Hard Drive Partitions

[wise_rob]

What is the benefit of having partitions on a single hard drive? People keep telling me I ought to do it, but cannot really work out any real benefit of it?
Cheers

 

[RealBlackStuff]

If you keep your data, such as My Documents and other important stuff such as emails, music etc. on a seperate partition, when your OS goes belly-up and needs to be reinstalled, at least your data are save.
Of course if the HD fails, then all is gone..., so install a second HD for your data and backups.

 

[Phantasm66]

I always keep data completely seperate from user application and operating systems.

 

[nein]

What is the benefit of having partitions on a single hard drive? People keep telling me I ought to do it, but cannot really work out any real benefit of it?
Cheers

I used partitions in my children's computers as the below...

-- 1st partition - DRIVE C: 10GB FAT32 - Bootable, Win98_SE, WinXPE, swap/paging file, drivers, emergency alternate boot for antivirus, BIOS updates, and repair utilities, etc...

-- 2nd partition - DRIVE D: 100GB NTFS - Bootable, WinXP, default boot and normal usage.

-- 3rd partition - DRIVE E: ~40GB NTFS - non-bootable, all data and backup archives saved here.