I keep seeing people recommending partitioning harddrives, one for OS and apps, another for data, swap, and so on.

I just wonder how anyone could even THINK of partitioning their hard drives for Windows systems.

Over the past 5-7 years, every attempt I've made to partition any hard drive has failed in 1-3 months after setting up the partition.

The following is to sum up some of the hardware/software used.
Hardware: PII 333, AMD K6-2 450, Athlon slot A 700, Athlon socket A 1ghz,AMD 1800+, AMD 64 3200+

Software: Windows 95, 98 se, 2000 using Fdisk. Windows XP using Disk Director, Partition Magic.

So I've tried the whole partition thing on a variety of systems and software, so I can only conclude that the problem is fairly pandemic. There's just something WRONG with the whole idea of partitions.

My last experience was on XP with my AMD 64 3200+ (similar to all my others) I used disk director to split up my 200Gb Maxtor into two 100Gb NTFS partitions so WinXP SP1 could use it. Nearly 30 days later both paritions collapsed to where one was garbage unreadable and the other was only recognized as FAT 16 by the OS...though I was still able to pull all my files off of it. And I kid you not...I shut it off when it was working fine at night, then next morning I turned it on and it was just TOAST.

Sorry to rant so much. It just bothers me a little maybe that others get their partitions to work fine when I can't seem to get mine to work at all.

As a side note: Linux partitions have never failed, not one bit. I've used Linux on partitioned hard drives for extended periods (well, guess that's kinda expected, lol) and never had one problem.

To sum up: Friends don't let friends use partitions!!!

thats just stupid... you say that it doesnt work in windows but it works well on linux? isnt it the same thing? and dont you think that the HD was toast because of the HD quality and not because you made a partition. I have been running with partitions as long as i have had a computer and i never had a problem with any of my drives.

I'll join the rant....

I gave up and only use Windows for gaming....One hard drive, one partition...I installed a couple games and that is all....no antivirus bloatware....just games...I only turn it on when I'm gaming because otherwise ms windows seams to be calling out to world..."Infect me...here are my vulnerabilities!"

Anyway...My HTPC is linux...I have an LV array for mass storage, my boot drive has:
/boot
/
swap
/home

for partitions...I can reinstall or upgrade the os without even touching the /home partition so that all my preferences...even firefox favorites are untouched... This is something I tried in windows and failed... What about the Drive labeling scheme in windows....WTF?? A: B: C:, etc....Ever had a removable storage device get labeled C: by windows??? That really F's things up!

Back to linux...I have a web server running over 300 days. I use NFS to connect it to mass storage so I can add/upgrade hard drives....never have to reboot or power cycle the server....

I wish micro$oft would sell a Gamers version of Windows for cheap...maybe make my PC act like a glorified xBox with upgradeable hardware.

This rant just doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever.

Virtually every server in the world has at least one partitioned hard drive. This would not be the case if partitioning was not reliable.

A partition is a partition, your partition table will be the same whether you see it under Windows or Linux. The only difference is the file system used to format the partition, which is generally NTFS under Windows and ext or reiserfs under Linux. A corrupted partition table should not be readable under Linux if it's not readable under Windows.

I'm not just SAYING it, I'm reporting my actual real life experiences with partitions. They've worked for over a year on Linux installs, but EVERY Windows partition has failed within 3 months!

No one will ever be able to figure out why it doesn't work for me...it just DOESN'T.

Also, the 200 Gb HDD has been fine working as a single partition on Win2003 enterprise for the past year now. I was trying to articulate that the partition and its tables were destroyed by doing nothing to them other than turning off the comp for the night.

The problem here is not the partition/partition table, I think my problems stem from how the OS...windows... is structured.

Example....My primary partition(c filled up...I wanted to install another game, so I selected to install in my data partition (F...Now....sometime down the road, this game required a patch or update....The updater/ windows couldn't figure out how to patch the game...

