What is the point of partitioning a HDD?

different reasons.
One is to seperate various Operating systems for multibooting.
And then there is seperating various programs
Then there is security for backup files and the likes.
But the best reason is to slow down wear and tear on your equipment.... If you use a large drive like 200/300 gigs imagine how long it takes to search everypart of it for file fragments. Now think of it slit up in to sections(partitions) and all that has to be searched is a particular section instead of the whole driv...By default this also speeds up the response which speeds up the multitasking. The same thing goes for utillity programs that you use to keep a system clean...they would not need to go through all the sections only those with the operating files and programs. Try defragging a 300 gig hdd. now compare it to defragging a 30gig partition.saves a lot of time and the movement of the internal working parts of the drive doesn't work as hard.
 
So idlely you would have one for the OS and day-day programs, one for games and save files, one for music/downloads. anything other section that would help.
 
yes that is exactly what I would do and did. extra drives are concidered as a partition also. There is a draw back to this...windows is defaulted to only allow 4 partitions on a drive(I think that # is right) So in order to have more partitions on a drive than that you would need a third party partitioning program to install the partitions. Once partitioned windows will see them as seperate drives and allow access to them.
I run mutiboot so in my computer I have 5 seperate operating systems all on either their on drive or partition. Each one is dedicated to certain aspects. and before anyone jumps out of line here...they are a legal with their own COA (no copies.)
 
Thats crazy 5 OS's. are they all XP?

is it four per drive? i wasn't sure becuase you said a second HDD is conciderd a partition but then you said 4 partitions on a HDD.
 
3 xp's and 2 98SE
I xp drive is set up with only video editing program on it.
1xp is work with a backup partitionand storage partition
1xp is wife's before I let her build her own. I just left it on the computer because it is OEM
1 98SE set up for dos applications and work
1 98SE for games( I do play a few :p)
they are 98 on a 30g; 2 xp on 2 40g;1 xp on a 80g split 40/20/20 and a 98SE on another 80 gig split 30/30/20 I use the boot and partition manager called
BootIt NG to keep them all seperate.
Windows OS is defaulted to only partition four partitions per drive you can set up how ever many drives your mobo will allow.
 
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