Do you have a separate partition for games and apps?

[Tobes]

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?)

 

[Tobes]

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.

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.

 

[Tobes]

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.

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.