Does it makes sense to partition a hard drive to keep O/S and programs in one partition and data elsewhere?

I am thinking of creating a 10GB Partition for the O/S and programs so if I have to reload again I won't have to touch my data.

What do other people do?

good day,

well, i am guessing that you are running windows nt / windows xp?

and, i am guessing that you probably will have anywhere from 30gb to 70gb for data storage?

i have always done what you are outlining -- i.e., a separate partition for my os and programs, and then multiple partitions for various data items.
having said that, i have never experienced any sort of crash, major corrupted area, or data loss [since 1986 up to today], so at one level i cannot honestly say why i have done so [having said that, i will say that i will continue to do the exact same thing to the next computer/hard drive i purchase].

you might want to do a google search on "partition size" and see how the size of your partition affects your cluster size which affects the lost area known as "slack".

and, i will admit:
a) i have always run gibson corporation's spinrite on my hard drives -- it will mark/repair any/all areas that are unusable [this is a gift from the gods at the same level as fire]; and
b) i have always used partitionmagic to partition my hard drives

you can read about spinrite at www.grc.com -- this site may be kind of geeky, but i consider spinrite as totally necessary to examine, and to repair, your hard disk.

and, i think partitionmagic is also a gift from the gods [not quite at the level of fire]. you can partition and/or resize your drive on-the-fly all without losing any data.

hope this helps.

What you are trying to do probably won't improve proformance much, but it does make good orginizal sense. It can also make reinstalling the OS a little less painful. If you ever need to then you can wipe the OS partition and re-install and not worry about moving your data first.

What will make a proformance difference is a seperate partition for virtual memory (or even put it on a different drive). I typically allocate about 3gb for virtual memory. Right click on my computer, go to properties then the advanced tab then then click the settings button under the preformance section. Then on the advanced tab click the virtual memory button. You can make the changes there.

If you really want to make a big difference then use two different drives. Get a smaller, fast (like a Raptor) drive for the OS and then use the entire second drive for apps and data.