On another machine, while upgrading the hard drive, somehow, the C: drive became the F: drive...the C: drive became a removable storage device.... 8O

This would cause programs like Spybot Search and Destroy to crap out...This was an easy fix, I just had to relabel the C: drive R:...or anything other than C:

I'm not an expert in windows, but I shouldn't have to be...that's why I paid the big bucks to own it....I've got several distros of linux running and had to spend a good deal of time to learn what makes them tick....a little sweat equity I guess...The Linux filesystems are much more flexible than windows...If my root partition fills up I can add a new hard drive and copy all the old files into the new partition, change a line in the FSTAB file and voila...I've just migrated my os to a new partition.

Umm... I've been running several partitions on all of my computers and I've had no problems with them whatsoever (except when my GRUB went down, but that's a different story). I think it may just be that you've had some bad luck with it.

Yes, I know most people don't have problems.

I'm just frustrated at having lost so much data to partitions failing.

Also sharing my experiences, and my recommendation that people should use one drive one partition under Windows.

Hooray for rant joining! ^^

Yeah, I've had drive letters jump in Windows before. Mostly under Win 98SE, though once under XP too.

Then the update process was very poorly designed. My games are all installed into my data partition, and none of them crap out when comes the time to patch them. Warcraft 3 has seen a billion patches, for example. The typical way to do it is to have a registry key that points to the installed directory. That way when the updater runs, it looks for the registry key that contains the installed directory value, and then patches the game into the said directory. If you manually moved the game from your system partition to your data partition AFTER it was installed, the registry key will point to the wrong directory and the updater will not run correctly. You will need to update the registry key to point to the new directory.

The drive letters in Windows is messed up, I'll give you that. I guess it just goes back to the early DOS days. People got used to that so I guess they decided to keep it that way. There is a possibility that your drive letters get messed up depending on how your upgrade your system. Under Linux you can use your /etc/fstab file to tell your OS where your partitions need to be mounted. It makes things easier when you know what you're doing, but on the other hand if you don't know what you're doing you completely prevent your system from booting.

Looking through the posts here, and even your own, it seems that the problems don't stem from the partitions themselves, but from the operating system that is making/using the partition. Why your partitions crapped out is something of a mystery, but it is one of those weird things about windows I guess. Without more information I cannot begin to guess what the actual problem was with your setup (as well as others on here) but I can say what it wasn't: the idea of partitioning. It could have been that your partition existed mostly on one platter and with just a little bit on another. A whole plethora of reasons could cause a filesystem crash, but it isn't your partition. Perhaps the partition table got overwritten by something and it screwed up what the OS was seeing it as.

My point is, the problem isn't the partition. Its how the OS handle the partitions. I, personally haven't had any problems with partitioning, even using EXT partitions in windows using the ext2IFS driver. Right now I have 4 primary partitions on my second drive, and three on my first drive. NTFS for the windows, EXT2 for the rest, except one small one that is used for saving the ext driver and others for the occasional reinstall of windows. That one is fat32.

I love partitioning my drives (currently raid 0 array) in WINXP. It has always served me great and really makes reinstalling windows alot easier. Eventually, I might backup all my data and format the hard drives when I get new computer upgrades.

<3 partitions.

Ive never had a partition problem... Ive been running Windows OSes since '95. Though I am exploring Linux as an alternative to Vista now.

There are millions of computers with partitioned HDDs. I would say your problems are more to do with Maxtor than with partitions... I have never heard of partitions being bad until now... possibly you have had poor luck and that is all...

I do admit that my partition problems are very...well, I guess you would use the word odd.

Though this has been on all HDD brands, Maxtor was only involved in the latest partition failure. I've tried Western Digital, Maxtor, and Seagate.

Now ain't THAT the truth! XD XD XD

Your points are indeed sensible. Still, I'm done with partitions and will not use them ever again outside of a Linux distro.

Though I must say that having so many failures has definitely instilled in me a good habit of making backups! =D