Dunno, you could just use it for archived stuff, backups, things like that that rarely get used. If the Head isn't moving to that location inbetween OS reads, then I'm sure you could store stuff there without any performance hit.
Are velociraptors the fastest
- Thread starter widdyst
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Dunno, you could just use it for archived stuff, backups, things like that that rarely get used. If the Head isn't moving to that location inbetween OS reads, then I'm sure you could store stuff there without any performance hit.
Soldato
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Err I don't quite understand why anyone thinks short stroking this way is somehow amazing. Partitioning achieves the exact same thing without losing any space. If you have a benchmarking tool that can test partitions you'll get the same thing (ATTO perhaps).
Yes, the idea however is to reduce the access times, so you get 'snappier' performance at greater speeds. Yes you can partition it, but if the whole drive is being used you get slower read/write and access times when jumping between partitions.
Soldato
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Err if what you're doing only uses the one partition you'll get the same lower access times. Limiting the drive like this is utterly pointless.
Hope this makes is clearer. If you split the full drive into partitions, the average access times are going to be greater as the physical head in the drive has further distance to travel, potentially from the centre to the very outer area.
If you just partition the outer area and leave the rest unused, the head never has to travel further than the size of the partition.
I whipped these up in photoshop.
Short stroked hard drive
Partitioned hard drive
Limiting the drive capacity may be pointless in your opinion, but surely it isn't as pointless as spending £120~ on a 150GB Velociraptor drive which's only advantage over this technique is slightly improved access times (around 3ms quicker). Other than that, this technique increases overall read/write performance and is better value per GB.
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Soldato
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You're mistaken, the heads start at the outer edge. All you're doing is throwing away space.
Exactly what diagram 1 shows
Soldato
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Well since you do know that then I really fail to see what you're not understanding. Partitions (or tools that let you rearrange files) achieve EXACTLY THE SAME THING and you can keep the full capacity. You don't even have to use the other partitions but you have the option and it's not going to affect performance in the slightest (outside of benchmarks) if you just use the rest of the space for storage.
You did read this right? http://www.techwarelabs.com/seagate_1-5tb-mod/all/1/
I'm using this technique for use as a boot drive and some applications, so Windows is completely independent of everything else and gets the lowest access times with fastest speeds. If you start using the rest of the drive as partitions, overall performance drops as the data is spread out, thus longer access times and slower read/write operations (speed of the platter correlates with distance from the centre)
If you mean using the other partitions for storage of data you are unlikely to ever use, or maybe as a back up of files, I can see your point. Using the rest of the space for general purpose though, that defeats the point of this technique.
At the end of the day £30-40 for a hard drive that is performing like a £120+ hard drive is good going.
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Soldato
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*Sigh* I just hope that nobody listens to you and loses out on all that disk space.
It's clear as daylight the boost you get from short stroking and equally clear the price you pay for it.
People can do what they like, its up to them to read into it and judge for themselves whether it suits their needs or not.
It's a shame you don't see the bigger picture and only see all those GBs of potential storage unused. Going by your logic, anyone who doesn't fill their hard drive completely is losing out. To be brutally honest, who gives a damn when a single platter 500GB Seagate costs £38... Furthermore, there's nothing stopping you reverting back to using all the drive anyway.
Soldato
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I'll say it one final time.
You get EXACTLY THE SAME results if you create partitions or rearrange files in other ways. PLUS you can use the rest of the disk.
You get EXACTLY THE SAME results if you create partitions or rearrange files in other ways. PLUS you can use the rest of the disk.
How? The speed in the centre of the platter is slower than the outside. You go against the laws of physics...
Soldato
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Mate, if you don't see it then you don't see it. You even made charts to support me.
Agree of disagree with my points?
- Read and write speeds are fastest on the outside of the platter
- Physically, the centre of the platter is the slowest moving point of the disk
- Physically, the smaller the area (partition) with data on it, the quicker the access time will be as the head doesn't have to move as far
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Agreed! I've been optimising partitions for performance for some time and I use the slower inner space for infrequent temporary backups/partition images so the fast partition is the only part of the platter that is used regularly.
Yep we agree, but the head will only goto the slow part if you access th data there, you could quite happily put your achives pics there, data you want to store away and still have a zippy OS partition, as you never hardly access those other files.
Hence you get the same performance, and the extra space to store the crap you rarely access.
Hence you get the same performance, and the extra space to store the crap you rarely access.
Yep, my point and I understand that fully. In my case, I already have two drives in a RAID 0 config, with an external backup drive. I'm using the short stroke technique purely for use of the OS and a few applications. I wanted to keep the OS completely separate on it's own drive.
You only get the same benefit, if the rest of the drive ISN'T used for general purpose, which for me isn't an issue.
You only get the same benefit, if the rest of the drive ISN'T used for general purpose, which for me isn't an issue.
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