"Why should I partitioning my hard disk drives?"

[eXe]

There are many reasons to use hard disk partition software. They all come down to this: Partitioning the hard disk makes your life a lot easier and sometimes saves your data and your neck. Disk partitioning: Limits Accidental or Deliberate Damage To Your Data You can separate your applications into separate partitions and put their data in other partitions. If an application becomes corrupted or is accidentally deleted, it is easier to contain the damage in a single partition. Hard drive partition recovery is faster than having to recover the entire hard disk. Increases Security Encryption is one of the fundamental tools to protection yourself against theft, corruption or compromise of critical data on your computer. But encryption slows your computer down. With disk partitioning software, you can encrypt just those partitions that need protection and let the other parts of your system run unencrypted, and hence faster. Helps Your Computer Run Faster Partitioning a hard drive lets your computer find things faster. Even routine access to information is speeded up because the computer can organize the information more efficiently with smaller directories. Quicker searches for files or directories also result because the computer only has to search a single partition instead of the entire large disk. Organizes Information Partitioning the hard drive not only makes it easier for the computer to find things, it makes it easier for you to find things as well. Creating partitions lets you categorize files and folders in partitions according to logical schemes. You don't have to search endless lists of hundreds or thousands, or even tens of thousands, of folders trying to find a particular file or application. Increases Productivity You can increase your productivity because you spend your time doing useful work rather than hunting for that letter or spreadsheet or other document.

Got it from http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,13499983

[TwoRails]

Although with NTFS it's becoming a moot point, but one of the original reasons to partition was to lower your cluster size, thus squeezing more storage space from your HD. Obviously this was more important when HDs were a lot smaller, and a lot more expensive. You can get a 300GB drive pretty cheap now-a-days, especially when compared to when 30MB drives were a deal at $500 a pop. Older, smaller drives where even more expensive per MB.