Partitions

[GavinG]

Hi
I'm building my 1st ever build this evening and have a 1Tb hard drive. My question is do I need to partition it i.e. some for my operating system and the rest for other stuff? What's the advantages of doing so? If I need to can I do this after I install the operating system? And if possible could someone briefly talk me through how to do this?

Thanks

 

[UKDTweak]

A good reason to partition a drive as large as a 1tb, if it's the only drive in your machines, is so once you have installed windows, you can create a local backup of the install to the secondary partition, in the event you need to recover Windows, you can do so without extra discs or losing any data from the secondary partition, naturally, if the HDD fails you will still lose everything so an external backup should be made too!

When you install windows on a new drive you should get the option of how much space you wish to use on the new drive and thus setup a partition, if you choose to use the whole drive, you can re partition it later using Disc Management built into windows.
I would recommend at least 60gb for your C: drive if your installing W7 or W8.

Generally you would install Windows and any programs to the C drive and use the secondary partition for Games, Music, Videos and documents.

I have a 1.5tb secondary drive which is partitioned into 2 partitions, one for Multimedia and the other for downloads/backups.

 

[GavinG]

Thanks that makes sense now
Can I ask 1 more thing, you refer to programs, would that be things like antivirus, teamspeak, reg cleaners and such? And would say 100gb be about enough for the 2nd drive for these? Sorry that's 2 things lol

 

[bledd]

Buy an SSD, use that for Windows / Programs, then divert your Documents/Photos/Videos/Music/Downloads to the 1tb drive

Awesome performance! SSD is the best upgrade ever.