in the physical world you would need to partition disks if you want separate drive letters (or mount points).
Never had a need to do this. Never been in a company that needed to do this. Never even heard of ANY software or anything that requires a drive letter. Mount points is a Linux term, so maybe you are confusing the 2. But in the Windows world, there is no need to do this, and I have been in MANY IT workshops, software companies, never seen this, so if you do this, you are unique. Want is the issue, if that's what you like.
On our SQL servers, we use C:, D:, E:, etc (depending on CD/DVD letter) coupled with different RAID arrays, to enhance performance.
On our web servers, we use C:, D:, E:, etc (depending on CD/DVD letter) to isolate IIS installations to prevent directory traversals, and prevent other security issues
On many of our other application servers, we (even on a single hard disk) create separate partitions to ensure that logging doesn't fill the drive up, rendering the system useless
There are many different situations where you would want some partitioning.
partitioning does have it's advantages.
VERY FEW, moe disadvantage than anything else. For one how do you manage disk space? It's a hassle to resize and decide how much space to give a partition.. Such as in this case.
Which is more of a hassle?
Having to resize a partition?
Having to plan accordingly to accomodate for system growth?
Having to accomodate for system failure or system breach because you didn't plan accordingly?
If you use one great big C: drive, that drive is always going to be locked by the OS
For what? The machine is locked anyway, ONLY files that are IN USE BY WINDOWS are locked, not the ENTIRE partition, nice try.That's just silly. RParker, you are correct> > if you need to do any maintenance (chkdsk, partition resize, etc.), it will require a reboot.
Really? So tools like Diskeeper, Acronis, and FixIT utilties can't run WHILE the OS is running eh? That's funny I use these tools ALL the time, NEVER reboot, same drive, 1 partiion, IN use by the OS, again, nice try. Sounds like you are using the wrong tools, the integrated tools with Windows maybe, but 3rd party tools don't need this to function.
With regards to installing everything on C:, sometimes this is an issue.
Most Enterprise class applications can overcome this in most situations, but sometimes there are technical limitations that cannot be circumvented.
But, if you have separate partitions, you generally can just stop some applications and do your disk maintenance on everything but the system partition.
So basically you only have 1 reason why you WANT to use partitions, albeit limited functionality, and I give a entire laundry list of problems associated with partitioning..That I have found over the years, but I will spare you. Suffice to say this was a rhetorical comment, and I have heard all of these excuses for using partitions, have yet to find one that is TRULY meaningful... There IS no compelling reason to use partitions. It's PURE preference, but it has more roadblocks than a highway in Cuba. Still an outdated practice.
I would have to disagree.
Jase