partitioning windows

[TheMajor]

I don't know, maybe. I don't have much time.

 

[KSoD]

thats it none of you are coming to my birthday party.

exert from wiki, along the same lines as my thoughts:
A common problem that occurs with the drive letter assignment is that the letter assigned to a network drive can interfere with the letter of a local volume (like a newly installed CD/DVD drive or a USB stick). For example, if the last local drive is drive D: and we have assigned to a network drive as E:, then when we connect a USB mass storage device it will also be assigned drive E: causing loss of connectivity with either the network share or the USB device. Users with administrative privileges can assign drive letters manually to overcome this problem

also one about problems with drive lettter assignment regarding mapped network drives but .... eh better safe than sorry I say

Notice how this all revolves around devices being added after the drives are set in place? Adding a network drive and then adding a USB Device after the drives are in place is what causes this issue, not having your hard drives set to these letters and then adding devices later.

As TheMajor said, Disk Management will assign drive letters to devices added after your system is already up and running. These letters can be changed by the user to force the drive to be recognized as that drive letter upon insertion into the system.

Just like TheMajor I have 2 External Drives, 2 phones and several USB Drives that I attach at various times. I have my phones setup to be recognized as Drives A and B. My Externals are Drives Y and Z. I have my USB Drives auto assign a drive letter upon insertion into the system. Since I never have both phones attached at the same time, I can reuse those letters. Just as I can reuse my external drive letters since those are not always connected.

So assigning drive D to an optical device is not mandatory. My 1 DVDRW drive is P, my other is Q and my virtual optical drive is R. All of which stay that letter no matter how many times I insert or remove another device from my PC. Never causing a conflict.

So while Wikipedia might have some information correct, it lacks information that is up to date or reflects how a system can truly be used today. I only have 6 drive letters not assigned by Windows. That is how many different devices I have attached at any given time. Yet I have yet to get a drive letter conflict cause I have used Drive Management to assign my drive letters how I want them.

This can be done at any point in time by the user. After a install of Windows I always go into drive management right away and assign the drive letters how I want. I assign them as such:

C: is my current Windows that I am booted into
D: is my pagefile drive for that current install I am booted into
E: is my system data partition (I use a SSD so all programs install here as well as downloads go here)
F: is my other install of Windows, the one currently not booted into
G: is the pagefile for that Windows
H: is the system data for that copy of Windows
I: is my download drive. Where I have all of my downloads get moved to after I download them for sorting
J: is my backup drive
K: is my Microsoft Downloads from MSDN and TechNET.
L: is my Music drive where all of my music is stored
M: is my picture drive. All my pics that are either taken, downloaded or created are stored here.
N: is my document drive. All documents either downloaded or created are stored here.
O: is my game drive. All games and patches are stored here for easy access to install them upon reinstall.
P: is my 1 optical drive
Q: is my other optical drive
R: is my virtual optical drive used to mount ISO's
A: is my phones internal storage
B: is my phones external storage
Y: is my 250GB External
Z: is my 500GB External

So as you can see there is a lot of thought and effort put into drive letter assignments. This can be done by anyone at any time. As long as your disk management screen reads these drive letters that you set, those drive letters will never be assigned to another drive at any time, until you go in and change that option yourself.

If I attached a Network drive to my system and let it auto assign, it will always choose a letter not currently assigned by me using Disk Management. So even if I dont have my phone or my externals attached, it will not use A, B, Y, or Z. It will use one of the other 6 letter left that I have not personally assigned. If I go into Disk Management and manually assign Drive S: as the network drive, then when I attach a USB Thumb Drive, even with the Network drive not attached at that time, it will choose one of the remaining 5 letters not manually assigned. So that I could still attach the Network drive and not have a conflict.

Windows has come a long way since the early days when drive conflicts were common. Wikipedia has not changed their articles to reflect the changes in the technology of the OS to match the times. So while what you say and read is true, that is only for earlier versions of Windows pre XP days. With XP drive letter conflicts are few and far between and with Vista/Win7 I have yet to see any instance of drive letter conflict.

 

[TheMajor]

I used to have that many partitions, but it's really much easier to work with fewer partitions and use folders to organize your data. You also have less risk of running into space problems on a partition. You don't want to resize your partitions if you run out of space

 

[KSoD]

I tried going by folder, but sadly it didnt work. I have everything sorted on my partitions by folder, but there is noway I could keep them sorted on 1 partition by folder. Jsut to much data.

I am not worried about size. My Doc partition is over 50GB in size. More than sufficient for any amount of documents. My Music is a full 320GB HDD to itself. My Picture Partition is 75GB in size. Windows is split on the SSD to 60GB each along with 12GB each for the pagefile and 85GB for the apps. My download drive is a TB in size and my backup drive, mainly for Windows is 500GB. I have more than enough space on each drive to handle the requirements. That is the major benefit of using a couple TB Drives mixed in with my 320GB music drive and 160GB SSD. I have more than enough space to manage and left more than enough room for expansion.