I decided to get a 1TB nvme SSD for my main Windows drive on my new build. Do you guys recommend I partition it or use the entire drive? I'm not sure what to do. I heard that partitioning it and installing windows solely on its own partition will make it easier to perform clean installs later if need be without losing all your data.

My new system will have a 1TB nvme SSD as my main Windows/Program and Apps/Downloads/Documents/Pictures drive, a 2TB SATA SSD for games, and a 4TB HDD as a backup drive.

I also heard that I should be using GPT (GUID Partition table) vs MBR format for all my drives if possible. Just want to get it right the first time, so would like to confirm with some tech experts here.

On 5/22/2020 at 3:24 AM, captain420 said:

I heard that partitioning it and installing windows solely on its own partition will make it easier to perform clean installs later if need be without losing all your data.

Yes and no. If you have apps (not just data) in one partition and Windows in another, if you clean-install Windows into the boot partition it will give you a fresh registry without any data the apps in your second partition need. As a consequence, you’ll probably have to re-install all the apps anyway to restore their registry entries. You can’t just backup the registry and restore it after the clean install. The same problem would apply to anything on your second SSD if anything on it relied on entries in the registry.

The best solution would be to get the new system fully running and stable, with everything you want installed, and then make a full system backup with something like Macrium Reflect (my favourite). If you schedule a weekly differential backup, you can effectively restore any of the drives and only lose a week’s worth of data. Alternatively, your first backup file (without using any of the subsequent differential backups) will get you back to the original, clean working version of Windows.

Edited May 24, 20206 yr by vortex681

Thanks, so in that case it sounds better just to use the entire SSD as my C windows drive then. Partitioning doesn't really seem to offer any added benefits here since you mentioned that if I were to perform a clean install of Windows, I would then have to pretty much reinstall all my apps over again since it relies heavily on the registry.

14 hours ago, captain420 said:

Thanks, so in that case it sounds better just to use the entire SSD as my C windows drive then. Partitioning doesn't really seem to offer any added benefits here since you mentioned that if I were to perform a clean install of Windows, I would then have to pretty much reinstall all my apps over again since it relies heavily on the registry.

Correct. There are some apps and games which don't rely on registry entries (XP11 being a good example) but these tend to be the exception rather than the rule. Regular backups are the key to overcoming most major problems.

Edited May 25, 20206 yr by vortex681