Whether you use your PC for work or play (or both), partitioning your hard drives appropriately can help you keep organized. It will also protect your work from disappearing should the first physical disk fail and the need for a hard drive data recovery arise. Lastly it is good practice to keep cache and log files separate from other files which can change size dynamically and rapidly, potentially making a file system full.
A popular reason to make a second partition on your hard drive is to separate your OS (operating system, such as Windows) from your applications and personal data. For example, Windows XP could reside on the C: partition, but you would install all of your programs and save all of your files to the new E: drive. Kept segregated from Windows, your data will stand a much better chance of surviving undisturbed should you need to reinstall or repair either the OS or your data.
Most tools will let you convert a partition from one file type to another, i.e. from NTFS to FAT/FAT32 or vice versa. Needless to say that in most cases, such a conversion, especially from NTFS to FAT/FAT32 will cause the files to lose their NTFS permissions and can cause you to lose access to these files. So beware of using multiple file types on a hard drive.
Partitioning also makes it simpler to install multiple operating systems on your computer. For instance, you might want a multiboot system with Windows and Linux or WinXP and Vista. Installations on different partitions may avoid certain problems and allow each OS to run at its full speed on your hardware.
Partitioning gives enormous advantages and should be considered as a very important precaution.
Tags: partition data recovery
