire drive than with just one partition. The only reason I have two partitions on my Windows boot drive is because I need a FAT32 partition that my Linux installation can write to (Linux can't reliably write to NTFS). My 80GB drive has just one big NTFS partition - and I can't think of a reason to change that.

 

[pelleplu]

Originally posted by: DeeK
There really isn't much reason to go with many partitions. In fact, I don't really understand the idea of having the OS and apps on separate partitions. I've heard people say "well, if one partition gets hosed then the other stays fine", but IME things are more likely to go wrong with the entire drive than with just one partition. The only reason I have two partitions on my Windows boot drive is because I need a FAT32 partition that my Linux installation can write to (Linux can't reliably write to NTFS). My 80GB drive has just one big NTFS partition - and I can't think of a reason to change that.

I like having windows on one partition and data on others because the root won't get so clutted with so many folders.. I've always laid out my harddrives like that and grown accustomed to it, so I like to keep it that way
I agree with you on the point that it's more likely that the entire drive gets screwed than just one partition. I just like my drives to be tidy and the way I'm used to having them. I'm kind of a perfectionist when it comes to arranging my files. I'm keeping a very strict structure to know where I have my stuff

 

[pelleplu]

What I really wanted to know by asking this, was if there would be any technical issues with having a 160GB partition. Would it slow down my system? Would windows dislike it? What's the cluster size on a 160GB partition using NTFS?