Partition an external drive?

[terrie]

A bit of background:

I'm planning on ordering a new external drive--a 3TB Fantom G-Force3 Pro USB3.0. It will be used for general file backup (just copy/paste from my local drive to the external, not via backup software) and also I'm planning on (finally!) using Macrium Reflect (free) to image my O/S drive.

At this point, I know I want to use Macrium to image my O/S drive and also perhaps for the partition with my installed software--I need to read through the Macrium user guide before I make any hard and fast decisions about which drives to image.

I'm thinking of partitioning the external drive into 2 possibly 3 partitions--perhaps 2 ~1.5TB partitions or 3 ~ 1TB partitions. I was thinking that I'd use one partition for my general file backup (data, images, etc., not O/S) and the other parition would hold whatever drive image(s) I finally decide to do.


Questions:

1. Does anyone know of any limitation within Win7/Pro/64bit as to drive size. In other words is 3TB too big for Win7--I suspect not but always good to ask.


2. Are there disadvantages to partitioning an external drive?


3. Suggestions as to which partitioning software to use?


4. I'm guessing that I can have multiple drive images (stored in different directory names of course) in the same partition?


5. What question(s) should I be asking that I've not asked?




Thanks...



Terrie