You have never installed beta software that has totally hosed your system? I
install beta software a few times a week for testing and some of the results
are unrecoverable!

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience


"Ken Blake, MVP" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 1 Oct 2009 15:34:48 -0400, "Richard Urban"
wrote:

The main drive to have a separate data partition (I have done so since
1992)
is that when (not IF) you have to either redo or return to a previous
image
of the operating system partition you do not lose your data.


I strongly disagree with that statement for two reasons:

1. You say "when (not IF)," but if you do a good job of maintaining
your system, that "when" normally never occurs. For example, I've run
almost every version of Windows since 3.0, and I've *never* done this.

2. Protection against losing your data should be a strong and regular
program of backup to an external device. Relying on its being on a
separate partition is like playing with fire. You can lose the
contents of the entire hard drive for a variety of reasons, starting
with hard drive crashes.



I have files I created in 1992. These files have survived many dozens of
system redo's and returning to a previous state through the use of an
imaging program. They have also survived upgrades, both physical and
operating system, 6-8 times.

Also, if you dual boot (many do so) you can access the data from any
operating system you have on the computer "without" touching data in
another
system partition.


Yes. As I said, those who dual-boot (perhaps many do, but as
percentage of those running Windows, the number is tiny) need multiple
partitions.

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP (Windows Desktop Experience) since 2003
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