C drive should only contain OS. Myth or fact?

hard-drive installation operating-systems

5,232

Since it is only one disk you are using, it does not matter if you store program data in another partition. In fact, there would be no performance impact to just use one partition. In a single disk configuration, the sole purpose of partions can be seen in logical separation and/or for the need of other filesystems (say fat32 for data exchange with other systems in a dual boot setup).

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A User

The more code you write, the more right you code

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

A User almost 2 years

So, I have a 500GB HDD @7200RPM.
It is split as:
C: 97GB
D: 179GB
E: 188GB

%appdata%

Should I go ahead and install ALL of my programs in C:\ and then use D:\ and E:\ for storing my data like photos, text files, java files n all?
How will this impact the performance of the HDD?

Moab over 11 years

This should be moved to the Stack Exchange Mythbusters site...

David Schwartz over 11 years

This is false. Using multiple partitions on a single disk has a huge negative impact on performance if you are accessing data stored on different partitions because the average seek length is dramatically increased.

Jonas over 11 years

I rephrase then: there is no gain of using more than one partition in a single disk configuration. Also the penalties you described are limited to classic magnetic hard disks. It is also questionable if it would be possible to align the actual physical placement of data just by partitioning. Modern disks can contain multiple platter and also they do much to spread disk allocation evenly in there own controller firmware.

David Schwartz over 11 years

They "may" do all kinds of things, but what matters when giving practical advice is what they actually do.