Question:Closed 8 years ago. ?
Possible Duplicate: ?Advantages/Disadvantages of Partitioning a Drive ?
Ever since I can remember owning a 50+ GB HDD (and knowing other people own them too), I’ve noticed a trend of making a smaller partition, typically SYSTEM c: for the OS, and DATA d: for the personal data, such as music and films. Is this simply a matter of aesthetics and taste or is there a real performance advantage in having the hard drive partitioned in this, or any other way?
Answer: Part of a rotating hard disk is faster. This is because they have rotating platters in them which rotate at a fixed speed. (e.g. 7200 times per minute). The outside of the platter is larger (and has more content) then the inside, but passes equally often (e.g. 7200 per minute) beneath the drive heads. Strategically creating partitions can be used to create faster and slower partitions.
That is one reason.
An other reason is that many people like to keep an easy distinction between their OS and their data. If the computer crashes just reinstall or restore an image. No worries about your documents, which are safely on another partition.
Lastly it is very handy when you have multiple operating systems. E.g. an old windows XP on C:, a newest win8 beta on D:, and all your shared data on a third partition.
