Shoutbox

My system drive is a 500Gb with a single partition with 249Gb free space. Would I be better off (faster performance) creating a 2nd partition for files (music, pictures, etc), thus reducing the system allocated space to say 100Gb? Thanks.

As long as both partitions are on the same HDD, there probably won't be any significant increase in performance.
Having a partition for the system (meaning Windows, installed programs) might be good for backup, since you can format only that partition and keep the second.

I've tried both setups and haven't seen any noticeable performance gain with windows when having separate partitions (on the same drive).

Personally I'd never partition a hard-drive.....I don't see any advantages to it.

It won't protect your data against crashes or anything as its the same physical drive.

I'd always just leave a drive as one single volume

It wouldn't be much faster (if any) as all data is still on the same physical drive, the harddisk head still has to make roughly the same amount of movement. You might have some benefit though, as your system files are less fragmented over the entire drive.

I would do 2 partitions, but mianly for a different reason: Should your OS get messed up you can format that partition without loosing your media.

Edit: I'm slow.

Thanks for the replies. I posted this question because I have about 110Gb of files I seldom access (music, videos,pictures, etc), and I thought that by placing all these files in a 2nd partition that I would be reducing the distance traveled by the drive's head in the system partition, hence increasing performance.
Of course I could move all these files to a 2nd physical drive, but I don't want to have a 2nd drive permanently connected to the system, specially since as I said it would be seldom accessed.
I found this article which supports the idea of performance increase by partitioning the drive:
http://www.acronis.com.au/resource/tech-talk/2004...-introduction.html

Well I guess theoretically there could be some sort of performance gain because of a smaller MFT, less fragmenting etc.
But as I said, it probably won't be noticeable at all on an average computer, considering how fast HDDs are nowadays.

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Originally posted by alegator
I have about 110Gb of files I seldom access (music, videos,pictures, etc), and I thought that by placing all these files in a 2nd partition that I would be reducing the distance traveled by the drive's head in the system partition, hence increasing performance.

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Usually, also when using only one partition, a decent defragmenting program should be able to take care of that by moving all the system files into one place and the lesser used files (music, pics etc) to another.

edit: btw alegator, you have 476 posts and I have 674 =p just a random thing i noticed..

quote:

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Originally posted by alegator
Of course I could move all these files to a 2nd physical drive, but I don't want to have a 2nd drive permanently connected to the system, specially since as I said it would be seldom accessed.

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You could also use a removable drive, or even transform a buildin HDD to a removable drive (cheap stuff for that exists everywhere in most hardware stores).

And except from boot time, the HDD wouldn't use that much power if it isn't used that much either. (Most power is drawn when the HDD spins up or needs to read/write stuff; so if you don't use > not much power). And most modern HDDs stop spinning anyways after being idle for some time.

quote:

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Originally posted by alegator
I found this article which supports the idea of performance increase by partitioning the drive:
http://www.acronis.com.au/resource/tech-talk/2004...-introduction.html

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yep, article is entirly correct.

Anyways, except that it would indeed be more convenient to have seperate partitions for your system and for your data:

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Originally posted by djdannyp
It won't protect your data against crashes or anything as its the same physical drive.

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On the contrary! It will protect your data more than when you only use 1 partition. Reason is simple: 2 partitions mean 2 MFT's etc. When a crash occurs it usually means that a certain part of the HDD can't be accessed anymore or that the MFT is messed up or whatever. So you would still have the other partition.

Physical crashes where the entire drive would be physically messed up rarely occur. Usually it are messed up tables and file systems, nothing which a format wouldn't be able to fix. And then you will be very happy that you had partitionned your HDD.

... And all other stuff people said...

(I speak out of experience... way too much experience tbh, ... damn HDDs )

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
Except that it would indeed be more convenient to have seperate partitions for your system and for your data:

quote:

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Originally posted by djdannyp
It won't protect your data against crashes or anything as its the same physical drive.

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On the contrary! It will protect your data more than when you only use 1 partition. Reason is simple: 2 partitions mean 2 MFT's etc. When a crash occurs it usually means that a certain part of the HDD can't be accessed anymore or that the MFT is messed up or whatever. So you would still have the other partition.

Physical crashes where they entire drive would be messed up rarely occur. Usually it are messed up tables and file systems.

... And all other stuff people said...

(I speak out of experience... way too much experience tbh, ... damn HDDs )

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Same as Cookie =P
My HDD recently had a physycal damage in it's "C" partition, and I've only lost Vista because of that (phew...), was yet able to recover everything from "D" and "E".

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Originally posted by djdannyp
Personally I'd never partition a hard-drive.....I don't see any advantages to it.

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yeah because nobody ever installs multiple operating systems on 1 hard drive



Windows 7, Windows XP, Xubuntu

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Originally posted by SonicSam

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Originally posted by djdannyp
Personally I'd never partition a hard-drive.....I don't see any advantages to it.

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yeah because nobody ever installs multiple operating systems on 1 hard drive

Windows 7, Windows XP, Xubuntu

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No.

You can't install different operating systems on different partitions.

Not only that, but you also can't split up your OS and data over two partitions so that if the OS messes up you can format its partition without needing to back up data.

Jeez, SonicSam, I thought you were knowledgeable. I would have at least expected you to know that there aren't any advantages to partitioning.