Partitioning Benefits (Smaller Drive)

[agoodfella]

OK, so I just bought a "portable" notebook (VAIO TT series) -- for work / travel.

Its nice and light, not powerful (VISTA Business, 1.2GHz, Core 2 Duo, 3GB RAM, 120GB Hard Drive - 100GB "usable") -- at any rate, its 1.3kg and very portable.

My question is with regards to partitioning benefits. Obviously, if I had a computer with, say, 300GB+, I'd definitely partition it, but with roughly 100GB to work with, is it worth all of the trouble?

If I did it, I'd go with prolly a 60/40 split giving the C:/ drive 60GB (and most of the apps / heavy programs) and a D:/ drive for files... But the question stands, with just 100GB to work with is it worth the trouble? will i see a noticeable performance improvement?

Thanks

Edited January 26, 2009 by agoodfella

[Kotuku]

Nah stick with a single partition. You will end up getting stuck with too little on the smaller partition and be up for changing partition size somewhere down the track. ALso, as the partitions are all on the same HD you will not see any speed increase

Use the Backup facility in your Business version and buy a 100 Mb HD to attach via USB to do incremental and full backups to that drive

You probably have a hidden partition there already with a Factory Image on it?

Kotuku

[nitroshift]

I always create a second partition for saving files onto it in case something bad happens to the system partition...

[spacesurfer]

I always create a second partition for saving files onto it in case something bad happens to the system partition...

Ditto.

You probably don't need 60 GB for you system partition. I vLited my Vista and installed in a 12GB partition. I keep my pagefile on the second partition. It works for me. I don't need to install that many programs that I need a more than 12-15 GB.

Even after Acrobat 8, MS Office 2007, Avast Antivirus, Comodo Firewall, Firefox, Virtual PC, and other minor tools, I have 4 gb free.

Oh, I have some portable apps on the second partition so it doesn't take space on system partition. Tools like winrar, ultraiso, infrarecorder, CCleaner, are available as portable versions or you can make them portable.

And yes, if my system gets hosed, my documents, programs, backup image are safe in the other partition.

[fizban2]

you won't see much of a speed improvement by partitioning the disk into 2 partitions, (still has to manage the whole 100 gig) i would stick with the single partition just from the stance in a partition fials normally these days it is cause the disk is going bad, which means that all your partitions are dead but to each his own