Partitioning

[Claydelas]

It has probably been asked many times before but I've looked at the last 20 pages of search and couldn't find exactly what I need to know. So, my question is - is it better to have a separate partition for your OS and your files or to have everything on the same partition? I have only 1 drive and looking to clean update to 1703 while wiping everything. Any performance to gain or just convenience to lose? Thanks! 

[KuJoe]

I prefer to partition everything into smaller drives, it's easier for me to organize and backup if everything is on a different drive (as in letter, not physical disk). Performance-wise I've never noticed a difference both on HDDs and SSDs.

[paddy-stone]

Depends on what the files are in some respects. If they are just files for storage, ie not to do with a program, then yes keep them in a separate partition at the very least, and in addition have them backed up either to the cloud, USB drive/disk or both if they are valuable to you and wouldn't like to lose them. If you do this it also makes backups smaller too, so you can backup to an image file for instance and if you need a re-install, you can use the backup software to re-image the partition to how it was when you made the backup, possibly saving you much time from having to re-install all your programs.

You won't see any performance gain at all from just having different partitions. You'd see much better performance by upgrading to an SSD (if you don't already have one).

[Claydelas]

How much should I allocate for Windows if I were to partition? 1TB drive.