Big Hard Drive, what's the consensus about partitioning?

Picked up a killer deal over the holidays and got a 1.5 TB drive for $55. It's not fast by any means, and I really only want it for storage as I have another 1 tb drive.

Is partitioning still a good thing to do? What's the best way with Windows 8.

My approach is
-Windows by itself. When I need to reinstall all I have to do is backup the user profile and nuke it, I'll be testing this soon (see below).
-Programmes that can be standalone, stuff where you can just run the .exe and it goes, also bulky stuff goes here if I can.
-Games
-Big file storage partition

I think this helps compartmentalise it a bit, partly for organisation, partly for fragmentation. Over the years one thing I have found is that going too far in having lots of partitions can hinder more than it helps, so if you assign 100GB for something and then need to store 120GB of that thing, it just gets in the way.

For a related question, I should be getting an 256GB SSD soon (tomorrow/Monday), and after a 'testing' period it'll be my main OS drive, any suggestions for partition/folders? Counter to my HDD scheme I think I'm just going to do one big partition, add C:\GAMES and C:\PROGS for anything that lives on the SSD and just pull it all off if I need a format/reinstall (plus backups of course).

I should add, that my plan is to buy an SSD for Windows when I find a deal I"m happy with.

El-Producto wrote:

I should add, that my plan is to buy an SSD for Windows when I find a deal I"m happy with.

That day was Wednesday for me.

Sounds to me like one big partition is probably what you need. Personally I am wanting to start drive pooling but ZFS just isn't quite where I want it to be yet (Hi, I'm a Mac).

I've been doing the SSD/Large Drive split for years.

SSD- Windows, Office, my Development Tools, utilities I commonly use, etc.

Big Drive - Docs, Games, media, rarely used applications. I generally don't partition it, instead I organize my folders well.

This year I plan to get a second 256/512GB SSD and put my steam games I'm currently playing on it.

I stopped partitioning once I had Windows on its own drive. I don't even know if partitioning is useful anymore (if you have multiple drives)...

Like a lot of things, partitioning is just a tool you can use to separate out and compartmentalise stuff that need to be separate. I agree the "OS plus anything else that needs reinstalling when the OS is replaced" partition is a good foundation, but anything after that is personal preference really.

Really though, the days of needing to reinstall an OS for maintenance are mostly behind us, and a last ditch option when things go really wrong. For the last few years the main reason I've reinstalled is for new hardware (a change in mobo/chipset) or replacing the drive the OS is on, which in itself might not necessitate separate partitions as you aren't nuking anything installing on a virgin drive, just copy the old stuff over.

Partitioning for organizational purposes is more trouble than it's worth. At most, put the OS in its own partition so you can do a destructive reinstall and leave it at that.

Unless you're booting multiple operating systems, just don't bother. Modern Windows is already oriented toward storing all user-created files under one directory tree, and you can install Steam and your games under a different tree on the same partition easily enough.

I do partition the disk in my work machine, but that's only because there's a lot of stuff that I literally have to know the location of while developing, and Windows has limitations on path lengths.

Imo, large storage hdds are a liability. Unless you have them in some sort of raid array and off-site storage. The bigger the hdd, the more data lost if it fails. Personally, I prefer 500gb and less hdds. I know it's counter to the prevailing knowledge but I can be quite the contrarian...

Duoae wrote:

Imo, large storage hdds are a liability. Unless you have them in some sort of raid array and off-site storage. The bigger the hdd, the more data lost if it fails. Personally, I prefer 500gb and less hdds. I know it's counter to the prevailing knowledge but I can be quite the contrarian...

Completely disagree. The bigger the better. Size doesn't matter as long as you have a decent system of backup in place.

Kurrelgyre wrote:

Modern Windows is already oriented toward storing all user-created files under one directory tree

That, is the one thing I'd really love to change about how MS organise things on windows. I know there are hacky ways to make it so your user profile isn't on the same partition as the OS, but I would love it if I could have my whole user profile somewhere else and just say "make a new user and use f:\profile for files". I've been using a separate folder on a separate partition for my documents and app profiles (mail, browser) and you just link them up.

Perhaps this is just my olde school way of doing things, and in opposition to how MS sees it's OS being used. Most people wouldn't notice if their files are in c:\users\bob\documents or somewhere else.

I would actually like to see Active Directory/Open Directory become a bit easier to setup and use in a home environment. I do most of my computing on my Macbook but I also have a desktop that dual boots Mac OS X and Windows 7 plus two more Mac's and 3 iPhone's in the house. It would be awesome to have a single profile and access to a base set of files on all of them.

