smaller drive is faster ?

[Long View]

Have been playing with Encyption for the last few days - using TrueCrypt to encrypt my C: winxp and prgrams drive. I wanted to find a way to easily image an encrypted C: and everytime I had to encrypt 160gb it took about 2 hours.

So I partitioned my drive giving C: 10 gb

Now with nothing else changed C: is measurably faster. I have used Ultimate defrag to archive less used files with the most used on the outer edge but I also dod this before reducing the size.

does this make sense ? can someone explain ? All I can assume is that the drive is faster because all of the relevenat files are nearer to each other than they would be if allowed to go anywhere on a larger partition.

any thoughts ?


PS at the same time if anyone knows an easy way to combine drive encryption and imaging I would ne grateful.

[lodore]

the first half of the hard drive is faster than the second half of the hard drive.
by using a small partition for c: you are forcing the files to use the fastest part of the hard drive.
this was discuessed at hexus community forums recently. see link below.
zak's partition theory

[Peter2150]

You can accomplish the same thing on one big partition with Disktrix Ultimate Defrag. I've played with it and in a few instances notice a marked difference.

Pete

[Long View]

yes Peter. I was already running UD and the archive/performance split is what makes this the best Defrag program by far.

Before I was rebooting in 1 min 5 sec. Now 57 sec. Paperport 11 would open in 6 seconds, now 4 sec. Once open the cache means that it opens in 2 seconds

@lodore - will read. As Peter says UD puts the "performance" files on the outer edge - the faster part and I was doing this before. So is there more to this ?
anyway I now have chnaged to a 12 gig partition and am enjoying my extra free speed.

[EASTER]

Originally Posted by Peter2150

You can accomplish the same thing on one big partition with Disktrix Ultimate Defrag. I've played with it and in a few instances notice a marked difference.

Pete

Hey Pete, glad that you too have finally experienced the difference UD can really make from it's latest commercial version. I been pleased with it for quite sometime but kind of felt in the minority in comparison when pitted against the likes of PerfectDisk, which actually really zoomed my system performance when i tried it last, but for some reason it just repeated weird issues so off on the hunt i went for another, and finally landed with UD and am quite satisfied with it.

EASTER

[Peter2150]

Originally Posted by EASTER

Hey Pete, glad that you too have finally experienced the difference UD can really make from it's latest commercial version. I been pleased with it for quite sometime but kind of felt in the minority in comparison when pitted against the likes of PerfectDisk, which actually really zoomed my system performance when i tried it last, but for some reason it just repeated weird issues so off on the hunt i went for another, and finally landed with UD and am quite satisfied with it.

EASTER

Well truthly I wasn't crazy about PD2008, and my Raxco loyalty was down a notch with FDISR, so I switched. Have UD on all 4 machines.

I don't think a smaller partition would matter much for me. My big drive only has about 28 gig out of 640 in use and now 75% of it is archived out of the way.

Where I noticed a difference is my toy Microsoft Train Simulator. With the scenery files scattered it was jerky at times. I moved the whole folder to the outer section and it really smoothed out.

Pete

[Long View]

Atto using the disk as a full disk gave the following results:

write read
6048 7297
9802 17285
23854 23854
34256 32319
32032 32816
43176 45343
37576 47994
37408 44864
43282 57995
45907 48674
46035 46603
56265 56819

with a 12 gb partition the following:

write read
5584 10842
0835 20028
9848 29262
6584 37350
9587 62757
5160 60817
1253 59323
3344 63017
6718 61253
6679 59323
4120 63329
1275 60951

with 3 exceptions on the writing side the 12 gb partition is faster than the whole drive

[Peter2150]

If all the files are in the first two or 3 tracks I don't see why partition size would matter. Not sure it makes sense.

[Long View]

the file size starts at 0.5 kb and ends at 1024 kb so should read:

0.5
1
2
4
8
16
32
64
128
256
512
1024

The way I read it an 8 kb file can be read at 32816 (full) or 62757 (partition).
If all your files were 8 kb in size I think you might want the 12 gb partition ?

[Peter2150]

Originally Posted by Long View

the file size starts at 0.5 kb and ends at 1024 kb so should read:

0.5
1
2
4
8
16
32
64
128
256
512
1024

The way I read it an 8 kb file can be read at 32816 (full) or 62757 (partition).
If all your files were 8 kb in size I think you might want the 12 gb partition ?

Not sure I understand, but the likelihood of all files being 8kb is slim to none so I am not sure I understand the point.

[Long View]

Perhaps the best way is for you to down load the atto test from
http://kb.ciprico.com/lore/article.php?id=268

as you are using raid you should see some impressive results. My point is simply that for file sizes between 0.5 and 1024 the partitioned drive gave higher "read" readings.

[Peter2150]

Originally Posted by Long View

Perhaps the best way is for you to down load the atto test from
http://kb.ciprico.com/lore/article.php?id=268

as you are using raid you should see some impressive results. My point is simply that for file sizes between 0.5 and 1024 the partitioned drive gave higher "read" readings.

I take that atto doesn't need to be installed. I may give it a whirl tomorrow.

[Peter2150]

After thinking about it, I suspect Atto would show a good gain of partitioned vs non partition, but I don't think it's real world. Reason:

When Atto tests i don't think it knows where files are on the disk so it tests across the whole partition, so naturally a small c: partition would be quicker all the remaining partition would suffer.

But in the real world all my system, and frequently used files be the programs or data files are at the outer edge so they would indeed be faster.

If you use a defragger, that doesn't arrange the files, but simply defrags them, then yes the smaller partition would be faster, but with file arrangement, I don't believe there would be much difference.

Pete

[Long View]

I only raised Atto as another indication. It is all well and good me saying that my system is now snappier and so on - which it is but do mI have any evidence ?

so forget atto.

what about UD2008 itself ? having been working for a few hours how long does a defrag of C: take ? answer 3 seconds

whay about rebooting ? 57Sec compared with 1 minute 5 before

what about opening Paperport ? 4to 5 seconds on first launch (6 to7 seconds before) and 2 seconds thereafter ( 4 seconds before).

Now don't hold me to these "precise" figs but in a number of ways things are now faster.

There is a posssibility that this works with slow drives like my C: with a newer faster drives, with Raid, or with SSD this would probably not be the case.

[Franklin]

Could it be that the default size reserved for the MFT has something to do with the speed increase?

The default MFT Zone is calculated and reserved by Ntfs.sys when it mounts the volume, and is based on volume size. You can increase the MFT Zone by means of the registry entry documented below, but you cannot make the default MFT Zone smaller than what is calculated by Ntfs.sys. Increasing the MFT Zone does not decrease in any way disk space that can be used by users for data files.

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