But you also may want to chop up your drive into smaller partitions. For
example, if you have a 500 GB hard disk, you may choose to divide it up
into four 125 GB partitions, or perhaps a 300 GB partition and two 100 GB
partitions. There are a bunch of reasons why you might want to do this:
Organization
Use multiple partitions to further organize your files and make your stuff
easier to find. For example, put Windows on one drive, work documents
on another, games on another, and music and other media on yet another.
Isolation of system and data
You can use partitions to isolate your programs from your data. For
example, place Windows on drive C:, your personal documents on drive
D:, and your virtual memory (swap file) and temporary files on drive E:.
264 | Chapter 5: Performance
This setup gives you the distinct advantage of being able to format your
operating system partition and reinstall Windows without touching
your personal data, and also makes it easier to back up just your data.
Performance
As illustrated in ???A Defragmentation Crash Course,??? earlier in this
chapter, the data on your hard drive can become badly fragmented with
use, which hurts performance and increases the chances of data corruption.
Because files cannot become fragmented across partition boundaries,
you can dramatically reduce fragmentation by separating
frequently accessed files, like those in the Windows and Program Files
folders, from frequently updated files, like your virtual memory (swap
file) and temporary files, as well as infrequently updated files like photos
and music.
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