Hard Dive Partitioning and performance question

[Nick601 0]

Hi

 

Ok i have a question regarding partition sizes and performance

 

 

i have just bought an abit at7 max 2 motherboard, amd 2600 processor and 512 mb pc3200 ram. I have also bought a maxtor 120gb hard drive and this is my question

 

i am going to have 2 hard drives in my pc, the master being a 30gb maxtor drive tha will hold windows xp pro and the slave being a maxtor 120gb drive to hold all my files and games etc

 

what i am unsure about is partition sizes and performace, i would like to have my slave drive as 1 120gb partition but will this have an effect on performance??? if so would i be better going for 2 60gb partitions?

 

does having one huuuge partition slow the computer down and will i notice a difference with the spec on system i have??

 

thanks

 

Nick

[jmmijo 1]

With an NTFS partition, which is preferred in this case, will not matter whether you use a single 120GB or 2 separate 60GB partitions.

 

My thinking however is, how fast is that older 30GB drive, 5400 or 7200 and if it's a 7200RPM drive, I would suspect only a 2MB cache. For performance reasons I'd most likely bag the old 30GB drive and only use the new 120GB drive, especially if it's the 8MB cache version

[Tomay 0]

Always put your system on the fastest drive. Create a 30GB partition on the 120GB disk and use the "old" 30gb for files.

 

If you wan't to know the difference use a benchmark like hd-tach or sisoft sandra.

[keitaro 0]

Quote:

Hi
i am going to have 2 hard drives in my pc, the master being a 30gb maxtor drive tha will hold windows xp pro and the slave being a maxtor 120gb drive to hold all my files and games etc

what i am unsure about is partition sizes and performace, i would like to have my slave drive as 1 120gb partition but will this have an effect on performance??? if so would i be better going for 2 60gb partitions?

does having one huuuge partition slow the computer down and will i notice a difference with the spec on system i have??

thanks

Nick

I'm unsure as to the technical aspect towards partitioning in regards to allocations. But here's my take on the matter.

Loading Windows XP on the 30GB drive might suffer some performance hit, depending on the age and specification of the 30GB drive. If the drive's spindle speed is 5200RPM, you definitely want to use the 120GB drive you have now, as file reading, writing, and accessing will be faster. Cache size may play a role although I have not had any experience in that sector yet.

In regards to partitioning on a large capacity hard drive, performance may suffer but only slightly, depending on how your partitioning software allocates space for your partitions. Having a singular partition will ensure you have maximum possible performance out of the HD but while at the same time you lose a couple of benefits from separate partitions. How you wish to use your 120GB drive will be trivial for you. If you wish to ensure the maximum possible performance benefit out of your new drive, use a single partition. The downside to this is long disk checking and defragmenting times and that all of the OS-specific data is on the same drive. So thus, should you ever need to reinstall your OS, you are most likely be 1) overwriting your existing system files, which is typical procedures but may cause more problems down the line or 2) lose all of your data in a reformat, which gives you a clean slate to start from and useful if you want to clear out stale files that remain dormant on your disk.

The benefit of having multiple partitions or drives is that you are given the opportunity to isolate the OS into its own partition. Doing so will enable you to reformat and reinstall your OS as many times as you like and benefits of preserving your precioussssssssssssssssssssssssss data. This type of setup is what I use, to keep Windows isolated and the program and data files separate from the Windows partition.

Should you wish to use a multiple partition style of setup, I suggest making sure that the first partition is allocated at the very beginning of the disk (the outer edge) so you can load your OS on that partition. This ensures that all the OS-specific files needed to boot and load files from is allocated and written into area where it is quickest to access from.

Which method is best? That's really up to you. If your system hardly goes down for power-down or reboot, you can install the OS onto the 30GB drive. Otherwise, it may be a good choice to put the OS on the new drive.

Any other questions?

[Nick601 0]

ok just to clear a few things up, my 30Gb drive is a 7200 rpm drive and also a maxtor drive like the 120Gb drive i have

 

the 120Gb drive is the 8mb version

 

if i put windows xp pro on the 30gb drive and have the 120gb drive as a single aprtition hoe much performance decrese am i likely to encounter?

