Building computer -> partition hard drive?

[widgetguy_th]

I purchased a 1tb Samsung Spinpoint f3 and am planning to use it as my primary hard drive. I've been told in the past that the drive that I have windows on should be small in case I ever want to reformat it. Also, I've been told that it's more efficient storage wise to divide the hard drive into smaller sections.

If I do end up reformatting the partition with windows 7 on it, will I only have to reformat that partition or do I have to do the whole hard drive?

 

[JackNaylorPE]

If I do end up reformatting the partition with windows 7 on it, will I only have to reformat that partition or do I have to do the whole hard drive?

Yes.

You'll see many arguments against partitioning but never on that topic .....there's no arguing the point that replacing on OS on a partitioned drive is much easier than a non partitioned one.

Another advantage is that HD's are about 2 x faster at the outer edge than they are at the inner. So it allows you to "plan" where you want things stored and keep them there.

When I reinstall on OS on a C partition, I either image it back off an image at the end of the drive or reinstall from scratch. The latter of course won't leave all your programs in a working state because the registry entries and common file have not been installed. Some will work, some will not. However, you are still ahead of the game as any customizations will remain intact as "installing over" the previous installation won't replace any modified files.

You can also create a small D:\ Partition for swap and temp file usage. This keeps them at almost the very outer edge of the disk where ya get that high DTR. Dropping the NTFS overhead by formatting this partition as FAT 32 also gives a small boost; NTFS file protections are kinda unnecessary for temp files.

E:\ should be programs or games depending on your speed priorities, with the other following immediately behind. Data partitions I put at the end unless there's gonna be a last partition reserved for backups

 

[widgetguy_th]

Thank you,

But just to clarify, when I'm partitioning the drive for the first time the first partition I make will be at the outer edge of the disk or do I get to choose the position?

This is my first computer build and I'm going to want to partition the drive as soon as it's up and running after windows 7 is installed. Partitioning doesn't require any formatting does it? I don't want to have to reinstall windows after.