Why do we use partitions

This method is only viable if your hard disk has a lot of storage preferably over 1 TB. This is one of the best and cheapest methods to create virtual storage in your laptop without investing in an external hard drive. The Windows Operating system has a bad reputation for unusual Crashes.

If you partition your hard drive then you have the option of storing the important documents in any other drive other than the C: Drive. This means you can Format your C: Drive and install the Windows OS again without having to worry about losing your important data which are stored in the partitioned drives. This makes it very easy to Recover your important files which are safely stored in the partitioned drives.

If you partition your hard drive then you distribute the storage space of your hard drive. This means you can easily and quickly defrag your C: Drive or any other partitioned hard drive to remove unwanted clutter. If you create a lot of partitions in your hard drive then you end up distributing the disk space in such a way that some of the partitioned drives have very low space.

This can lead to problems because Windows will constantly show an error like Low Disk Space for the partitioned hard drives. If you create a lot of partitions in your hard drive then you end up reducing the disk space of the partitioned drives. This means you cannot install AAA Title games in a single drive because they required a lot of disk space.

You can mount and unmount any partitions besides the startup disk. Partitioning a disk can make it easier to organize files , such as video and photo libraries, especially if you have a large hard drive. Creating a separate partition for your system files the startup disk can also help protect system data from corruption since each partition has its own file system. For many years it was advisable to partition hard drives to reduce the minimum sector size and increase performance.

However, with modern file systems and faster HDDs and SSDs, creating multiple partitions no longer has the same benefit. Older operating systems only allowed you to partition a disk during the formatting or reformatting process. This meant you would have to reformat a hard drive and erase all of your data to change the partition scheme. Modern operating systems and disk utilities now allow you to resize partitions and create new partitions or volumes on-the-fly.

For example, Apple's APFS file system supports resizing partitions and creating new volumes without reformatting. Otherwise, it may cause misconfigurations of operating systems and then system crashes. In the current era, there are multiple potential threats around our computer, such as virus infection, hardware failure, software malfunctions and so on. All of them can result in system failures and then data corruption and data loss follows, like PST corruption.

Therefore, you had better have at least two partitions on one PC, one for operating system and one for personal data. In this scenario, even when you need to reinstall operating system, your personal data will remain intact. In order to back up your data more effectively, you should also partition the hard disk in that it will be much easier to back up all the partitions separately than to back up a whole disk.

The same holds true for restoring data from backups. Nowadays, so as to ensure data security, many users choose to encrypt the drive. Because of this, if your hard drive fails, is destroyed by a natural disaster, or otherwise stops working, you'll lose everything on it.

This could be a shock for a new user, who's used to every drive in the This PC window representing a separate physical device. Thus, backing up your data in Windows , no matter what partition it's on, is crucial. You need to have multiple copies of data for a proper backup. One of the biggest hassles when you have several partitions is keeping them straight. With any more than three or four partitions, you'll likely lose the organization benefits just trying to keep track of them.

And even with an extra partition or two, you'll still have to set up Windows to save your files and software on the other partitions. This is more complex than saving everything on one partition, making it unnecessary for most people.

Additionally, the complexity of having multiple partitions introduces more chances for a mistake. When formatting one partition, you might accidentally erase another.

With one disk partition, you don't have to worry about overall disk space, aside from filling up the drive completely.

But with multiple partitions, you can end up in a situation where you're cramped for space on one partition but have plenty of free space on another. The limited space also means you could run into surprises. For instance, a major update to Windows 10 could require more space than you have free on its partition.

You'd then have to remove some games from a separate partition, shrink that partition, then extend the one with Windows installed. Thankfully, Windows makes it pretty easy to shrink and extend partitions, so you're not locked into your initial sizes. But resizing partitions frequently is inconvenient. Many power users like to partition for the reasons listed above, which is great.

But for the average user, it's often not necessary. Typical computer users don't typically have enough files that they need a different partition to manage them. And they don't often install other operating systems, negating that benefit. While partitioning isn't overly complex, it also introduces some potential for issues for a novice user.

Compared to the low benefit, it's generally not worth the effort for them to partition. Many of the historical reasons for partitioning don't matter as much now, due to the widespread inclusion of SSDs in modern computers.