There seems to be a growing trend among computer manufacturers regarding the initial hard drive configuration on newly-sold desktops and notebooks. It seems that rather than delivering systems with a single data partition on the system, manufacturers are instead sending out systems with three, four, or five partitions. But does this just waste hard disk space and add to the confusion of the not-quite-average computer user?
To answer this question, we’ll need to examine the pros and cons of three different configurations. First is the Single Partition idea, followed by the Double Partition scheme, and finally the Multi Partition configuration. They all have merits, and they all have disadvantages. But which one is best for “the average consumer” when they buy a new computer?
The Single Partition Idea
This is perhaps the most logical concept, as customers who purchase a system with a decent sized hard drive can immediately see that 98% of their expected storage is accounted for when they happen to look at the drive’s properties. While this might not occur on a regular basis for most, this is often something that I pay attention to as it seems that every drive I’ve ever owned has run out of hard disk space within weeks of first using the drive. Other benefits are rather simple, as people will not have to think about what drive they should use to store their files, nor will they need to change anything in the Windows Registry to move “My Documents” from the C partition.
That said the consequences of such an action can be quite severe. By storing all information on a single partition, should a catastrophic failure happen with the MFT or some other critical file on the main partition, the chances of someone losing all of their personal information can be quite high. Most of us might never experience something as potentially tragic as a “NTLDR is missing” error but, if we do, knowing that our important files are stored safely in another logical location can be of some comfort.
Whether most people would actually have these thoughts in the event of a failure, however, remains a little dubious.
The Double Partition Idea
This seems to have become the most popular idea among manufacturers over the years, as customers who read the literature included with the computer come away knowing that their personal files can have an extra layer of protection simply by being stored on this second partition. Oddly enough, manufacturers do not go the extra mile to configure Windows to use the second partition for the “My Documents” folder or even the swap file, but it is there for our use. Typically, this second partition is anywhere from 50-70% the size of the entire hard drive, and comes with volume labels such as DATA … with all caps.
The disadvantage of this model occurs when customers have a software fetish and install just about everything they can get their hands on. With an excessive amount of software installed, the small primary partition quickly fills up and people are greeted with the ever-happy “Hard Disk is Full” message with a not-so-helpful utility standing by to clear out our temporary internet files in an effort to free up some disk space. Digital photo enthusiasts also run into this problem quite often, however, these are often the same people that have little trouble installing another hard drive, internal or external, with the intentions of using it solely for their massive picture collections.
That said, one advantage to this disadvantage is that some customers will go out to buy a newer computer with a “bigger” hard drive, while others will just take their in to a shop to have a larger or second hard drive installed. While this may not be good for the consumer’s pocket book, it’s certainly good for the local economy.
The Multi-Partition Idea
So while having a single partition allows the most space at the risk of losing everything should a partition fail, and having two partitions often results in consumers thinking they’ve run out of space, this next idea carries a great deal of potential while also giving people an initial reason to distrust everything their computer says: multi-partitioning.
The idea is pretty simple, too. Three or more partitions are created on the primary hard drive, but only one or two are visible. In the case of many Fujitsu notebook computers in Japan, there are four partitions created. The first contains the bootable recovery software, the second contains the OS and applications, and the third is the “C drive.” Any other partitions afterwards are used in the same fashion seen in the double-partition scheme. This can certainly be a great time saver for customers that can never find their recovery discs fast enough, as well as for technicians that need to restore a system for whatever reason. Why carry 400 different installation CDs with (essentially) the same information when the offending computer can do it for you? The Acer AspireOne also has something similar to this, since it does not come with recovery CDs, or a CD-ROM.
The disadvantage here, though, is that a customer who expects to have a 120 Gigabyte hard drive will only see 110 Gig of total space. What’s worse is if that person bought a machine with a 16 or 32 Gig Flash-based hard drive … they might think that much of the storage was missing. While this will likely not be an issue for most people, it could create some confusion for people that don’t know about the hidden partitions or their purpose.
So partitioning data can be a great way to keep things organized and even offer some measure of security, but what is the best answer to this question?
I’ll leave the answer up to you. What has worked best for you over the years?
When I used to use Windows (until 2001 or so) I mostly went with dual partitions, with D: holding all my data – except for the stuff annoyingly automatically put into Documents and Settings as it was. I held nothing in the My Documents folder on the C: drive. This made it really easy to reinstall (well, apart from having to reinstall all the applications and settings that is) and also to make sure I had all of my really important stuff in just one place, to allow for easy backups. It just requires some effort to make sure all apps save by default to D: (like always having a link to D: in the left side-bar of open/close dialogs to for easy selection etc).
Then when I moved from Windows to Linux, I changed between having my home directory as a separate partition and on the same partition as the system, depending on what distribution I was using at the time. I also sometimes dual/triple-booted so having the data completely separate was useful in those instances too, as it could be accessed by most or all of the different OSs/distributions.
After a couple of years of Linux I moved to OSX, where I’ve never had to worry about the choice, as everything is stored in the /Users directory (similar to /home on other unix/linux systems) on the main partition, and if I ever need to do a reinstall of the system, it keeps all of the applications and settings (yay!) and just replaces the system files around your data. That and the lack of something as easily breakable (or so it seems) as NTLDR means partitions are just not a concern; as it shouldn’t be for a “user” at the end of the day.
In some ways, I wish that Windows would follow OSX and a few other operating systems by putting everything in one easy-to-find place. This would keep things incredibly easy for people who are not interested in sorting their data in a very particular way.
I’ve always had some solid backups, so keeping items in “My Documents” never seemed like a bad idea. As it is, the only thing I’ve ever kept in those directories has been photos, Word Documents, and tax information. Everything else is stored in alternate directories or somewhere on the network.
I generally just throw everything into one partition, but I do have a couple of external hard drives as well as an internal one on my network that are where I store most of my data at.
Do you back up your external data?
Not as well as I should…I’m working on formulating a better idea in my head, and almost have it but when I get a bit further, I will likely need/want your expertise to try and make it happen.
No worries. I’ve actually been trying to think of a good way to back up 6.6 Terabytes of data, since putting that online would not only be ridiculously expensive, but incredibly difficult to fully recover should my house catch fire