Do You Separate Your Programs from the OS Drive?

[Bryan R.]

I keep virtually everything on a different drive or on my server. My OS is on an SSD and I'll keep particular games and programs on it while documents, pictures, videos, and music are on my server. Other games and videos (for example screen recordings) go to a local RAID0 array.

[AJerman]

Yes, absolutely I do, but not programs, just documents, pictures, videos, etc. Any personal files. And not for "protection" or anything like that either, but because I now have all my important files separated from my OS and programs, so if I should ever need to, I can wipe that drive in a moments notice and reinstall a new OS without having to worry about copying my documents off the main drive first. It's just for organization and ease of use.

[Torolol]

i hates installing games on "C:\Program Files (x##)"

i always want to install them on "C:\Games\(insert game name)"

[Bertch]

I was always told (probably wrong after reading this) that if you separate your OS and programs you will get better speeds as the program(s) and OS can then read in parallel making things faster overall.  Can anyone confirm or deny this?

[LUTZIFER]

Nope. My stuff runs awesome as is. However, all my media is on a separate drive.

[Aergan]

For Windows I used to do the following:

 

• C:\ = OS Only
• Redirect all user data, games, downloads, non-Microsoft applications, other to D:\

 

Due to SSD's and SkyDrive, I only separate downloads & games that are large or that are not played all the time to D:\

 

On Linux, /home used to get it's own partition or drive, with Ubuntu One I no longer bother.

 

In both cases I encrypt any extremely important data sat in Documents (BitLocker & TrueCrypt).

 

I'm a big fan of Cloud Storage solutions.

[Shadrack]

I used to keep everything partitioned separately or on separate drives, but not so much anymore.  I don't anymore because:

 

* I have a pretty solid 100% and incremental backup scheme

* Most programs and games would need to be reinstalled if an OS was reinstalled anyway

 

Still, in order to keep my main SSD from becoming too full, I put my music and my video on a secondary drive (typically).

[sikhwarrior]

I have a SSD with just my os and programs installed but i store all my music,videos and photos on another hard drive and have pointed dropbox to be stored on that same HDD so my SSD has more then enough space for windows updates and any temporary files.

[Bryan R.]

I was always told (probably wrong after reading this) that if you separate your OS and programs you will get better speeds as the program(s) and OS can then read in parallel making things faster overall.  Can anyone confirm or deny this?

There's nothing to confirm or deny. It's just common sense if you have any idea how the hardware works. The OS is mostly loaded into memory by the time you're launching applications so it largely makes no difference these days. The idea of installing to a different partition is held over from legacy systems in a time when RAM was much less abundant and hard drives were night and day to today's. Now, with SSDs funnily enough, it's become more prominent again since space is so valuable (monetarily).

 

Other than that, these days, it really just comes down to organization of files (documents, pictures, videos) in the case of system failure or reinstall.

[xendrome]

Programs no, C: drive is OS and Apps, D: is Games/Media, makes it easier to drive image the OS/Apps.

[Sir Topham Hatt]

After much deliberation, I will continue to separate games and documents as it is just easier to manage, but things like Office will go with the OS.  Not sure about other programs as yet - it was easier to have them separate too as I frequently visited the folders.

Means I can leave the OS drive well alone.