Partition HardDrive for best performance?

GamingGod · Post by **GamingGod** » Wed May 09, 2007 6:57 pm

I am getting a new Samsung hd501lj. I will have only XP installed for now.
I will be using this computer mainly for gaming. I might have some mp3's but seeing as they aren't a priority I was wondering if I could partition the hard drive to put the games and OS at the outer layer and the excess storage on the slower inner layer?

Is it good to partition to increase performance? Does it actually help? Does it have any negatives? Does anyone have a good guide on how to do it, and what sizes are optimal? Also what program should I use?
Sorry, I know zip about partitioning, I thought I would try it out and squeeze every bit of performance from my new rig.

nick705 · Post by **nick705** » Thu May 10, 2007 1:18 am

Partitioning a single drive won't help performance, but it's always a good idea to seperate the OS/apps from your user data, so you can format and reinstall the OS if necessary without having to restore your data from backups. If you'll rarely access the data on the second partition, your OS and games might benefit from being confined to the fast outer sectors rather than spread all over the disk, but I doubt if it's anything very noticeable in practice.

As for the partition sizes, well, it depends on how many installed apps and games you have, and how big they are. Many people use a 74GB WD Raptor for their OS drive, so a C partition of around the same size is probably plenty, which will leave you nearly 400GB after formatting for your documents, MP3s, movies, pr0n etc...

You don't need an extra program, just create a C partition of the size you want during the XP setup procedure. Once the OS is installed, you can go into Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management and create/format your D partition using the remaining empty space.

Plissken · Post by **Plissken** » Thu May 10, 2007 2:31 am

The outer tracks are faster, so a good partitioning plan can increase performance. It helps for data backup too, if you have 2 drives. Here's what I did with (2) 501LJs:

Disk0
C: 40 GB (OS)
P: 60 GB (APPS/GAMES)
F: 365 GB (DATA BACKUP and temp storage)

Disk1
S: 5 GB (SWAP)
D: 365 GB (DATA)
I: 95 GB (IMAGE)

The idea here is that the faster tracks are used for OS and swap file, and the slower inner tracks are used for backups. Data on disk1 is backed up on disk0, and images of OS and apps on disk0 are backed up on disk1. That way if either drive fails, I still have everything. I use free DriveImageXML for the imaging, and made a BartPE CD to use if disk0 fails, so I won't have to re-install XP.

jhhoffma · Post by **jhhoffma** » Thu May 10, 2007 6:09 am

IMO, the extra work and complexity required for setting up a system this way is not worth the negligible performance increase (if any) resulting from aligning data on a HDD.

Most seeks done during basic computer usage are random anyway, not sequential where the biggest benefit would be found to having the data at the outside.

qviri · Post by **qviri** » Thu May 10, 2007 6:34 am

Okay I am confused here. To get the partition located on these famed outer tracks, should I create it at the very beginning or very end of the drive? In other words, 400 GB data on C: then 100 GB system on D:, or 100 GB system then 400 GB data?

Plissken · Post by **Plissken** » Thu May 10, 2007 7:36 am

qviri wrote:Okay I am confused here. To get the partition located on these famed outer tracks, should I create it at the very beginning or very end of the drive? In other words, 400 GB data on C: then 100 GB system on D:, or 100 GB system then 400 GB data?

The outer tracks are the beginning of the disk.
With XP, the system partition you create during install (C: ) is on the outer tracks by default. When creating more partitions using "Disk Management", the beginning (outer) tracks are used first.

qviri · Post by **qviri** » Thu May 10, 2007 8:08 am

Excellent. I thought that was the situation but the "outer" part confused me a bit. Thanks for the confirmation.

nick705 · Post by **nick705** » Thu May 10, 2007 8:22 am

qviri wrote:Okay I am confused here. To get the partition located on these famed outer tracks, should I create it at the very beginning or very end of the drive? In other words, 400 GB data on C: then 100 GB system on D:, or 100 GB system then 400 GB data?

I honestly wouldn't worry about it too much. I've tried all sorts of weird and wonderful partitioning systems in the past, in an effort to get better performance, and I'm completely unconvinced it makes any real difference in practice. You only really see performance benefits when you have multiple physical drives so that different datasets can be accessed concurrently, and even then it depends on what you're doing. In fact, if you only have one physical drive, partitioning is more likely to hurt performance than to help it, as you could be forcing longer seeks as the heads hunt backwards and forwards between the partitions.

It's worthwhile separating your data from the system files from a safety point of view, but beyond that all you're doing with partitioning is chopping up your total available free space into smaller inflexible chunks, which usually ends up in a disorganised mess as certain partitions fill up quicker than you expected.

qviri · Post by **qviri** » Thu May 10, 2007 8:36 am

nick705 wrote:It's worthwhile separating your data from the system files from a safety point of view, but beyond that all you're doing with partitioning is chopping up your total available free space into smaller inflexible chunks, which usually ends up in a disorganised mess as certain partitions fill up quicker than you expected.

Yes, that is my main purpose - I love being able to nuke the system partition and lose next to nothing. I find that keeping applications on a separate partition from both system and data is also worthwhile, and although I have run into the inflexibility, it was due to my applications partition having free space and me ending up stuffing data there anyway.

I am not overly concerned about performance (if I was, I wouldn't be booting from a 5400 rpm drive...), but if I am going to partition anyway and partitioning in a particular way helps, I don't mind.