Hard Drive partitions is it a good idea

dividing, or partitioning of a hard drive is a good idea, but do not squeeze Windows partition, it needs space

[nelsono]

I have never been a fan of keeping my personal data on the same hard drive I boot from, even if it is on another partition. In other words I would never have a 1 TB or more boot drive. Right now I have a 500GB M.2 drive that I boot from. The only thing on it is Windows and all my apps. Total space used is 114GB. I keep my data elsewhere. If the M.2 craps out I just get a new one and restore it from a cloned image that I have. If I had a 1TB drive that was partitioned with my data on the second partition and that drive crapped out, unless I was religious about making data backups I would no doubt lose data. Why risk it? I build my own desktop computers so I can set them up the way I like. Thanks for the video!

[davidmalaky]

I would recommend against partitioning at all, if you need to reinstall while keeping data nothing is easier than just copying user folders or using windows upgrade functionality, which does essentially the same

[JamesSmith-ixjd]

There are pluses and minuses of having a second partition, but overall I think it doesn't worth it.
The couple of reasons you would have another partition, first is to save your files during reinstall (but it can be done with another external hdd or online backups).
Second, if you create full system disk image, small C drive is imaged much quicker, but as you've mentioned having small C is dangerous and not recommended for most people.

While single partition also has many benefits, it is easier to manage, let's say you want to install some very heavy game the size of 150GB, and you have 140GB free on your C and another 140 on your D, in this example you have 280 GB free, yet, you can't install 150GB game anywhere.
Another downside is that copying between partitions is much, much slower, it messes up the file attributes (file creation date).
It's very difficult to estimate how big of a C drive you would need, installing Adobe suite and some other heavy professional tool would quickly take 100GB or more, so your usage can drastically change at any moment.
Single disk is easier in navigation, you just use folders on your single root partition. Multiple partitions lead to data hording tendencies and many folders being created, but minimalism saves more time.
If Windows was using portable applications and had no registry, then having another partition for all your apps and their settings would be a valuable thing, but since you can't separate apps from your OS that easily then each reinstall of Windows would make you lose your settings anyway. And you can/should backup your personal files anyway.

[secondsrule]

After few years my windows 10 is taking 200gb! And this is with regular cleaning and removing all but the last restore point. 250mb is a bare minimum in my experience.

[biggfoot]

All pcs should come preinstalled with seperate partitions. Windows folders that are called my music, my videos etc if you think about it are not yours if the windows needs reinstalled. They are configured in the windows partition and are gone if reset to factory.