2TB NVMe - partition for windows?

xenon20

xenon20

xenon20

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28 Aug 2013
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Hi All,

I'm unlikely to need any more than around 350GB for windows OS and programs (not including games), so is it ok to create a 350GB partition on my new 2TB NVMe drive to install windows, and use other partitions with the rest of the space for games and data ?

I read that partitioning is a thing of the past, and lots of people use a dedicated drive for the OS only, but as I've bought a 2TB drive I want to use it for other things as well as the OS.

What's the best way forward in this case? I'm thinking I'd need a separate partition so if necessary, I can restore just the OS and any installed programs, rather than having to restore the whole drive. Also I've been used to segregating my data on different partitions, is there anything wrong with doing that these days on fast NVMe drives?

Thanks
X20
 
Partitioning back in the olden days of hard drives was so that c: drive occupied the outer areas of the spinning disk, so had better performance (higher linear "velocity" on the outer edges of the disk than the inner portion due to HDDs having constant angular velocity).
Nowadays there's no such thing for SSDs.

Basically, do what you want but know that there's no performance benefit.

Personally I think having a separate small SSD for the boot drive is a bit pointless because SSDs have come down in price so much compared to a decade ago (was more common then to have a small boot SSD purely for cost reasons) and also that small SSDs are actually slower than larger SSDs.
 
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I'm a creature of habit so I have a 512GB Windows partition and the rest for personal data. I used to have a separate drive for the OS but, as @tamzzy says, there's not really any point now. Basically, do whatever you're most comfortable with.
 
I split my SSDs up into partitions for only one reason and that's backup.

I do backup images/incrementals of every partition/drive, but the ability to restore the key OS partition very quickly as possible has been good on several occasions. I generally backup the OS and important data more than the lesser data partitions (VMs, some games etc). This also makes cloud and offsite backups of the most important data smaller and hence I can keep way more backups of those things.

If I didn't have a complex backup approach then a single partition would be my choice.
 
I used to run seperate SSDs when the drives were a little smaller but with my 2TB drive I have a 200GB OS partition (90GB free even with Office and Adobe CS installed) and the rest of the space as a seperate partition for games.

Makes it a bit nicer to manage but obviously be aware you still lose everything if the drive was to fail.
 
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I'm a believer in partitioning if you have a single drive as reinstalling windows will not wipe out the whole drive of data.

2tb I would give 500gb for windows and programmes then keep the rest for games and data
 
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dont forget overprovisioning on ssd's

i've ended up with an o/s and another partition on 2tb ssd. and I backup o/s and other partition separately as per the backup software options.

1tb on main pc. easier with just one partition. :p

I use many and various HDD's for backups. 1, 2 and 4 TB only.
 
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I still tend to keep a separate partition for Windows and the rest of the drives for games (or anything else that I don't want to bump off to a sata SSD or mech drive.
Currently 4TB partitioned as around 400GB windows and 3.5TB games (or however much was left after formatting overhead... or the difference between GB and GiB)

This way if I ever need to nuke the windows partition and reinstall, I don't have to download TBs of games again.
 
Being able to reinstall Windows without touching the rest of your data is essential in my view. I've been doing it that way for so long I really can't envisage doing it any other way. These days of course, that end is achieved with a dedicated drive, but if that is not possible or desirable for some reason, then yes, a separate partition is still the way to go. It won't affect performance. It may even interfere with an SSD's wear algorithms (not sure), but the benefit of wiping and reinstalling the OS without touching any other data is more than worth it.
 
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nightwish said:
Being able to reinstall Windows without touching the rest of your data is essential in my view. I've been doing it that way for so long I really can't envisage doing it any other way. These days of course, that end is achieved with a dedicated drive, but if that is not possible or desirable for some reason, then yes, a separate partition is still the way to go. It won't affect performance. It may even interfere with an SSD's wear algorithms (not sure), but the benefit of wiping and reinstalling the OS without touching any other data is more than worth it.
Click to expand...
That is definitely where I feel partitions give a bit more peace of mind.
Having said that, I don't recall having as many (if any) issues and need to wipe the windows partition in last 5+ years. Could be that I have just been lucky but it seems that gone are the days when once a year you had to re-install Windows for the sake of keeping things stable lol.
 
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