That sounds something like what I'd like in any NAS system I ever get for myself, a centralised repository of files you can have a local cache of, and then some version control system on top. I can understand there's some files windows absolutely definitely needs to have, or otherwise that profile won't load and windows will get all confused, but it would be good to see a few options about where stuff is stored.

To make a bad car analogy, moving your profile between installs of windows seems a bit like having to remove the seats and refit them when you want to change car. I'd prefer it if I could just dump a box of stuff on the back seat and I'm done.

We use Active Directory at work and it is awesome (when it is working right). It is nice to be able to sign into any computer on campus and have access to my stuff. I do a similar thing at home with Google Drive though.

Scratched wrote:

That sounds something like what I'd like in any NAS system I ever get for myself, a centralised repository of files you can have a local cache of, and then some version control system on top. I can understand there's some files windows absolutely definitely needs to have, or otherwise that profile won't load and windows will get all confused, but it would be good to see a few options about where stuff is stored.

To make a bad car analogy, moving your profile between installs of windows seems a bit like having to remove the seats and refit them when you want to change car. I'd prefer it if I could just dump a box of stuff on the back seat and I'm done.

I purchased a 4 bay synology nas earlier this year, started with two 2TB drives in raid. It has some lovely software on it for media sharing, DLNA, etc. I put all my photos, music, and movies on it as well as back up my system OS's to it.

It's actually getting kinda full, I'll probably slap a couple 3TBs into a second raid later this year.

Rykin wrote:

I would actually like to see Active Directory/Open Directory become a bit easier to setup and use in a home environment. I do most of my computing on my Macbook but I also have a desktop that dual boots Mac OS X and Windows 7 plus two more Mac's and 3 iPhone's in the house. It would be awesome to have a single profile and access to a base set of files on all of them.

Home Group is supposed to be that in Win 7+. Between that, Skydrive, and your Win 8 profiles, they're moving pretty close.

Scratched wrote:

I would love it if I could have my whole user profile somewhere else and just say "make a new user and use f:\profile for files". I've been using a separate folder on a separate partition for my documents and app profiles (mail, browser) and you just link them up.

Pretty much the same for any version of windows but here goes for Win7:
Log in with an admin account that isn't the account you want to move (local admin should be good, what's that you say you run as an admin and don't have a separate account for that? I can't help bad decisions). It won't let you move a profile in use so you may want to make one temporarily.
Hit Start/Wincharm button or Windows key
Right click on Computer and click Properties
Click on Advanced System Settings on the left
It should have opened to the Advanced tab but if not click the Advanced tab of the System Properties.
In the middle section click on the button for Settings under User Profiles
You will now see a list of all profiles and whether they are roaming or local (most likely 100% local in a home environment).
Click on the account/profile you want to change the location of and click the Copy To... button.
Type in a path and generally follow the wizard, you should be good to go.

I took a look at that and the "copy to" button is disabled for the other profile on this PC. I might play around with it a bit more later.

Scratched wrote:

That, is the one thing I'd really love to change about how MS organise things on windows. I know there are hacky ways to make it so your user profile isn't on the same partition as the OS, but I would love it if I could have my whole user profile somewhere else and just say "make a new user and use f:\profile for files". I've been using a separate folder on a separate partition for my documents and app profiles (mail, browser) and you just link them up.

Perhaps this is just my olde school way of doing things, and in opposition to how MS sees it's OS being used. Most people wouldn't notice if their files are in c:\users\bob\documents or somewhere else.

I was thinking about this recently, and I think it's one of the most egregious failings of Windows as an OS.

The whole concept of a "drive" in Windows is just... bad. In Windows, filesystems are a property of drives, rather than the system. Partitioning is just splitting a physical drive into multiple logical drives, each of which gets their own completely separate filesystem.

Whereas in UNIXes, the file hierarchy is a property of the system, and drives can be attached at any point. Hence how I can partition my SSD and my storage drives and easily make whatever chunk of the file hierarchy be stored on the drive I want it to be on ("this partition will store /boot, this one will store /home..."), and the OS does not give a crap in the slightest.

That's one thing I wish I could wave a wand and change about Windows. The separate drives thing is a DOS anachronism that's way past its sell-by date. When I first bought an SSD, I tried to come up with a way to split things up nicely between it and my storage drive, but ultimately I had to give up my dream of sensible storage management and just configure apps to go to the secondary drive.

You can just use mount points in Windows, if you want. You still have the C: root, but that's not really that much different than "/" in Unix, and then you can mount your entire directory structure under there.

People often use D, E, F and so on, but you haven't had to for a long time, since at least Vista, and maybe XP.

