you can install your personal files and folders in one partition and the OS in another, making it easy to format the OS if the need arises without touching your files On UNIX-family OS' you can also share the /home and /var folders across several systems, this is very useful for distro-hopping, as it allows you to share your personal folders and program data between several installations.
After backing up to an external hard disk but otherwise not removing any data - could a partition reliably be installed on OSDisk (C: ) 200 GB free of 500 GB?
Any thoughts on benefits of using MiniTool Partition Wizard or another? - Information from CNet: http://download.cnet.com/MiniTool-Partition-Wizard-Home-Edition/3000-2094_4-10962200.html?tag=dre Editors' Rating: 4.5 Outstanding, Average User Rating: 4.4 MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition 8 adds disk conversion and copying to what was already one of our favorite disk partitioning tools, free or not. It creates, deletes, aligns, moves, resizes, recovers, splits, joins, hides, copies, and converts partitions or entire disks. It can change drive letters, label partitions and volumes, edit properties, and check file systems. It does all that and more for free, though premium upgrades for business environments, servers, and special needs are available. Pros Powerful and flexible: MiniTool Partition Wizard has the tools advanced users need to manage all their disk drives. We used the Split Partition tool's slider to size and create an 80GB partition on an external hard drive in mere seconds. Undo it: An Undo button lets you back off changes before they're irrevocable. Help: A fully indexed and illustrated Help file explains each feature and process clearly. Wizards and extras: Both wizard-based and separate tools make MiniTool one of the most flexible partition managers we've tried at any price. It can wipe drives, create bootable CDs, change drive serial numbers, create dynamic disks, and export disk configurations, too. Cons Data killer: The only fault we've found with MiniTool Partition Wizard is common to all such tools: it can destroy data when used carelessly (always pay attention, take your time, and back up your data when formatting or partitioning disk drives). Bottom Line MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition 8 does what pricey premium tools do, and more -- yet it's free. It remains our primary disk utility. Publisher's Description From MiniTool: Working as partition magic, Partition Wizard Home Edition is a free partition manager designed by MT Solution Ltd. This partition software supports 32/64 bit Windows Operating System. Home users can perform complicated partition operations by using this powerful but free partition manager to manage their hard disk partition such as Resizing partitions, Copying partitions, Create partition, Delete partition, Format partition, Convert partition, Explore partition, Hide partition, Change drive letter, Set active partition, Convert Dynamic Disk to Basic Disk, Surface Test, Change Partition Serial Number, Change Partition Type ID and Partition Recovery. What's new in this version: Version 8.1.1 adds support to create ext2/3/4 partition more than 4TB.
I usually go with OpenSource, but that also includes my OS (Fedora <3) so I'm not familiar with Windows tools. Found a good article on partition magic and it's alternatives though. en.kioskea.net/faq/1391-free-alternative-to-partition-magic
The old days - disk partitioning as a way for: - Putting multiple operating systems (e.g. unix and Windows) on different partitions, same physical disk (or different versions of an OS)... a way of multiple OS boots on the same hardware. - Put quotas on disk usage per group in a company, makes it easier to manage/monitor disk space usage (e.g. Engineering versus Sales department, something like that) These days, disk spaces are inexpensive. 2GB around USD $50? Nobody cares as much about partitioning.