Optimal Partition size for NTFS

[tomatohead]

I know NTFS can handle HUGE partitions.

What I want to know is this ...
What is the largest partition size you would personally go with for
your personal data (not a system drive)?

I want to balance ease of use (meaning fewer partitions) with disaster
recovery + performance.

If the MFT for a giant 260 GB partition gets messed your in trouble.
Where if you had 4 60 GB's you would still have 3 good partitions.

You get the idea ...
Also, I'm sure read/write support for a 1000 GB partition isn't as
good as it is for a 40 GB partition.

What do you guys think the optimal/maximum size is considering these
trade offs ?

cheers,
e

 

[Norm]

I'm not a big fan of partitioning drives and one reason is that when a disk
usually fails, it's gone. I don't think many fail these days with surface
problems, so when 1 out of 4 of those 60 gb partitions fails, more than
likely you won't be able to get to any of the other 3. I would rather put
my money on more disks than more partitions.

 

[Stuart]

Multiple partitions on a single physical disk will suck the life out of your
machine. Reading or writing to the outside of the disk while performing
another opearation (e.g. pagefile or system files) on the inside of the disk
will mean that your disk heads are spending much more time moving between
the appropriate points than they will actually recording or reading data -
BAD BAD BAD - its like having defrag running in the background.

I have never 'lost' an NTFS partition.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I know NTFS can handle HUGE partitions.

What I want to know is this ...
What is the largest partition size you would personally go with for
your personal data (not a system drive)?

I want to balance ease of use (meaning fewer partitions) with disaster
recovery + performance.

If the MFT for a giant 260 GB partition gets messed your in trouble.
Where if you had 4 60 GB's you would still have 3 good partitions.

We have not yet got up into those sky high sizes yet; but in principle,
I think partitioning needs to be based on the needs of the data, and
split that between partitions sized accordingly. Thus documents of the
scale of letters, spreadsheets do not need all that much space, but need
probably more critical security by way of backup than do MP3 files. And
Movies work would need as large a partition as you can get, though not
containing *that* many files. An author working on a book might well be
advised to have a partition for this separated from day to day business
letters. So from this a range of sizes - but around 16GB should be big
enough for system and programs; similarly for 'scratch' data and email
etc; then split the remainder in two or three sections increasing in
size. At present for a simple user setup, just a 16GB base and whatever
(say 100 on a 120 GB drive) works quite well.

One thing I have and which I am sure I will retain when drives grow even
bigger is multiple physical drives. It is then practical to use one to
image essential partitions of the other, particularly the system one.
(with a further level backup to DVD - say 14GB of data on a 16 GB
partition will compress onto two DVD disks)

 

[tomatohead]

I'm not a big fan of partitioning drives and one reason is that when a disk
usually fails, it's gone. I don't think many fail these days with surface
problems, so when 1 out of 4 of those 60 gb partitions fails, more than
likely you won't be able to get to any of the other 3. I would rather put
my money on more disks than more partitions.

True enough ...
I've lost 3 hard drives. Two IBM's and a Western Digital.
It wouldnt have mattered how many partitions I had. One was due
totally to drive failure. Another due to a power surge from my
motherboard,
and the last due to power failure during Hurricane Isabel ... %^)

I won't buy any of the "super" drives over 120 GB, as I heard the
manufacturing and engenering of these drives is fundamentally
different and not as reliable.
I've heard it mentioned that it is probably not coincidental that the
warrenties changed for hard drives simultaneously with these drives
coming out.

 

[tomatohead]

Multiple partitions on a single physical disk will suck the life out of your
machine. Reading or writing to the outside of the disk while performing
another opearation (e.g. pagefile or system files) on the inside of the disk
will mean that your disk heads are spending much more time moving between
the appropriate points than they will actually recording or reading data -
BAD BAD BAD - its like having defrag running in the background.

hhhmmm ... that is an interesting theory.
I havn't heard anyone mention this before. I've always been told
smaller partitions are best, but that may have been from the
standpoint of performance ... and having lost 3 hard drives in my
lifetime, I'm really more interested in reliability than I am in
shaving a few milli-seconds.

Though i should say this drive will strictly be used for data.
~ 50 GB of mp3's, 20 GB's for other multimedia files, and the rest to
copy DVD's I have rented but dont have time to watch ... %^)

How about the effect power settings have on the lifetime of a drive ?
I have heard it is best to leave the drive spinning 24/7, though this
is a bit
counter intuitive.

What do you guys think of that SMART Defender technology ?

Alright, it makes me a little nervous to make just one big partition,
but I think I just might do it ... I've never just lost a partition
now that i think about it ... it has always been the whole shebang.