Last Updated on August 15, 2017 by Larious

After getting a new external hard disk, the question that usually comes to most people, as it also came to me some years back, is “Should I partition my external hard drive?” As at that time, I was still a novice to a computer and found myself in the valley of indecision on whether or not to partition my new external disk.

I eventually opted to partition the disk, and fast forward to three years later, I never regretted doing that. Although the external disk later crashed, I was still able to salvage some files and still use part of the disk.

So, a direct answer the frequently asked “Should I partition my external hard drive?” question is YES.

In this post, I like to share with you the advantages I have gained from partitioning my external hard disk and why the answer to the question is YES. But before that, I think it would be good for you to really understand how partitioning of a disk (both internal and external) works.

How Hard Disk Partitioning Works

When you partition your hard disk, you are simply dividing the whole volume of the disk into small volumes. This doesn’t mean the disk inside the drive would be physically divided — of course not; instead, the volume is virtually divided.

And by that, you are making your computer to believe and treat each partition as a separate disk. If for any reason you want to undo the partitions, after partitioning, you can undo them. Both partitioning and undoing of partitions are easy, but you have to be careful in order not to destroy your files during the processes.

That said, now let me share with you the two great advantages I have enjoyed from partitioning my external hard disk. Hopefully, after reading about the advantages I enjoyed, you would be convinced that the answer to the “Should I partition my external hard drive?” question is YES.

Partitioning my external hard drive makes me more organized with my files and folders.

You should know that the easiest way to organizing files into a drive is to arrange files with the same extension into a folder and give the folder a descriptive name.  But if you are someone like me who loves to keep archives of files, using only folders to organize files into your external hard disk may not really do the job well.

You will end up having lots of folders and sub-folders.

By partitioning my external hard disk, I was able to put related folders together into a partition: I have a partition for videos, another for documents, another for program setups, and one for audio. So if I am to find a setup for a particular program, I just go straight to the partition for keeping program setup. This helps to reduce the time I spend in locating files and folders.

Partitioning saved me from losing all my files

The time I was convinced I made the right decision partitioning my external hard was when the disk crashed. After three years of actively using the disk, I woke up one day and noticed that one of the partitions has crashed.

I lost the partition where I stored some important documents; however, the partitions where I stored video, music, and program setups remain intact.

My Video and Music files are stored in the Tunisblizz partition. The Local Disk (L) is the crashed partition

Now imagine that I didn’t partition the drive and this crash happened; it would have been an awful experience. All the whole volume would have crashed altogether. The partitioning at least reduced the magnitude of this unfortunate event – and till today, I still use the other working partitions.

I hope you are now convinced that it is wise decision to partition your external hard disk. If you have now decided to go with partitioning your external hard disk, you can use the inbuilt Windows Disk Management feature or use any of the great disk partitioning third-party software.

About Author: Adedapo Olatunde is an editor at Techrabytes and an author at HowToTechNaija. He loves everything tech and everything space – and hopes to be one of the first tourists to Mars.