[SOLVED] Drive Partition Strategies

[dereckbc]

Just built a new machine with a SSD and reusing my 2Tb HDD. Last night I made one 500 Gb Partition, so not too late to change directions. Initial thought before I learned limitations was 5 Partitions using them like root file folders; Documents, Media, Personal, Work, and Downloads. What I quickly learned you can only have 3 Primary and 1 Extended Partitions with as many virtual Drives you want. I do not fully understand the pros and cons of the limitations.

So what are the strategies for Partitioning a HDD? Additionally the pros and cons.

Thank you in advance.

 

[lvt]

In your use case with XP in a work environment, sure specific partition sizes are required for that always available clone operation.
But if the OP is trying to use XP with his brand new system, there are much larger issues to contend with.

They do have a newer version for Win7/8/10 but I didn't try it so I'm unaware whether the behavior has changed.

But from a technical point of view, the old method of direct bit-by-bit copy is really fast as you don't have to spend time to filter/compresse the data. Especially when you don't trust the app 100% and want the whole drive to be cloned, that's the best method.