Worth partition an M.2 drive and installing programs on a separate partition to windows?

[Ricky5555]

Hi guys

The title says it all really. I have a 256gb M.2 NVME M.2 drive. In the past I have always partitioned drives up. A partition for Windows, one for Apps and one for my documents. I did this believing that performance was better which was probably true with a mechanical HD.

Am I correct in believing that with an SSD it makes no difference in terms of performance? What do you guys do? would you recommend partitioning or just run with single partition?

Any advice / thoughts greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Richard

 

[Barty1884]

Outside of the ease of backing up (ie you could have data on a secondary partition, and only back that up), I don't really see much need in partitioning at all really.

Especially true of such a (relatively) small space as a 256GB SSD. Performance-wise, it's not going to impact anything though, either way.

 

[Ricky5555]

Thanks mate. I'm not too concerned about backing up as everything gets backed up to the cloud via Backblaze anyway no matter how its partitioned.

I think I might just go for just a single partition. How of interest what do you do?

 

[USAFRet]

A single partition, and other physical drives for other things.

 

[Barty1884]

Thanks mate. I'm not too concerned about backing up as everything gets backed up to the cloud via Backblaze anyway no matter how its partitioned.

I think I might just go for just a single partition. How of interest what do you do?

I have a boot SSD (256GB 950 PRO), a separate SSD for my frequently used programs/save games etc (250GB 850 EVO) a 1TB HDD (WD Blue) for bulk storage and another 1TB HDD (Seagate Barracuda) for backups of the drives.

Totally overkill for my needs, I'd be happy with just the 950PRO for OS/Programs and a 1TB for bulk storage.... but I've added drives over time.

 

[Ricky5555]

Yeah I know what you mean. I actually have a lot of my stuff on my NAS so this drive is more for operational use.

 

[USAFRet]

My system, 5 x SSD:

500GB 850 EVO - OS and all applications
250GB 840 EVO - photo work
250GB 840 EVO - CAD, video work
960GB Sandisk Ultra II - games, docs, all that other junk
120GB Kingston - cache and scratch space for drive 2 & 3

All the movies (2.5TB), music(110GB), backups, etc...all live on the large NAS box.

 

[Ricky5555]

Some drive action you've got going on there USAFRet

 

[boosted1g]

Separate partitions give you zero performance gain, this is for both SSD and magnetic drives.
The Pros are simply in organization and slightly easier to configure for backups.

With programs on a separate partition, it is still completely dependant on that windows partition.
Your programs still need the registry keys, userdata and other files on your windows drive to run; and thus doing a reinstall of windows will still require you to reinstall all of your programs.

 

[Ricky5555]

Yeah I get that Grandmaster. Thanks for all the advice. I've just gone with one partition. The OS is installed now.