Is it worth partitioning an external hard drive?

[Ian]

I have a USB hard drive which I separated into partitions based on different types of data. I was just wondering if it it worth doing this if the idea is to prevent loss of data by separating the partitions. Do you tend to get situations where individual partitions might fail rather than the whole hard drive? Or is it usually that the whole hard drive will fail and therefore it’s not really worth partitioning?

I ask because I’m going to be upgrading a new bigger backup drive.

[phillpower2]

Hello Ian,

Any data that you truly value should have at least two back ups and ideally one of them kept off site, on the Cloud or on a drive kept in a safe etc, so the answer to your question would be yes it is worth partitioning the drives as you see fit but for backing your back ups you should ideally have two storage devices of equal storage capacity.

[Ian]

Thanks, and yes I do need an offsite backup, although Cloud might be easier I guess.

[phillpower2]

You are welcome

Some Cloud info for you here