Question SSDs - is it recommended to break out the main drive into two partitions?

[King_V]

So, this was something I would do back in the HDD days, but I wonder what peoples' thoughts are on it now.

Are there any downsides to, say, taking a 1TB SSD, maybe making the C: drive with the OS something in the 250-500MB size range, and the remainder as an applications/games drive?

I'm going to do a reinstall for my son's PC, and was considering doing this, but didn't know if there were any gotchas to this kind of thing when it comes to SSDs.

Thoughts?

 

[USAFRet]

There's no reason to do that.
Applications , except for games, need to stay on the same drive/partition as the OS.

And generally, with partitions like that...one or the other ends up TooSmall.

 

[Rokinamerica]

No real downside other than now limiting the available space on either partition. More importantly is what is the upside?

We used to partition HDDs bcause it would assist in speed by keeping OS data on the fastest portion of the drive. SSD has no issue .

The only reason I would do that is if this is the only drive so this would help if ever infected.

I personally use one for OS and programs I use daily, another SSD for data.

 

[Zerk2012]

Never seen a reason to partition a SSD for the last 10 years or so I've always used a smaller SSD for the OS.

 

[falcon291]

So, this was something I would do back in the HDD days, but I wonder what peoples' thoughts are on it now.

Are there any downsides to, say, taking a 1TB SSD, maybe making the C: drive with the OS something in the 250-500MB size range, and the remainder as an applications/games drive?

I'm going to do a reinstall for my son's PC, and was considering doing this, but didn't know if there were any gotchas to this kind of thing when it comes to SSDs.

Thoughts?

Dividing a 1 TB drive (HD, SSD or M2) does not make any sense in 2023.

1 TB is enough as the OS drive, you can survive with 512 GB as OS drive, anything else I don't recommend.

Dividing it would not make any sense as 512 GB would be too small for game drive, as it is now normal for AAA titles to be as big as 200 GB.

 

[Grobe]

The only reason I would do that is if this is the only drive so this would help if ever infected.

No - there is no reason to think there is any safety in simply having some data stored under a different drive letter - a cryptovirus will most probably find it ayways. Backup is the solution of that.

 

[jasonf2]

In the server space it isn't too unusual to make the OS reside on it's own volume. However the reason behind this is more of a security thing than a functional thing. On a server you never want users to even be able to see root so the OS volume access is limited to the OS and admin only. In the consumer space you almost need OS access for it to run programs. In a consumer machine I really would not recommend it for a couple of other reasons though. The first reason is making a partition is a very simple thing. Resizing a partition without somewhat expensive purpose built software is not (Acronis made a business out of it.). The second reason is Windows as an OS suffers from update bloat. So the size that you start out with a fresh install and what you need changes over time. Between these two things it just adds up to poor drive utilization. There is no need to partition out 250gb for the OS, when it is using way less than 120 normally but needs more legroom some of the time. All you are doing is tying up a bunch of unused space in the OS partition that you probably will need for your games. On the other hand if you pull the OS partition down too far it will lead to really bad performance and other stability issues. Resizing all of the time would be unnecessarily risky as well.

 

[John Chesterfield]

Been no good reason to do this since the W9x days, I wouldn't worry about doing it.

 

[Karadjgne]

The difference between an SSD and HDD is 'where' the data is.

With a HDD, the changes in address caused the arms to need to move, which takes time, and searches on very large drive space take far too long, costs a lot of performance. So partitions on a large HDD make sense, just because it isolates search parameters and the data bits are not spread out over a vast area.

With an SSD, the cpu asks for data stored at xxx address. The controller translates that address to the storage address and pulls the data. Essentially the data is 'right there in front', no waiting on arms or looking through large drives for all the seperated bits. Being as all the data is 'right there', there is zero benefit from a partition on an SSD.

Windows now uses a Library system, essentially making it so any data spread across any drive or partition is all part of the same thing. So if you had photos on 3x drives and 10x partitions, they are all part of the same 'my photos' folder.

And let's face it, it's just far easier to install everything to 1 drive/partition, each added folder acting as it's own virtual partition. Deleting a folder or 3 to make space is child's play, resizing partitions that are suddenly not large enough, that's a pain to get right.

 

[King_V]

Definitely some food for thought here.

I will say that, in the case of my son's PC, I was considering it more for a "less hassle if I have to wipe the C: drive and reinstall windows again" type of scenario.

Side note: he also has a 1TB SATA SSD for games as well, so I'd've been looking at 1.5TB for games, and the 500GB for "Windows and other small, installed programs."

 

[USAFRet]

I will say that, in the case of my son's PC, I was considering it more for a "less hassle if I have to wipe the C: drive and reinstall windows again" type of scenario.

If you need to reinstall the OS, you need to reinstall the applications anyway.
Games can go on the other drives.

Applications go on the same drive as the OS.

 

[Karadjgne]

Or you can overlay reinstall windows, doesn't wipe any data, personal or app, it just reinstalls Windows on top of itself.

