Re: Do I need to partition?

From: Donald McDaniel (orthocrossAT_at_cablespeed.DOTcom)
Date: 02/15/04 

Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 20:26:37 -0800

Bob Dietz wrote:
> Neptoone wrote:
>> Alex,
>>
>> Thanks for the information, wow that is quite a site, but I'm
>> wondering why you said that dividing my HD four ways with 40GB is
>> not a good arbitrary number

> Because it's arbitrary. Why not 3 x 53.33Gb or 5 x 32Gb.
>
I hate to tell you this, Bob, but dividing a HD into 3x52gb or 5x32gb
partitions is also "arbitrary". So using the term "arbitrary" in a
negative sense, as you are doing is not a proper usage of the English
language.

> You have the empty shell of a building. When you partion it, you're
> putting in walls - creating rooms. It's probably not a great floor
> plan
> if the livingroom and the broom closet are both the same size.
>

A hard drive is not a house, and the "walls" are not laid out in the shapes
of a parallelograms. The fact is, ANY division of a hard drive is going to
be "arbitrary"

There is no hard and fast rule for subdividing a Hard Drive. There are as
many theories for dividing up a HD as there are users. Personally, I prefer
not to divide my HDs into partitions, unless I am using the partitions for
other Operating Systems. Fragmentation is no problem, because my defragger
can defrag system areas of the HD, as well as user areas. As for speed:
Modern hard drives and their controllers are approaching and surpassing the
speed of the Bus as it is. When hard drive platters are in danger of
blowing apart from the extreme rotational speeds approached nowadays, any
talk of "faster" is more along the lines of comparing the sizes of sexual
organs.

Partitioning is, in my opinion, a relic of the '80s and early '90s, when the
Operating System would only address 2gig. As a result, hard drives larger
than 2gig HAD to be divided into several partitions. Not only that, the OS
could not handle the file structure of a huge HD.

With modern Operating Systems, this is not necessary: Most Operating
Systems will address huge volumes easily, so further partitioning is not, in
the strictest sense, needed. Unless, of course, you are booting multiple
Operating Systems. 

-- 
Donald L McDaniel
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