HD partition Q

[Ketou]

I have a question about partitioning my HD and would appreciate if someone could clarify a few things.
I use my drive for all sorts of things at the moment and it tends to get fragmented and full quite quickly. Even with defrag.
I have now bought a larger drive and thought to partition it up into three parts. One for general use(internet/e-mail/cd burning etc) , then gaming/benchmarking and lastly photo and video editing. At present I intend to have each partition with it's own OS. But......I also notice many people partition the drive with seperate spaces for the OS, games, apps, files etc, whilst having to use only one OS.
Would this be a better way to partition my drive? Is this form of partitioning secure. ie if one partition was to be infected would the other parts be safe?

One reason for seperate OS's is that some games will not work with certain emulation software installed. Would the partitioning the other way stop this problem?

[Ptyx]

My 2 cents
I use a 5 partitions on my drive running on one OS. I install windows into one partition the others are for stuff as you mentionned, game, mp3, work etc.. I use that system because if win screw up (and it does) i just have to format partition 1, reinstall Win on it and all my others partitions are left untouched.
Of course all the software installed doesn't work anymore since the registry has been erased. So you still have to reinstall all the software but that's not too much of a pain. Win doesn't screw up that often, once every two years i'd say if you keep things relatively clean.
I'm not sure why you would want to put an OS on each partitions, especially if you intend to use the same OS. Then again i don't know of the emulation software problems you're having.
The way i understand it is that partitions are like different hds, if one goes down the other are untouched, of course if you drive is really screwed there's nothing you can do and all your partitions will be dead.

[Ketou]

Thanks Ptyx. Yes I would be using the same OS and that is why I was asking about the partitioning with one OS installed. I've partitioned with seperate OS's before but I've never used the method you mentioned and as such don't having a working knowledge of it.
Having one OS with other partitions seems the way to go...so far. How do you swap between partitions? Of course with different OS's one needs to reboot but how about this system?

[Ptyx]

The partitions are presented as different drives do, so you can use whatever file explorer you use to copy files from one partition to another just how you would do between two hds. The thing is even the time a file transfer take is the same as two different hd so large file transfers between two partions will take some time.

I'm not sure of what you're trying to do though. If you just want to have a safer way to organize your files on your hd, the method i'm describing will help.
If, on the other hand you're trying to get to work two apps that don't work well under the same OS then you'll have to have two separate OS's on two different partitions or you'll have to find a hack for the two apps to work better under the same OS.

[cstaylor]

I don't understand why anyone would use more than 2 partitions per Windows OS (one for OS, one for apps). If you're on the same hard disk, there's no performance or safety benefit AFAIK.

[Ptyx]

I don't understand why anyone would use more than 2 partitions per Windows OS (one for OS, one for apps). If you're on the same hard disk, there's no performance or safety benefit AFAIK.

True. It just helps get things organised a little better imho.

[Ketou]

T
I'm not sure of what you're trying to do though. If you just want to have a safer way to organize your files on your hd, the method i'm describing will help.
If, on the other hand you're trying to get to work two apps that don't work well under the same OS then you'll have to have two separate OS's on two different partitions or you'll have to find a hack for the two apps to work better under the same OS.

Ok, so if logical partitions won't resolve a software conflict (security feature ) then it looks like I'll have to add another OS.
Cheers

[Socratesabroad]

[kotatsuneko]

as well as the partitions, dont cheap out on not backing your data up.

ritek's G05 dye is now out, have just burnt 100 of ridiscs 100% guaranteed discs without a coaster

with 16x media just coming available from majors, and the 2nd gen 16x drives out, its easier [and better] than ever to backup ']