[HM] Re: Partitions

[Nevin Steindam]

>Yes, if the drive goes bad both partitions are compromised.

Not really.  If the drive breaks down physically, then you're out of luck
(as Guy and Tom said).  But most of the drives that I've seen "go bad" were
just having problems with the data on their drive.  The information about
where everything was on the drive/partition got corrupted.  In minor cases,
this causes a little bit of data to get corrupted, or the drive to slow
down.  In extreme cases, the drive is no longer recognizable and you have
to reformat it (thereby losing all the files).  Because multiple partitions
are seen as "logically" separate disks, this information is completely
separate for each one.  And so that sort of corruption on one partition
won't hurt your other drives, whether or not they are physically related to
each other.

Bottom line:  I wouldn't back up important data to a different partition on
the same drive, but other than that, it's a good safety precaution.

Nevin