Worth making a games partition?

Venares

Venares

Venares

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Just bought a new 320Gb spinpoint and was wondering if it was worth partitioning the drive in half.
160GB for OS and Apps and the other 160Gb for games.
Now the question is, will there be any speed advantage to doing this or will it just be a waste of time?
 
I've NEVER understood why people would want to make different partitions on there hard drives. some people say so they can have it more organised? wtf just put your files in the correct folders, thats fine!

How hard can it be to have everything in just 1 normal partition? so much easier.
 
Normaly I would, but what I was asking is would it help with load times on games.
Im assuming that it would fragment a lot less?

Oh, and no need to be a patronising ahat, if you had nothing constructive to add why reply.
 
Lots of reason for having a separate partition:
1) It's more organised :)
2) You can make separate [logical] disk images to backup and restore with.
3) If things go wrong with the [say] games partition, it gets corrupted, the MFT is stuffed, then the OS partition is not affected and you can work on putting it back together.
4) Writing lots of temporary data to the 'games' partition won't fragment files on your OS partition and slow it down. You can optimise the defragmentation of the OS partition.
5) You can backup a disk image of your OS partition, it will be much smaller as you don't have to include the GBs of data on other partitions. So you can do this regularly (I'm sure you do this...)
6) Some argue that if you put the OS partition on the outer edges of the disk it will be faster and seeks only need to look in that portion of the disk. Sorta makes sense but I'm not sure it results in noticeable improvement.
7) it's more orgranised :)
 
Jamesdavid3 said:
I've NEVER understood why people would want to make different partitions on there hard drives. some people say so they can have it more organised? wtf just put your files in the correct folders, thats fine!

How hard can it be to have everything in just 1 normal partition? so much easier.
Click to expand...

right up until you need to reformat and reinstall windows.......hmmm reformat my small OS partition and not have to touch the larger data partitions (mp3's. movies, photo, games,downloads etc.) or reformat my entire 1.2tb array and have to restore lots of stuff from backups or even have to download it again.

now which would you choose.

as for the opening poster when you partition a drive the first partition is generally a little faster (due to being the first part of the platter) but of course normally this is the partition you install your OS on. I suppose you could use this partition for you games/data but i dont think its really going to be much of a noticable differnce.


edit: damm beaten to it ;)
 
I have two 1TB hard drives and i have partitioned the first into 4 230's, where i have a 4-way boot set up with xp 32,64 & vista 32,64. I use the second hard drive for games (partitioned into 4, with 1 partition for each os) as i am led to believe that it is best to have a games partition if you have two seperate hard drives.

So in a nutshell, i like partitions;)
 
Not having a separate partition for your windows installation is plain silly imho. It only takes a matter of seconds to setup and saves you so much hassle in the long run.
 
titaniumx3 said:
Not having a separate partition for your windows installation is plain silly imho. It only takes a matter of seconds to setup and saves you so much hassle in the long run.
Click to expand...

Sorry to hijack ure thread but I was just about to partition my Samsung 500Gb and wondered whats the best app for dong this..

Ive used partition magic in the past and as far as I remember this was pretty good...

Anything better these days & anything free?

Edit: btw, Ive already installed the os.. Vista 64.
 
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I've used Partition Magic (my version out of date now and doesn't work with Vista), and Paragon. Most things you can just use Disk Management console, but it will mean multiple steps. If using the latter then first you need to shrink the exisitng partition with your OS on it, then after rebooting create one or more partitions in the unallocated space. If you use Paragon then it makes a script and does all the operations in one go (slowly from my experience).
 
I just use separate drives instead.

However in terms of speed I don't see how you will get a speed advantage from the partitioning as you still have the same number of heads that can access the disk.

That does not mean not worth doing for other reasons as already mentioned.

1st = OS
2nd = Apps
3rd = Data

Is how I build my systems.
 
i used to use game partitions but now i've changed to using seperate drives a bit like mcnallys rig for running games on. The problem is that with a partition you are still using the same disk space that windows is on and over time it will still start running slower depending on how much space you use in the windows partition and if the partition becomes corrupt you're buggered anyway. Just buy something like a 320gb samsung F1 and use that to install games onto and you wont have to worry.
 
Hey,Am starting fresh install of vista 64 soon.as my boot loading time goes 5 to 10mins untill its get to desktop,dont why it,it started last week,
Well anyway,I got two 400Gb WD and am getting Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103UJ) soon,As my 250gb Ex Wd is dead now,

Just Wandering how would you Partition these

1:Os 260Gb
2:Programs 140Gb
3:Games 100Gb maybe more?
3:Pictures,Music,Movies,Roms,Documents 300Gb


When i get Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache
1:Back up 100Gb
and really for future and for window 7 when its out.

Can any else think of better partitions,i want OS to be higher since its slowly working its way up?
 
Are you guys saying if say on C drive you make an OS partition and you want to FORMAT, you can still keep all the data on C and literally just format the OS partition? I've always wondered this, thanks
 
Never really found much point myself, in the old days people tended to have multiple drives and not in raid so you you Windows on one and then games and the swap file on the other.
 
Are you guys saying if say on C drive you make an OS partition and you want to FORMAT, you can still keep all the data on C and literally just format the OS partition? I've always wondered this, thanks
Click to expand...

If you partition your boot disk then the first partition will be C: and the second will be D: so yes, you could format C: and the data on D: will be intact.

I have the following:-

300gb velociraptor - 50gb OS partition (C: ), 250gb games partition (D: )
500gb for storage (E: )
500gb for backup (F: )
 
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