Do you have a separate partition for games and apps?

Tobes

Tobes

Tobes

Soldato
Joined
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Howdy,

I was asking about this in a thread in general hardware the other day and just wondered what others thought about this.

People said the reason they do is because it keeps the OS at the front of the disc and makes defragging easier. My views as to why I do not do this is because I would like to think that in today's day and age Windows defrag should be smart enough to keep system files at the front of the disc. Also there is the slight problem of me being lazy and I wouldn't be bothered to keep selecting a different partition when installing stuff. I don't think I would see any difference in speeds and if I was really fussed about it I would just have a single drive for Windows rather than a partition.

So do you have your games and applications on a separate partition from Windows?

(Also off topic but I notice a lot of people are against RAID 0. I know if one drive fails then all data is lost but I haven't had a drive fail on me... ever. What gives?)
 
In general I give the OS and programs their own partition at the front of the disk so I can just wipe the partition for reinstalls and I don't have to change the path for every tiny program. Games and large applications that load a lot of resources get put on another disk, it's not a bother changing the path sometimes and this is for performance. Preferably there should be a third disk for downloading to and 2 & 3 can be used for pagefile/scratchdisks too. Spreading I/O operations is the best way to speed up a system.
 
Nope, same partition, but I do use an ssd so my drive is probably a lot smaller. but even when I had everything on a 500gb hdd, I still did not use a separate partition.
 
partition for OS + Apps, rest of drive for games. Raid 5 array partitioned into drives for films/music/installers and then one for general stuff that isnt just storage. Looking to change it to SSD for OS + Apps then adding my current OS/apps/games drive into my raid.
 
Yes I do.. i have 4 partitions, one for Windows, one for apps, one for games and the other for data. The second drive is used for backup and the pagefile.
 
Admiral Huddy said:
Yes I do.. i have 4 partitions, one for Windows, one for apps, one for games and the other for data. The second drive is used for backup and the pagefile.
Click to expand...

So when you reinstall Windows you just just copy over shortcuts for games and apps or do you reinstall?

I have 4 drives. 3 for data, music, vids etc. Then my 74gb raptor which has my OS apps and games on it. However this will be replaced by a couple of drives in a RAID setup and I will probably use the raptor for Linux or I could use it as a scratch disc.

Just the idea of not reinstalling apps doesn't seem.. right. I don't know where the app might have placed files, registry etc.
 
What I sometimes do is copy the folders with app/game data in, reinstall windows, install those apps/games, then delete the folders and copy in my backup of them. Bingo, everything restored unless it keeps random game stuff in the registry, which hasn't happened yet..
 
300gb raptor is games
500gb wd is storage and downloads
160gb retro drive is mame,amiga,n64,zx spectrum etc
 
Yep, currently got 6 partition over 3 drives :

C : Win 7
D : Win Vista
E : Games
F: Downloads
G: Documents
H: Backup

Then ive also got a exteranl drive for backup as well thats kept at dads
 
mdjmcnally said:
I don't use separate partitions, I use separate disks instead, was using 150Gb Raptor for OS, 150Gb Raptor for Apps/Games and 250Gb for CD images etc.
Click to expand...

So you must be using about 8gb of that Raptor then?

I keep all my documents away from my main drive with the use of the Windows 7 location feature. The only thing I can't change is the AppData folder. Which keeps all of the my programs settings.

C: Win 7 - 74gb Raptor
D: Stuff (Downloads, Documents, Desktop, Setup files)
E: Music
F: Media

I don't think my minds changed on the point of a windows partition. It's too much faffing about for the only reason of easily installing again. When I don't install much anyway and I only install windows.. what... twice a year.

Plus I hate partitions as I never know how big to make them. :p
 
320gb drive: OS, apps and docs (C: )
640gb drive: Games, downloads, music, images of 320gb drive, temp stuff (D: )
1tb drive: Backing up (F: )
 
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I know some people do do it because they have loads of games on their pc at any one time but I normally only have 5 or so maximum so its no biggy reinstalling them.

1 x 640 gb drive
146 gb C: OS games apps
449gb D: Data
 
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I used to do same as many here, tons of partitions, RAID etc etc.. but lets face it, life is short, and as long as your PC performs ok why get OCD with stuff like this.

2 Drives in my PC, each with a single Partition.

1 Drive is OS and everything else

1 Drive is BACKUPS


It's simple, does the job, anything else other than this is a waste of time imo :)

One reason many will slate for complex setups is ease of reinstall, maybe it mattered years ago, but with PCs so fast these days you just don't have to worry about it.

My PC is a tool and a entertainment hub be it games or media, I don't want it to be a headache and a 'job' to manage and organize, which by overcomplicating your data storage produces.
 
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1 500gb hdd with os & games, 1 500 gb hdd with media only on it, important media (family photos etc) is on both drives (hopefully they don't both blow at the same time lol) but other stuff I don't care about can crash & burn tbh. Will be getting a 1/1.5tb drive soon for more media & plan on putting family pics etc onto a small external drive.

Most of my games are now steam based, means a big download if I format but I normally don't mind too much.
 
6 partitions over 4 drives. The thing I really love it for is if a drive or windows goes nipples end up I dont loose any data.

On large drives partitioning is a must imo.
 
Edinho said:
6 partitions over 4 drives. The thing I really love it for is if a drive or windows goes nipples end up I dont loose any data.

On large drives partitioning is a must imo.
Click to expand...

neither do I lose anything, and I have 2 * 1TB drives and just 2 partitions in total

6 Partitions is over the top m8 ... just my view though :)

I can't think of a single reason why 'partitioning is a must', this applys of course only to home PCs not servers / server hardware. In fact you could say partitioning a large drive forces you to use 'slower areas' of the disk where if you lumped everything together instead in a single partition odds are most of it would end up being a lot faster (this makes sense I think, could be wrong lol)

For example, 1.5TB dirve in 4 partitions, your 1st partition is the fastest, the last very slow in comparison... you are dividing drive areas by speed for no real reason, when if you had a single partition then everything would fill the fastest part of disk first. This doesn't apply so much if your almost full of data anyway, but these days who is
 
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Not for apps (because they're unlikely to work after a Windows re-install anyway), but yes for games. They can take ages to re-install, re-patch etc so it's easier to have them all there. Plus it makes defragging easier/quicker to manage, for both my OS and my games. I don't really bother defragging my other partitions, they're only used for normal data so performance isn't a huge concern.
 
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