500GB HDD - partiton or not

[Rytron]

Hi,
I have a 500GB HDD, on many sites I have read that partitioning hard drives offers many advantages.
I read recently that if you partition a very large hard drive .i.e 500GB the advantages are even greater.

What are your reccomendations for the most straight forward and safe way to partition a hard drive into multiple partitions.
Also does this method have a reliable way to 'undo' partitions?

Thank you.

 

[reddevil6]

if u use partition magic u can undo it mind u if u do a system restore it will undo it with any program.
u can also di it through disk management just deleat the whole 500G an allacet it is sizes u want

 

[porterjw]

Punctuation and grammar are still our friends!

As mentioned, Partition Magic will work. Also may want to look into GParted. You can create/resize/delete with either program, so you can undo (redo?) any changes.

I'd opt for several smaller partitions, but that's just me. I like to keep things super-organized. One of my 80 GB is split into three, and the other into six.

 

[Geoff]

What kinds of advantages did you hear? You could create one partition for the OS, one for data, one for programs, and one for backups, and then if your OS becomes corrupt and wont boot you can reinstall the OS and all your data will still be there. However if the hard drive fails, everything is still lost.

 

[munkyeetr]

I've always been of the camp that makes a 20 or 30 GB partition for the OS and any installed software, then usually the rest in an Extended/Logical Partition to store documents. Link your My Documents folder to it right from the Desktop. That way if worst came to worst (and it has many times in the years of tinkering and experimenting) I can format and reinstall the OS without worrying about my personal data.

 

[Vizy]

It might seem dumb but, i don't even think that xp will read over 137 gb. So hell yea, PADRTITION IT!

 

[Cleric7x9]

What kinds of advantages did you hear? You could create one partition for the OS, one for data, one for programs, and one for backups, and then if your OS becomes corrupt and wont boot you can reinstall the OS and all your data will still be there. However if the hard drive fails, everything is still lost.

wouldnt the OS and the programs have to be on the same partition?

 

[Geoff]

It might seem dumb but, i don't even think that xp will read over 137 gb. So hell yea, PADRTITION IT!

Way wrong, it supports much more then that with SP2. It can support well over 1TB.

wouldnt the OS and the programs have to be on the same partition?

Nope, you can change the installation location for each game/program to another drive, but if you reformat you will have to reinstall most of your programs anyways.