OS on 1 volume & all programs/app's & games on other

[Dirty Durden]

I have split my C) Drive into 2 volumes, one for the OS & the other volume for my programs/app's & games. Is this a good idea, I have always done this & I really can not tell you why?

Thanks,

 

[505090]

Personally i don't think there is any gain from partitioning a single drive like that, and if you run of room on one partition you are going to be stuck with it.

What I personally do is use two separate drives one for data and one for my os and apps. The reason I do that is I run a lot of alpha and beta software that manages to crash my computer every few months, so this way i reformat my os drive and start over while keeping all my data intact.

 

[andy5174]

Apps and games would load faster if they were installed on the same partition as your OS.

I would make two partitions and then throw every apps & games into the OS partition with the rest in the other partition.

 

[Dirty Durden]

Thanks guys for you info, what about doing a clean install of the OS. If I have all the apps/programs in its own partition I can save some time by not having to reinstall all of my those apps, right?

 

[andy5174]

It is a good idea to do a clean install and then back up the system partition RIGHT AFTER with Acronis True Image which is available on WD website for free if you have a WD HDD.

A lot of apps/games will not work without writing registry and so you may still have to reinstall them even they are in different partition as the OS.

 

[Dirty Durden]

That sucks, I just bought Acronis Home 2010 & I have 4 WD drives.

 

[505090]

as andy said most apps need to be reinstalled on a new os install

 

[geofelt]

If you have 4 drives, then install your OS and programs on one drive.
Use other drives for data storage if you want.

Use Acronis or windows-7 backup to create an image copy of the OS on a second drive.
It will be much faster to recover than an OS reinstall.

You might want to consider using one of those drives in an external enclosure for safer backup.