Benefits of Partitions

Below is a clip of hard disk read/write operations to recover data.

As you can see the seeks go from the most outer to the most inner.

With say a 20 gig C drive partition on a large hard drive for the system the data seeks should stay at the most outer edge thereby speeding things up even if fragmented.

Is that correct?
Read/Write Seeks Clip

 

The reading or writing of data on a computer's disk drive cause three delays which are seek time, rotational delay and transfer time, and their sum is access time.

Rotational delay is a factor of the rotational speed,generally 7200rpm.

As the read /write head of the disk has the least movement to make ,the larger outer portions of a disk have the highest transfer rates,whilst the smaller inner areas have the lowest.

If the data access isnt sequential and is fragmented all over the disk, each fragment of the file requires an additional positioning step of the read/write head to the location where this piece is located, causing a deterioration of the seek time.

An obvious way to prevent this, is to create as many patitions as necessary of the smallest feasible size,all as close as possible to the rim.

This causes any fragmentation to be in a nearby area- lowest seek times and highest transfer rates.

A partitioned drive which is defragged will generally perform better than one which isnt partitioned but also defragged .

 

Hmmmm, interesting. I have been running 2 hard drives, each with only 1 partition. I might have to rethink this strategy.

 

The benefits IMO of partitioning is the freedom to run more than a single system at a time and able to switch (by reboot) over to a different completely separate operating system provided of course your HD has ample space to accommadate them.

The genuine old FD-ISR version was a Dream Come True when it entered the field, because it allowed a user not only 2 bootable partition constraints but incredibly 10! That was a treat in and of itself. But that aside, partitioning offers a user more mobility and freedom to navigate within their respective systems and enjoy the comfort of easy accessibility to the other while enjoying the one their in at the time.

 

lol
WHy not just make an empty partition to take some slack out: would speed proceedures up. (oops: dont you have a raid set-up )

Agree.
I run a 'single' partition (per OS ) not counting VMs too: back-ups and data on external USB drives: so big, so fast and sooo cheap now: this has been a great buy:
http://www.netgear.com/Products/Storage/ReadyNASNVPlus.aspx
http://www.netgear.com/Products/Storage/ReadyNASNVPlus/RND4425.aspx

It still is..for all those reasons..

 

Linux

Just for fun: even in the VMWare works good.
Dont be afraid.

 

I know trhis is drifting Ot a bit:

You might be surprised

With FireFox, FDISR -and the new release -, Sandboxes, VMs, Terabyte/ShadowProtect, Sysinternals tools, external storage, high speed processors, HIPSs and a router, -phew- , my MS experience has topped out so to speak. I have been able to cherrypick some outstanding MS softs, just some fine tuning left.
Everything works, no BSODs for years, no visible malware for years: all copacetic. Confidence for disaster recovery is good.

Kudos to this forum for helping make it so

Maybe review if Windows8 looks good.
My ability to help others is -cough- somewhat limited, and everyone ignores my links to Terabyte lol.
I like giving back what I can, but I have some other things to do than endlessly pursue the latest granular firewall, I bow to and follow others expertise.
My MS 'time' is not over yet I still need MS ..but have escaped the cage a bit.

SO: new horizons and eyepopping experiences have been are being undertaken.
Even getting productive with it.

Coog.

 

See no reason that the partitioned drive do better,if both drives have data only at the outer edges then IMO they perform equal.

 

Hairy Coo said earlier:

Perhaps I'm missing the implied "grin", but if not, could you elaborate on how one can control where partitions are created in relation to the rim?

 

Partition 1 is nearest to the edge,partition 2 is next nearest etc.

By compartmentalising/partitioning to the smallest possible size within reason of course,you make certain that fragments are kept within the partition,not spread all over the disk,which causes the R/W arm to oscillate all over the place,causing a deterioration in the Read/Write speeds and access times.

 

The UltimateDefrag help file mentions this issue. They recommend fewer rather than more partitions, and using defragmenting to move frequently used files to the outer tracks, and less frequently used files to the inner tracks.

 

That is what hard drives are designed to do. In normal everyday use I think it matters not whether the data is on the outer edge or not.

I partition my hard drives for function not speed. On my XP box I have a system partition, a data partition and a archive partition (oops, that is another hard drive). With this setup I can wipe, restore my system partition without affecting my data or backups. My data partition has My Documents, Shared Documents plus all other data I want to save such as downloaded files and stuff. My archive is for daily backups and image saves.

I have never benchmarked my hard drives I just don't see the point. I am happy with the speed of my system and not too concerned about tweaking it down to the nanosecond

 

According to the UltimageDefrag help file:

You can see that this is true by running a hard disk exerciser. I've done so in the past, and the difference in speed between outer and inner tracks is easily noticed. However, like you, I will continue to use multiple partitions for functionality reasons.

 

What is a "hard disk exerciser"? Could be I know it by a different name??

 

Sorry for being vague there. I meant the hard disk diagnostics program supplied by your hard drive manufacturer.