To partition or not?

[Laquer Head]

Grabbed a new Samsung 960 Pro for my laptop to replace the factory Toshiba unit, I can't honestly recall if it was partitioned from the start - I do know I've formatted once and I never made any partition at that point.

My question, since I'm installing this new NVME drive and obviously starting fresh, is it recommended to make a Windows partition and the rest for programs. (I opted for the 512GB variant) if its recommended to make a partition, what general size would be appropriate?

@Geoff what did you do?

 

[johnb35]

If the drive is going to be the only drive in the system then definitely partition into 2 drives. I would go with 120 to 150gb for primary and then balance for storage.

 

[beers]

You can always shrink and partition or grow a different partition to the whole drive size later if you want to change your mind.

For an SSD it really doesn't matter and would be a personal preference if you want to logically separate those boundaries.

Personally I'd just one huge partition it so you don't have to juggle volume sizes and available space. If you want to wipe Windows and keep other data on the same drive it may be beneficial to make separate partitions.

 

[Laquer Head]

If the drive is going to be the only drive in the system then definitely partition into 2 drives. I would go with 120 to 150gb for primary and then balance for storage.

Ok.. what about if I already have a secondary drive?

 

[Cromewell]

Personally I'd just one huge partition it so you don't have to juggle volume sizes and available space.

Same with me. It's not like you need to mess with partition boundaries to try and get the most out of a mechanical drive.

 

[johnb35]

Ok.. what about if I already have a secondary drive?

Then don't partition it.

 

[Laquer Head]

Then don't partition it.

Simmer down there, sparky

 

[JaredDM]

You do realize that the original reason why a lot of people would create a separate OS partition was just to ensure that OS and program files get stored on the outer tracks of the HDD which read marginally faster than the inner tracks. With an SSD all parts will read the same speed, so there's no advantage to creating a separate OS partition other than to satisfy your own OCD.

 

[Darren]

You do realize that the original reason why a lot of people would create a separate OS partition was just to ensure that OS and program files get stored on the outer tracks of the HDD which read marginally faster than the inner tracks. With an SSD all parts will read the same speed, so there's no advantage to creating a separate OS partition other than to satisfy your own OCD.

I thought it was so you can put Windows on one partition and your data/games/whatever on a second. Then you could reinstall windows on one partition and keep all your stuff still.

 

[Cromewell]

so there's no advantage to creating a separate OS partition other than to satisfy your own OCD

Sure, there's no performance reason. But even then, it was so minimal I don't think worrying out getting your partition on the outer edge of the disk will make much difference on any reasonably new disk. Even on an old 5.25 or bigger platter it couldn't have been that much.

 

[JaredDM]

No, it was only a 20-25% difference in sequential read speed from the outermost tracks to the innermost and zero difference in seek time / random IO. I never even subscribed to that idea back when it made some little bit of sense. More often I've seen issues come up from the OS partition running out of space because the owner underestimated the size of future programs they'd install. That's why I've always stuck with a single partition OS drive, unless you need to do something special like a dual boot.

Why partition what you can just separate using folders? I don't really get it.

 

[Okedokey]

The reason i partition if I am working on one drive, is that an complete reinstall is easy without worrying about your files on the second partition.

 

[JaredDM]

I thought it was so you can put Windows on one partition and your data/games/whatever on a second. Then you could reinstall windows on one partition and keep all your stuff still.

If you have a good backup system in place, you can still do this without needing to partition. I guess that would be a personal preference. I don't personally install enough junk software or browse enough porn sites to need to regularly re-install Windows, but perhaps some have this need. Usually by the time I'm starting to see performance lags in Windows I'm just building a newer better computer to replace it and the old drive just gets connected long enough to copy off what I want to keep.

I also keep all my important stuff on a NAS with offsite backup. So no single computer on my network would be a source of any significant data loss should it be formatted, encrypted, os re-installed, etc.

 

[Darren]

If you have a good backup system in place, you can still do this without needing to partition. I guess that would be a personal preference. I don't personally install enough junk software or browse enough porn sites to need to regularly re-install Windows, but perhaps some have this need. Usually by the time I'm starting to see performance lags in Windows I'm just building a newer better computer to replace it and the old drive just gets connected long enough to copy off what I want to keep.

I also keep all my important stuff on a NAS with offsite backup. So no single computer on my network would be a source of any significant data loss should it be formatted, encrypted, os re-installed, etc.

I know full well how to manage data backups and reinstalls, it's my daily job. I'm just pointing that out because I think that's usually the rationale behind two partitions. Never even heard of the speed thing before actually.

 

[JaredDM]

My comment wasn't specifically directed at you. It was more of a general statement about needing to constantly re-install windows.

 

[Cromewell]

I don't personally install enough junk software or browse enough porn sites to need to regularly re-install Windows

Neither do I, but sometimes non-junkware leaves stuff around and after several years you have a mess, or the MS update train does something silly and you need to reinstall. And not everyone has a NAS or other solution for backups, I'd guess most people don't. It doesn't hurt to have a relatively data safe option to do it.

My parents install next to nothing, but their 10+ year old install still needs a paving to speed it up again.