Originally posted by: wexsmith
The only reason I can see for a normal home user to have more than one partition is to make reformating easier. All data can be backed up onto the "data" partition while the "os" partition is wiped. That being said, I don't use partitions anymore. Two physical drives is the way to go. One for data and one for os+apps.
Originally posted by: scottws
But if you reformat the OS partition, all the registry entries stating which applications are installed on the system go with it, making many (most/all?) applications installed in a non-system partition worthless in the fresh install of the OS. The OS doesn't know they are there.
Originally posted by: wexsmith
The only reason I can see for a normal home user to have more than one partition is to make reformating easier. All data can be backed up onto the "data" partition while the "os" partition is wiped. That being said, I don't use partitions anymore. Two physical drives is the way to go. One for data and one for os+apps.
Right. I use separate drives, but the principle remains the same. Separating OS and apps is just a pain, and can only give a [minuscule] performance benefit if they're on separate drives. Putting them on separate partitions is a maintenance nightmare, and will probably actually cause a slight decrease in performance due to the greater seek distances on the hard drive's platters. Keeping the OS and apps on one partition/drive with data on another partition/drive has all of the usual reinstallation benefits, though, and is generally a good idea.Originally posted by: corkyg
:thumbsup:Originally posted by: wexsmith
The only reason I can see for a normal home user to have more than one partition is to make reformating easier. All data can be backed up onto the "data" partition while the "os" partition is wiped. That being said, I don't use partitions anymore. Two physical drives is the way to go. One for data and one for os+apps.