 

i just feel that keeping windows on a seperate drive might make it run better??

 

im still a little unsure what to do!!

 

thanks very much for replies

 

 

Nick

[jmmijo 1]

As for performance, I've not seen any decrease myself, as long as you're using NTFS and not FAT32

 

Besides, you get a more efficient filesystem with NTFS and it's 4K cluster size compared to the 32k of FAT32 on drives this size.

 

As for keeping the OS on a separate drive and/or partition, I can't say I've seen it make a difference other then if the drive and/or partition fails, but that's not something you can planfor without going to a more expensive RAID configuration.

[Nick601 0]

ok i wasnt thinking about having an NTFS file system, i heard that some games dont like it?? maybe you can clarify that !!!

 

i would like to put xp on the 30gb drive and keep the 120gn as a single partition and use it for gajmes and files etc

 

is ntfs better than fat 32??

 

nick

[jmmijo 1]

OK, I guess I've never heard that before. Rumor or fact ?!?

 

Can you give me a link or two about this ?!?

 

Since I have two boxes here, the one I'm using right now is my Workstation/Server box and my other is a Gaming rig only...

 

On the gamig rig I have a RAID zero array for speed, I don't care if I lose data cause I back it up to my workstation frequently. I have a dual boot config, a 20GB partition for Win98-SE for games that don't want to run under XP properly and then on the rest of the array I have an NTFS partition of about 140GB, it works just fine for all the apps/games I run on it so far.

 

List some of the games you play and I can tell you if I run them as well

 

and yes, NTFS is much better then FAT32 for larger drives. No sense partitioning when you don't really need to.

[Nick601 0]

i havent got any links but its something i heard on a forum i cant remember where

 

so if i partition my 120gb drive as ntfs i should format my 30gb as 30gb as nfs too?

 

nick

[Jerry Atrik 0]

i found that a small 5gig system partition makes for extra speed. (unless u are running raid)

i also format everything ntfs

i have a 15k u360 scsi and the difference is noticable

[Nick601 0]

i havent got scusi and i dont really want to get involved in RAID as im not too sure as to what it is - in detail i mean and would rather keep my system simple!

 

Nick

[jmmijo 1]

Quote:

so if i partition my 120gb drive as ntfs i should format my 30gb as 30gb as nfs too?

nick

Yes.

As far as SCSI and/or RAID is concerned, unless your motherboard has onboard UDMA RAID I wouldn't think about adding it, as you've already mentioned

You may find that your performance with the older 30GB drive is adequate but you have to test this by reformatting the drive with NTFS and installing XP onto it and seeing for yourself how fast it loads and performs for you.

You may find little to no difference between the two drives but I suspect that the new drive will perform somewhat better, seeing as it has 8MB of cache instead of 2MB and I suspect the access time to be a bit better too.

[Nick601 0]

yeah i have performed a low leve format on the 30gb drive and the 120gb drive is new so i am definately starting from fresh lol

 

i dont really see much point in making a partition on the 120gb drive and putting windows on it then having the 30gb drive as a files drive

 

ill see how it goes i guess

 

my idea setup would be the 30gb drive for windows and anti virus etc then everything else on the 120

 

thanks again

 

Nick

[clutch 1]

I just threw my 100GB JB drive into my server to install Server 2003 on it, and I just run a single partition. I have a 40GB (slower BB) drive that I am going to use to store backup images on using Ghost or PowerQuest V2i. I don't expect the server to exceed the capacity of the drive with compressed images, but if it does I will throw a larger drive in there later on. I hate the partitioning scheme in Windows ("C", "D", "E", etc rather than what *NIX uses, so I just don't bother with partitioning it. While you can enable Dynamic Disks and then use mount points (folders) for other partitions, many drive imaging solutions don't work properly with them.

[Nick601 0]

thanks for your help

 

i have got more serious problems at the moment regarding my new motherboard - think it might be a dead on arrival job

 

Nick