Why Do We Create A Drive Partition When We Are Installing Windows?

[Chivpcgamer]

Im curious as im a bit rusty when it comes to this side of computing.

[Chivpcgamer]

Still confused. Lol. I should of asked what a partition is first, can u guys enlighten me?

[Chivpcgamer]

Ok so say if i set up a computer and bought a samsung ssd for example, when i install windows and select it as a boot drive etc i should create a partition so that windows can use the hard drive properly?

[tito]

Ok so say if i set up a computer and bought a samsung ssd for example, when i install windows and select it as a boot drive etc i should create a partition so that windows can use the hard drive properly?

It depends, if you wanna use the entire ssd for the OS partition, then there is no need to create a partition, just point the drive in the installation and windows will take care of that. If you wanna install another OS in the same drive, then you must partition your drive.

[lutzee]

Generally when you install windows it makes 3 partitions, but only 1 you can see (the main data part) It also creates a boot partition where the boot loader and other data is stored, and lastly a recovery partition. 

 

When installing windows it always wants to partition even if the partitions are there. You can point it at a partition that exists and it will just overwrite that partition though.

 

On linux you generally  create 2, the data partition and the swap partition, the swap is a portion of a harddrive that the OS can swap data to from RAM if the RAM fills up. 

 

Lastly sometimes people on windows will further partition the data partition to help organise data.. though personally i feel its bad practice. Should always get an extra hard drive if data space is becoming sparse