Any benefit to partitioning of a 1+TB storage Drive

[jalmolky]

I'm sure that there must be a thread about this somewhere here, but I can't find it. I see things about how to partition, why to partition, partitioning with a single drive, and raid setups etc.

Here's my Situation.

I already have computer set up with a 640 GB SATA2 32MB part'd to 100/540 for OS&Programs/Storage.

However I'm looking at getting a new drive probably 1 or 1.5 TB's for storage of multimedia files. I might do something else with the drive, page file and what not, I won't be doing anything that requires a format of my original drive, so let's ignore all that.

So my main question is...

Assuming I was to only use the full 1.5 TB drive for storage of multimedia files, is there any reason to partition it? These are large files that are seldom edited and are written all at once. So they shouldn't be fragmented and the extra file size that may be created by one large partition is just a drop in the bucket.

Is there anything else that I might be missing?

 

[saint19]

Hi newcomer and welcome to the Tom's hardware forum.

The main reason is that, in some fail of the disk you can lost all your files if the disk isn't with partitions. If you have 2 or 3 partitions, you can be more sure that in some fail on 1 partition the other data in the other 2 partitions are good.

 

[jalmolky]

That makes sense Saint. Thanks.

 

[saint19]

Any time, that's what we're here for.

 

[sturm]

you can be more sure that in some fail on 1 partition the other data in the other 2 partitions are good.

That really only makes sense if you copy your files to more than one partition. If not you will still lose your files if 1 of X partitions goes bad.

If it's mainly just a storage drive I would just leave it as one large drive. As for ANY drive I would have backups of your important files.

 

[saint19]

^ With files i not only mean to .docx or .xlsx

Isn't the same if you have 1TB with videos, music and games in an only partition that if you have the same videos, music and games in the 1TB disk with 3 partitions.

In the first example, if the disk fail, he lost videos, music and games. In the second example, if the videos partition fail, he only lost her videos.

 

[jalmolky]

Thanks Saint, I knew what you meant, that if one of the partitions failed that the files in a separate partition might be a bit safer.