Should I have my OS on a separate partition or drive?

[eamon butler]

I have been looking into separate partitions and a thought came across me, would it be better to have a separate partition or hard drive (or maybe i could save up and get an SSD)? At the moment i have everything on the same hard drive and, unless win7 automatically sets up a separate partition, everything is on the same partition. If the separate drive one is best i don't mind spending a bit on a new drive but if they are equal or a separate drive is only the tiniest bit better then i won't bother. Also which one is easier to do on a computer that has been used for a few months?

thankyou for your answers in advance and sorry if i posted this in the wrong category.

 

[ssddx]

its perfectly fine to have your OS on the same drive as everything else. i used partitions quite awhile ago and stopped because of the irritation. now i just keep everyone on one drive with another drive for just backup files and the like.

partitions can be handy for setting things up in my computer however in the long run only cause issues and become a pain to deal with.

having a ssd drive for boot will speed your system up and make your boots ultra fast however is completely optional

 

[eamon butler]

its perfectly fine to have your OS on the same drive as everything else. i used partitions quite awhile ago and stopped because of the irritation. now i just keep everyone on one drive with another drive for just backup files and the like.

partitions can be handy for setting things up in my computer however in the long run only cause issues and become a pain to deal with.

having a ssd drive for boot will speed your system up and make your boots ultra fast however is completely optional

So what does separating the OS do? Is the only advantage speed? and what does a separate partition do?

 

[SamiSC]

for example I have my OS on a different partetion along with other apps, and my other partition has all my files.

makes it more orginized and if I need to format my pc I can format just the OS partition without losing all my files.

 

[ssddx]

having it on a seperate drive means you can have your data as well as a backup image of your OS on the secondary drive so that if your os drive fails or gets corrupted you will not lose the data. a ssd drive will increase the speed of your system. partitions are mostly for organization purposes but could be used in the same way as multiple drives (but if the drive fails you lose everything on the drive, partitions and all so its not really good for backup as much as it is for organization).

if you reinstall the OS you will need to reinstall all programs as well, regardless of whether you have them on a different partition. some files are installed into the OS as well as in the registry which are needed to work the program so it will not work without a reinstall if you formatted just the OS partition/drive. this is why i say to just put all programs and the OS on one drive and leave the other drive for files and backup.

it can be convenient to have partitions.... but it can also be extremely inconvenient as well.