Should I partition my hard drive or not?
 

I'm getting mixed messages through google so I figured I would ask others who use their computers in a similar manner as me.

I'm running windows 7. I use photoshop and dreamweaver daily. I do a small amount of video editing and tinker with audio software (mainly reason) from time to time.

Any reasons to partition or not?

Well it's good for organization,since if you screw your operation system you can format system partition without touching your data,but it's also a little slower speed then.Also if harddrive have bad sectors you can add a partition to bad parts and hard drive will function normally like it doesn't have any bad sectors.

Not for any kind of reading or writing work, like editing.

How fast will it be if you are reading from one place and on the drive, and trying to write to another, and run the OS at the same time?

If you're serious, it's optimal to have 3 drives.

1. OS
2. media(read data from)
3. render(write data to)

At the very least, have an OS drive and a media drive.

By drive are you meaning partition or additional hard drives? Its a laptop so I'm stuck with one using one internal drive. That is what I'm trying to figure out if I should partition or not.

My vote goes for 2 partitions on a laptop.
c: system (35-40 gigs), the rest media, downloads, etc..

You didn't say it was a laptop.

Get one of these.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-753-_-Product

If that's too much hassle, then I guess you could just partition. I;m just saying it's not optimal for doing any serious work. But then again, you are using a laptop.

Yes but which types of hdd ?
1.SSD
2.SSD
3.Normal Hard Drive

I have a stack of externals so no problem there. Thanks for the clarification.

yah this is how I do stuff.... never keep data on the os drive... on one machine I do render off the data drive but I'm in no real hurry to get the renders done

my laptop uses an 80g ssd drive with separate app, and render drive, 320g, I keep data on the app drive usually

SSD's are great, but you're limited with size.

I use one for my OS.

I partition laptops. That way I can restore my OS (Or install a new one) while all my data is safe.

I don't bother, as long as you have stuff organized you don't really need it..

I used to partition everything. Now I may have 3.

root, home, and swap. I used to move /var and /tmp elsewhere but turning noexec on tmp these days breaks everything, and /var gets fucking everything from logfiles to mysql and htdocs.

This question should never have a no answer...

I partitioned this one. I am torn as to whether or not I would do it again.