Partitioning hdd for performance.

runnerjp

runnerjp

runnerjp

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12 Jul 2010
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Hey guys,

I have had issues with my old hdd going caput so I bought a new one 500g Seagate barracuda.

What I have been told is if I partition the hdd so one has windows installed and the use others for other parts of use it would greatly speed up performance.

If this is true how would you recommend I set this up?
 
Partitions are created from the outside of the drive so the first one is quicker. But the real benefit of creating one for your OS is for easier reinstalls.
 
I always thought this was an old myth? I would suggest getting another smaller HDD 160 or 250 perhaps to install the OS and core programs and then on your 500 store your movies/games/musics etc.

All depends on how you use your pc though. If you don't store a lot of media then you will probably be fine just keeping everything on the new HDD you have.
 
I don't partition anymore, don't see much point (unless you have a mahoosive disk which contains lots of data, even then its meh!). There's certainly no performance difference. Some people still think that moving the pagefile to another partition helps. :rolleyes:
 
Oligopoly said:
I always thought this was an old myth? I would suggest getting another smaller HDD 160 or 250 perhaps to install the OS and core programs and then on your 500 store your movies/games/musics etc.

All depends on how you use your pc though. If you don't store a lot of media then you will probably be fine just keeping everything on the new HDD you have.
Click to expand...

No myth look at a HDTune benchmark and you can see how much slower the inside of the disk is compared to the outside.

A smaller HDD will be a slower, older tech and smaller platters.
 
It can only degrade performance of the apps in the second partition since they are going to be closer to the inside tracks than they would be if they were sitting in the same/single partition that the OS is in.

Having a pagefile on another drive (actually, having one on each drive, system managed) is the best option.
 
Banzai_Joe said:
I don't partition anymore, don't see much point (unless you have a mahoosive disk which contains lots of data, even then its meh!). There's certainly no performance difference. Some people still think that moving the pagefile to another partition helps. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

creating an extra pagefile on another drive helps, not another partition mind..


I just create Windows partition ~ 60gb, and the rest of the drive for games/data
 
I have 150GB C: partition on my F3 drive for OS + pagefile + apps + games. PerfectDisk puts all the boot files at the fastest part of the partition. I used to have separate os/apps partitions and pagefile on another drive, but I didn't notice a difference and when you have 4GB+ of RAM paging doesn't happen as often anyway.
 
With 2 partitions, performance will always be better on the first partition. The outer partition will be slower (HDTune will reflect this if you compare it to an unpartitioned drive). You're unlikely to notice a real world difference, unless your primary partition is huge.

I keep separate partitions for my OS and games on the RAID array, with partitions for PF, docs and backups on the 1tb. It's nice to get a performance boost from having the OS on a small partition (went for 60gb originally, but could probably drop down to 40gb).

Main reason for all the partitions is it makes life much easier with Ghost backups (don't risk losing half my photos if I have to do an OS restore etc).
 
I just set up Windows on my new hard drive today, went for 120gb for the Windows partition and the rest for Docs. Think I might have been a bit over conservative. I have everything installed now apart from Crysis and maybe one or two other games, and I've used 26gb.

Should have gone for 60gb really. How easy is it to resize partitions then?
 
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