I use mutiple hard drives on my machine and have found partitioning does
have one MAJOR advantage. When it comes to maintanance (IE: Defragmentting
and Scandisk) it is much, much faster to defrag, for example, 10 gig as
opposed to 30 gig. Also, you can increase security of certain files by
password enabling the partition you wish to use for secured items.
I also use a partion to download programs from online to. This allows me to
reinstall from there, if necessary, as well as have somewhere to go to share
files I liked with friends.
I have actually copied my install CD for my OS to one partition so I can
"heal" any damage done by who knows what or replace corrupted operating
system files with easy and much faster than using the CD.
Granted, partitioning used to be the domain of multiple operating systems,
but with a little imagination, I've found it very useful still!

James A. Taylor



>From: "Jon F. Persinger" <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: PCBUILD - Personal Computer Hardware discussion List
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: [PCBUILD] Partitioning Hard Drive
>Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 06:54:47 -0500
>
>Message text written by PCBUILD - Personal Computer Hardware discussion
>List
> >I have Dell Dimension L,800MHz, 128 RAM, 40 GB, WinME.  If I am only
>going
>to use one OS & one browser, what's the pluses or the minuses of partioning
>my hard drive? Thanks
><
>
>Honestly, I don't see many pluses at all.  Back in the days when cluster
>size management was a big concern, it made sense.  (Or before that when you
>had partition size limits like DOS 3.x.)  If you don't need dual-boot
>capabilities, what's the point?  Technically I don't see any gains by doing
>that.  Logically, it is a different issue.  You may find it more convenient
>to view the drive as smaller partitions for the purpose of organization.
>Sometimes it makes sense to put all the programs on one drive and the data
>on another.  (ie. databases)  Actually, in that instance, you may see a
>small gain in speed by doing so, and backing up the data becomes a little
>easier to manage.  Similarly, I've seen people use a separate drive for use
>with only the swap file.  This is more often done with NT, but I guess you
>could do it with 9x also.
>
>Jon Persinger
>
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