Question Partitioning a Hard Drive - Advisable?

[Oasis Curator]

I'll have an NVMe drive for the OS so that's separate from this.

I will be adding a 10TB drive to a PC, to store specific types of data: documents, pictures, videos, etc.

Can I split the 10TB into a bunch (7 or 8?) partitions for neatness (when looking in Explorer)? Or would it be better to have folders within the root of the drive?

Or does it not really matter?

 

[USAFRet]

Folders are better than individual partitions.

Partitions have a fixed size. When one gets full, increasing it gets messy.
Folders...it doesn't make a difference.


Individual top level folders...1 for Doc, 1 for Video, etc.

 

[falcon291]

Years before it was a good method to keep the OS and the data in different partitions with single drive desktop computers. But now it is no longer necessary and does not worth the effort.

 

[Oasis Curator]

Thanks, I thought this would be the answer.
Just a shame that it won't be as neat in the explorer pane 😛

 

[USAFRet]

Thanks, I thought this would be the answer.
Just a shame that it won't be as neat in the explorer pane 😛

Not neat...vastly more confusing.

We had a guy here a while ago...
4 or 5 physical drives, with many many partitions.

He had 2 issues.
He was literally running out of drive letters (He was up to 'Y') and wanted to know how to mount more drives/partitions.
This is somewhat doable...you can mount a partition without a drive letter. Messy, though.


And also wanted to resize a couple, because those partitions were running out of space.
That was much more problematic. As in...no, you can't do this.

A few top level folders on each physical drive, and there would have been no problem.

 

[Inthrutheoutdoor]

We had a guy here a while ago...4 or 5 physical drives, with many many partitions.

He had 2 issues......He was literally running out of drive letters (He was up to 'Y') and wanted to know how to mount more drives/partitions.....This is somewhat doable...you can mount a partition without a drive letter. Messy, though.

And also wanted to resize a couple, because those partitions were running out of space...That was much more problematic. As in...no, you can't do this.

A few top level folders on each physical drive, and there would have been no problem.

1. Running out of drive letters is NOT a problem you want to have, trust me.....and neither is mounting drives without a letter..

2. There are software tools that WILL allow you to resize partitions easily. And for routine data this is usually ok, but for critical data that you can not afford to lose, you should ALWAYS have 1 (or 2, 3, 4) back-ups on other drives/machines/clouds BEFORE attempting to resize the partitions it is on.
Again, trust me when I say that copying data from a backup to another drive is way, way easier & faster than trying to recover it from a crashed/wiped/dead drive !

3. Since getting my first computer in the early 80's, I have always used Folders as my primary method of keeping my data organized, easy to locate & access. But I also use partitions (on external drives) to separate different types of data, so that if I want/need to wipe one part while keeping the rest, I can do that and it also makes the wiping process much faster too

 

[USAFRet]

2. There are software tools that WILL allow you to resize partitions easily. And for routine data this is usually ok, but for critical data that you can not afford to lose, you should ALWAYS have 1 (or 2, 3, 4) back-ups on other drives/machines/clouds BEFORE attempting to resize the partitions it is on.
Again, trust me when I say that copying data from a backup to another drive is way, way easier & faster than trying to recover it from a crashed/wiped/dead drive !

For the #2, this particular situation was...

5 partitions on the drive.
#3 was 98% full.
#4&5 were full.
#1&2 had some free space
He wanted to steal some space from 1 or 2, and give it to #3.

And the partitions were for, and labeled thusly:
Music A-L
Music M-Z
etc....

Just silly.

Yes, it could be done with some of the 3rd party tools.
But messy and fail prone.


A few folders, and there would have been NO issue.

 

[Oasis Curator]

It's interesting as I posted this elsewhere on the internet to cover a few different view points but everyone has come back and said the same - no partitions.

The reason I had them was because I physically had 4 separate drives of 2TB each (which was a huge amount of space back then).
Each drive is only just over 50% full now, so I'm not running out of space and don't need to worry about that in the next 5 years at least. I wouldn't ever think of nicking some space from one drive and adding it to another unless it was part of the same physical drive - but I have never done this before, ever. I'd just buy a bigger capacity disk.

I do find partitions easier in many cases - all downloads in one place - open explorer and click on it, instead of clicking on one drive, then into a folder - twice the amount of clicks. The times I have run low on space simply meant I needed to move the media to it's final home instead of allowing it to build up. It IS neater in the explorer pane as all the drives are listed there ready for me to click on. Yes, you can pin folders I suppose but it's not quite the same.

I understand and accept the advice given - more so as my backup drive is just that, one drive but a bunch of folders in the root - but it does seem some have filled in any missing information and made it sound like it's the worst sin 😛