Partitioning benefits

Pr0SteR · 8 Nov 2006 at 20:57

I am about to get the 500gig 7K500 Hitachi HDD ,and I was wondering whether I should make a separate partition for windows and leave the rest for games and such, however I was told it kills the performance. Any suggestions?

smids · 8 Nov 2006 at 21:09

For a drive that size, definitely partition. It doesn't kill performance, it actively improves it. The fastest part of any disk is right at the beginning and can be up to 20MB/s faster than the slowest part (average is about 55MB/s for a standard 7200rpm).

Set aside about 15-20GB for windows and key programs and let the rest use the other partition. This also means faster defrags and less defragging of data.

It can kill performance because seeks might require the head to move from the windows partition to the other partition which will be 20GB further out than it might be - so there are disadvantages too to be aware of. For such a large drive, the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

Pr0SteR · 8 Nov 2006 at 21:20

cheers for clearing this up mate, i also have another 200gig pata and a 250gig sata.Should I install XP on say the 250gig one and leave it alone ,and use the 500gig and 200gig for random stuff?

smids · 8 Nov 2006 at 22:00

Could do - generally larger disks are faster though (the data platters are denser therefore faster access of data etc).

El Jimben · 9 Nov 2006 at 18:05

The extra benefit of partioning is that if one of the partitions goes belly up, the others should still be intact. I've got 50 Gb for windows/programs, 150 Gb for games and 100 Gb for music/cartons/pr0n