Is there any benefit to partitioning an external USB hard Drive?

Over the last six years, I have owned several external HDDs - both purpose-built and internal HDDs mounted in external enclosure kits (including USB 2.0, FireWire 400/800, SATA 150/300 types, but no eSATA connections) up to 250GB capacity - and I have come to the conclusion that I strongly prefer a single logical partition within an extended partition which is not active.

El Pescador

Pesky, with all that experience I'd be interested to know how many of those external drives you partitioned otherwise (than a single logical drive). In other words, were any partitioned with two (or 3) partitions?

And I'd be interested to know WHY you feel the way you do.

I think it depends somewhat on the SIZE of the drive itself. While I might be inclined to partition a 160-gig drive as a single partition, I'd be reluctant to leave a 1-Terabyte drive as a single partition.

I have a 500-gigger which was GIVEN to me, so its a single 500-gig partition. (After files are loaded onto the drive, I'm reluctant to re-partition unless absoluetly necessary.) I would prefer it as 2 x 250-gigs, ..or even 3 x 167.

If I had a 1-Terabyte drive, I would prefer at least 2 x 500-gigs, and probably 3 x 333-GB. I mean 333-gigs is a BIG partition.

This way I could, for example, dedicate one partitition to backup Ghost images ("recovery points"), which would allow me to defrag the other drives without touching the Ghost drive.

Rad wrote on Sep 26^th, 2008 at 4:52pm:

" ...how many of those external drives you partitioned otherwise (than a single logical drive). In other words, were any partitioned with two (or 3) partitions? And I'd be interested to know WHY you feel the way you do. I think it depends somewhat on the SIZE of the drive itself..."

The floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina that inundated our residence essentially derailed my acquisition of ever-increasing external HDD capacities at 250GB and there I remain to this very day at an admittedly obsolescent level.  For over two years in the aftermath of the storm, virtually everything I owned in both hardware and software was in secure deep storage while we restored our home so be advised that most of my notions are pre-flood.  That said, I thoroughly concur with your statement regarding the SIZE of the HDD being definitive and above 250GB I would suspect my opinions would then have to be re-evaluated.  Also, it is the number of platters in a HDD that govern my thinking and not simply the capacity of the device expressed as a rated quantity, i.e., I am dubious about risking cooling problems with multiple platters, particularly in passively-cooled external enclosures.

In the instances where I established two logical drives, one would be NTFS and the other would be FAT32.  In all instances, I eventually reverted to the single logical drive within the extended partition - sometimes NTFS but more often FAT32 once I discovered how to enhance the ability of the latter to be competitive with the former when creating "cold-imaging" Norton Ghost backup files.  I should add here that my primary motive for having any external HDD was to use it for housing Ghost images.

El Pescador

@ El_Pescador


Quote:

I eventually reverted to the single logical drive within the extended partition - sometimes NTFS but more often FAT32 once I discovered how to enhance the ability of the latter to be competitive with the former when creating "cold-imaging" Norton Ghost backup files

Could you explain what you mean by that statement--especially how you *enhanced the ability*--any links??

On a slightly related note, I noticed that all external drives USED TO come preformatted as FAT32, but the most recent ones now seem to comes with NTFS. I'm talking primarily about external drives manufactured by Seagate. FWIW.

NightOwl wrote on Sep 27^th, 2008 at 2:32pm:

Could you explain what you mean by that statement--especially how you *enhanced the ability*--any links??

Read the remainder of Christer's thread beginning at:

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1078435342/123#123

El Pescador

@ El_Pescador

Thanks El_Pescador--I thought that's what you were referring to--but couldn't remember the details.

wrote on Sep 25^th, 2008 at 7:06pm:

Is there any benefit to partitioning an external USB hard Drive?

Partitions are good for Deep Separation, like to separate an OS on an NTFS partition from a data-storage partition formatted FAT-32.

But that amount of separation usually is NOT required within a Storage Drive.

To categorize your data on a storage drive, you don't need partitions.
That's what folders (Directories and Sub-Directories) are for.

A little research on the internet will uncover many problems that users have had recovering data from multiple partitions on a second drive.
Or from wanting to remove a partition.  No partition, NO problem.
If you want to remove old data, simply delete it and go on.

Since adding and removing data files from a storage drive can cause fragmentation, it's a good idea to Defrag those drives every once in a while.  

Cheers mate and Happy Computing!

the Shadow  8-)