Well, okay, you usually still want to use a drive letter for a CD or DVD. Not sure if you can path-mount those.

I imagine MS would have to do a lot of redesigning windows, and break backwards compatibility (or nasty unintuitive hacks) to get that in windows. Not that I wouldn't mind seeing what they could do with a full redesign and no legacy to worry about (although perhaps from a bunker a few miles away with welding goggles after Win8). One thing I'll say about drive letters is that they give a fairly unambiguous way of identifying something, you're not going to mistake what "the E drive" is.

I think they've been down that path before though, with WinFS and Longhorn, and I'm sure you could go down the rabbit hole quite a way if you give yourself free reign over redesigning computer storage and how it's used in OSes. Could you have a filesystem more suited to flash, could you use a better interface than SATA (PCIe is used in some), are the various layers we've got perfectly fine.

Malor wrote:

You can just use mount points in Windows, if you want. You still have the C: root, but that's not really that much different than "/" in Unix, and then you can mount your entire directory structure under there.

Possibly I was doing something wrong, then, as I was not successful at doing this when I tried.

*Legion* wrote:
Malor wrote:

You can just use mount points in Windows, if you want. You still have the C: root, but that's not really that much different than "/" in Unix, and then you can mount your entire directory structure under there.

Possibly I was doing something wrong, then, as I was not successful at doing this when I tried.

I've both had it work for me and not work for me so..I suppose I'm clueless here as well.

Is it buggy? I've never had trouble with it, although I don't usually bother with it, as drive letters are basically okay. Unix's system is better, but eh, drive letters work.

Scratched wrote:

My approach is
-Windows by itself. When I need to reinstall all I have to do is backup the user profile and nuke it, I'll be testing this soon (see below).
-Programmes that can be standalone, stuff where you can just run the .exe and it goes, also bulky stuff goes here if I can.
-Games
-Big file storage partition

I think this helps compartmentalise it a bit, partly for organisation, partly for fragmentation. Over the years one thing I have found is that going too far in having lots of partitions can hinder more than it helps, so if you assign 100GB for something and then need to store 120GB of that thing, it just gets in the way.

For a related question, I should be getting an 256GB SSD soon (tomorrow/Monday), and after a 'testing' period it'll be my main OS drive, any suggestions for partition/folders? Counter to my HDD scheme I think I'm just going to do one big partition, add C:GAMES and C:PROGS for anything that lives on the SSD and just pull it all off if I need a format/reinstall (plus backups of course).

With Windows 7, there is actually a solution for that. If you setup the Big Disk(s) as dynamic volumes, you can actually grab free space from elsewhere in the disk (even another disk) and assign that space to the partition that's running out of space and this process is transparent to other applications (including Explorer). It's basically like LVM in Linux or ZFS pools that Rykin mentioned. Dynamic volumes can also be mirrored for basic redundancy in a RAID-1 array.

The trade off of dynamic volumes is that they can't be read by older Windows versions (possibly Linux/Mac as well) but if you have an external backup solution that's not a major issue normally.

Note: Tested only Windows 7 ultimate, I have no idea which flavor of Win7/Win8 this feature becomes available in.

*Legion* wrote:
Malor wrote:

You can just use mount points in Windows, if you want. You still have the C: root, but that's not really that much different than "/" in Unix, and then you can mount your entire directory structure under there.

Possibly I was doing something wrong, then, as I was not successful at doing this when I tried.

This is NTFS junction points yes? It's essentially equivalent to symlinks and I've been suing it since Vista without major issues. You might want to install some 3rd party utilities to make things easier though, I think Windows by default only provides command line options for creating/managing junction points.

Well, junction points sounds right, but you don't have to use the command line. Just look in Disk Management -- you can tell it to mount a drive under a path, instead of using a drive letter. It's all GUI, and perfectly friendly, no need for utilities that I'm aware of.

Malor wrote:

Well, junction points sounds right, but you don't have to use the command line. Just look in Disk Management -- you can tell it to mount a drive under a path, instead of using a drive letter. It's all GUI, and perfectly friendly, no need for utilities that I'm aware of.

Ah, sorry perhaps I go it wrong. I've normally used Junction Links to move specific folders across hard drives and never found a GUI for that built into Windows. Kind of how you needed to install Steam Mover to shift games onto SSD's until Steam added the option to install outside the Steam directory.

Oh, ok, I misunderstood, then. It sounds like Junction Links are like symbolic links in Unix, and what I'm talking about is more like a mount point, where a whole filesystem shows up at a specific mount location.

I'm not aware of any native GUI for doing symlinks in Windows, so I think you were correct, and I was just confusing terms.