[HM] Re: Partitions

[Tom Burton]

Define "go bad."

Partitioning a drive doesn't provide protection against a physical 
crash. Any physical damage generally destroys the entire drive (tho 
sometimes data recovery houses can recover at least some of the data).

What partitioning can do is speed up certain operations. For example, 
some people use a small partition for their System Folder, and put 
EVERYTHING else on the other partition. Startup, Restart, Rebuilding 
the desktop (on the startup volume) will be faster, since they only 
involve that small partition.

Another related usage is to reduce fragmentation of files. A large 
file could, potentially, be spread over the entire drive (especially 
if it evolves as grows over time). If it's all within a (smaller) 
partition, the various fragments would be closer together, reducing 
time going from one fragment to another (slightly!).

But protection, no.

Tom Burton

>I have a question about partitioning a hard drive. I have split my beige G3
>6 gig drive into 2 equal ones. One is just called storage and I back up to
>it. The other is my main drive. What happens if that drive goes bad ----
>does that mean that the other half is trashed, too?
>
>jane
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