Is it okay to run only 2 partitions?

[Koka458]

I just wiped all of my data in the HDD and installed windows in 60 Gb partition.

Its 500 Gb HDD and I just want a C drive and D drive. Because managing space would be simple and moving stuff between drive would be simple.

Is it okay?

[lewdicrous]

Like this, but with partitions?

[JoostinOnline]

It would be simpler to only have one.

[WereCatf]

3 minutes ago, Koka458 said:

I just wiped all of my data in the HDD and installed windows in 60 Gb partition.

Its 500 Gb HDD and I just want a C drive and D drive. Because managing space would be simple and moving stuff between drive would be simple.

Is it okay?

There is no technical reason for why you should have more than one partition, so anything above one is up to your own tastes; if you want two, then go for two.

[Koka458]

4 minutes ago, lewdicrous said:

Like this, but with partitions?

Exactly 

[Koka458]

2 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

There is no technical reason for why you should have more than one partition, so anything above one is up to your own tastes; if you want two, then go for two.

Thought there are some technical things I might not know about...

Just wanted to be sure.

[lewdicrous]

Just now, Koka458 said:

Exactly 

My laptop used to work that way, so I guess it should work

[voiha]

From the XP era people had used to have the C and D drive, as some people was spreading information that the Windows installation should be at it's own partition (which was nonsense), but people still loved the organization of having 2 partition, 1 for installing programs, and 1 for everything else between. So as people above me pointed, there is only personal taste of how you want to organize your stuff.

[williamcll]

supposedly having partitions makes your drive load faster, but I cannot confirm since I'm on SSDs now.

[WereCatf]

1 minute ago, williamcll said:

supposedly having partitions makes your drive load faster, but I cannot confirm since I'm on SSDs now.

Well, kinda, sorta; the outer edge of the spinning disks inside mechanical HDDs spins much faster than the part of the disk that's closer to the motor and therefore putting stuff as close to the outermost edge as possible means it can be accessed faster. Making a small partition for Windows and swap-file on the outermost edge will constrain the contents there to the faster parts of the disk, while a bigger partition for everything else will constrain all its contents to the slower parts of the disk.

 

With the above in mind, this obviously only works for spinning rust, not SSDs or other, similar technologies, and the difference isn't really all that big and, IMHO, totally not worth it. Also of note is that it doesn't make sense on SSHDs, either, even though they've got some spinning rust inside them, too.

[Master Disaster]

43 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

There is no technical reason for why you should have more than one partition, so anything above one is up to your own tastes; if you want two, then go for two.

That's not true. Running a drive in UEFI boot mode REQUIRES a ~200mb boot partition to store the boot loader. PCs in this configuration will always have a minimum of 2 partitions and removing the boot partition will stop the drive from booting.

[WereCatf]

2 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

That's not true. Running a drive in UEFI boot mode REQUIRES a ~200mb boot partition to store the boot loader. PCs in this configuration will always have a minimum of 2 partitions and removing the boot partition will stop the drive from booting.

We were talking about non-system partitions. The OP is clearly not a power-user and was not interested in knowing about system/recovery/hidden partitions, but regular data-partitions.

[Master Disaster]

Just now, WereCatf said:

We were talking about non-system partitions. The OP is clearly not a power-user and was not interested in knowing about system/recovery/hidden partitions, but regular data-partitions.

Doesn't change anything, you said "there's no technical reason for why you should have more than one partition" which is false.

[WereCatf]

Just now, Master Disaster said:

Doesn't change anything, you said "there's no technical reason for why you should have more than one partition" which is false.

If you insist on being anal and not understanding the conversation, yes.

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, WereCatf said:

If you insist on being anal and not understanding the conversation, yes.

Quote

Definition of technicality

1 : something technical especially : a detail meaningful only to a specialist a legal technicality

2 : the quality or state of being technical

You used the word Technical...

 

Tell me again how I don't understand the conversation.

[WereCatf]

2 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

You used the word Technical...

 

Tell me again how I don't understand the conversation.

Like I said, there is no technical reason for there to be more than one unhidden, user-visible, regular partition, which is what the whole discussion was about.

[Master Disaster]

10 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

Like I said, there is no technical reason for there to be more than one unhidden, user-visible, regular partition, which is what the whole discussion was about.

Interesting you felt the need to add the qualifiers to your apparently absolute statement.

 

Giving people incorrect advice like that is very dangerous, you might end up with people deleting system partitions (and yes I know that's difficult to do) because you've told them there's no need for any more than one partition. Just because you understand the difference doesn't mean OP does.

 

You can call me anal all you like, you can claim I don't understand all you like. The simple fact is I was right which is why you changed the statement after the fact and I feel very strongly about ensuring people who obviously don't understand a subject properly get correct information and advice.

 

There is a technical reason to have more than one partition, in fact technically theres 2.