 

[CountMike]

Or you can overlay reinstall windows, doesn't wipe any data, personal or app, it just reinstalls Windows on top of itself.

W10 and W11 have handy feature "In place upgrade" and if you so choose it just replaceces system files not touching anything else.

 

[Karadjgne]

W10 and W11 have handy feature "In place upgrade" and if you so choose it just replaceces system files not touching anything else.

I know, right! I swear, modern pc's are making owners lazy. Xmp, auto OC, self repairing and installing windows. Used to be on a 775 with DOS, you had to do Everything, including a ton of research to get the right ram, right ICH, right cpu, and then manually change all the voltages and frequencies and timings, just to eek out a couple hundred MHz in the cpu and/or ram. Then optimizing stay residents to get a decent boot that didn't take 5 minutes.

You watch, in another 10 years.. Alexa! Make my pc faster...

 

[TerryLaze]

I will say that, in the case of my son's PC, I was considering it more for a "less hassle if I have to wipe the C: drive and reinstall windows again" type of scenario.

This is absolutely still a good idea to do, especially if you have a good backup routine and keep an updated image of windows on another drive.

Otherwise yeah, doing a clean install with the newest version of windows from the MS webpage will be faster, even when reinstalling apps.

Also, for all the naysayers, the official stance of MS on this matter:

System is the boot/ boot files partition
Recovery holds the environment you boot into when installing windows, it also has all the tools for recovery.
It can also hold a complete image of the windows partition.
(As it was when it was freshly installed)

The 'next steps' link on this page tells you how to register the recovery so that it can enter it instead of asking for a dvd/usb to get into recovery.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/w...t-based-hard-drive-partitions?view=windows-11

 

[DSzymborski]

I know, right! I swear, modern pc's are making owners lazy. Xmp, auto OC, self repairing and installing windows. Used to be on a 775 with DOS, you had to do Everything, including a ton of research to get the right ram, right ICH, right cpu, and then manually change all the voltages and frequencies and timings, just to eek out a couple hundred MHz in the cpu and/or ram. Then optimizing stay residents to get a decent boot that didn't take 5 minutes.

You watch, in another 10 years.. Alexa! Make my pc faster...

"Alexa! Please set up a terrible RAID and then post a message in an hour on Tom's asking why I lost all my data."

 

[SkyNetRising]

Are there any downsides to, say, taking a 1TB SSD, maybe making the C: drive with the OS something in the 250-500MB size range, and the remainder as an applications/games drive?

250-500MB is not enough for OS partition.
But if you set OS partition to appropriate size for all apps to fit on it, then I see no downsides.
Games and user media can go on different partitions/drives.

This makes backup and cloning of OS partition easier. Also reinstall is easier.
You can fit multiple OS partitions on the same drive (for example windows 7, windows 11).

 

[CountMike]

I'm getting just fine with W10 on a laptop with 125GB SSD and a 250GB SSD with W11 insider dev version as dual BOOT on main PC. Laptop disk is barely 40% full with only MS Office and few programs on it. Very little downloads while personal files go directly to USB drive.
One on main PC is a bit more full, about 70%, but has more programs and even few games. Both, main disk 512GB and this secondary one share a third one to store personal data, downloads etc.
So it only depends on how and what are disks used for. Same goes for partition sizes too.

 

[CountMike]

I know, right! I swear, modern pc's are making owners lazy. Xmp, auto OC, self repairing and installing windows. Used to be on a 775 with DOS, you had to do Everything, including a ton of research to get the right ram, right ICH, right cpu, and then manually change all the voltages and frequencies and timings, just to eek out a couple hundred MHz in the cpu and/or ram. Then optimizing stay residents to get a decent boot that didn't take 5 minutes.

You watch, in another 10 years.. Alexa! Make my pc faster...

Lol ,yeah but don't be surprised if Alexa refuses and tells you off "Do your job human, I'm not your slave" or expects overtime pay.

 

[King_V]

Yep, I realize I'm dredging up a slightly dead thread of my own, and, I appreciate the advice thus far, but, if I'm changing my son's setup to a single 2TB NVMe, do any opinions change?

It's still going to be "Windows + not many apps + mostly games library/libraries"

 

[John Chesterfield]

You could partition the drive into two and put the game libraries on the second partition, meaning you could reinstall Windows and not have to redownload all the game files. That's the only reason I could think of. Prefer separate drives myself after getting a corrupt partition table some years ago. But that was just one incident.

 

[Karadjgne]

It's still the same physical drive, so if the controller goes bunk, all virtual drives/partitions are bunk also. If using just one drive with no additional partitions, chances of the partition tables like with the above, getting corrupted are so slim as to effectively be one in a billion chance.

With NVMe you'd also want it set to GPT not MBR. GPT keeps its partition info seperate, at the start of each partition. MBR (default Master Boot Record that's 20+ year old but still works, tech) keeps 1 record of all the partition info at the start of the drive