There is little performance to be gained from chopping a hard drive into tiny bits. Plus, when a partition is ALMOST full (say, near its last 400-500 MB) there is not much room to work with and the Wasted Space Monster eats its way into your system.
your point is even more accurate then you realize;
in point of fact, if you are using the nt file system, performance will actually take a hit with partitions.
xp has taken a huge leap over former os philosophy,,xp has file optimization, which on a personal level, places the files in the nost optimum area on your drive....optimization does not cross volumes, and is worthless when the os has a separate partition
Why do you want to partition your drives? If it's just for the sake of dividing your various file types, all that is happening is trading a folder icon for a drive icon.
this point is 100 percent accurate...there is no organizational gain to be had with partitions over a good file system...a good file systrem can become what I like to call "virtual partitions"
all the functionality of partitions with none if the performance hits associated with it.
I can see maybe partitioning off a few GB for the Windows installation (so you keep your files in the event of a fresh install), but any more divisions beyond that starts getting crazy on a 40 GB drive.
actually, this scenanario does the most harm as far as partitions...you should keep the apps on the same partition as the os, seek times are improved, and file optimization will gain from this set up
You know who loves file system questions? Dealer! I'd PM him and ask. He's very keen on these issues.
ya, I like the discussion of partitions
I think though that anyone that wants to do it should,
partitions has become a pleasure for many users, and it is well worth the performance hit that partitions bring for these people
there is an added safety factor, in that your files are slightly more safe, and if you don't back up off the box, then partitions become a must for safetys sake.
another fine idea is to put your temporary internet files on their own partition
these files fragment the most, and giving them their own partition will fracilitate defragmenting very nicely
anyway, if you want to partition, go right a head and do it...it's quite worth the performance hitt for many