2 Random questions re: harddrive format/power options

[maxxpowerr]

I did a search but could not come up with anything.

First off, after the initial partitioning I only formatted the OS drive. Now I am going to format the other partitions and get a couple of options for quick format and enable compression. What are the benefits of checking or not checking these two options?

In control panel>performance & maintenance>power options there is the option to have your discs turn off. Default is to never turn the harddisks off. Are there any benefits to having them turn off after some time?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: maxxpowerr
I did a search but could not come up with anything.

First off, after the initial partitioning I only formatted the OS drive. Now I am going to format the other partitions and get a couple of options for quick format and enable compression. What are the benefits of checking or not checking these two options?

I'd recommend against a quick format, but that might be the badger in me.

Do you need compressed drives? Probably not.

In control panel>performance & maintenance>power options there is the option to have your discs turn off. Default is to never turn the harddisks off. Are there any benefits to having them turn off after some time?

Save power.

These seem more like OS questions than hardware questions.

 

[L00PY]

A quick format is like it sounds -- a quicker format that saves you time by just resetting an allocation table to show the drive as empty. Full formats will typically hit every sector, check for errors, and reallocate them if found. For the initial partioning, you should definately do a full format.

Enabling compression enables a software level compress that lets you squeeze more information onto your drives. It gives you the potential for more space at a trade off of a hit in performance. Given how cheap drive space is, and the fact that many larger files tend to already have some sort of compression in them anyways, you probably don't want to do this. You can always turn it on for individual folders if you need it. For example, once I had to have thousands of plain text files sitting on my computer. The couldn't be zipped so to save room, I turned on compression for those folders and saved a couple hundred megs. Now if they were MP3s or JPEGs, I probably wouldn't have gotten much additional space back at all -- but raw text tends to compress nicely.

Having hard drives turn off saves a tiny bit of power and can quiet things down. It's unlikely that either of these things will affect your system. If you've got a dozen Raptors humming away, you might see some gain, but otherwise don't worry about it.

 

[Matthias99]

Having hard drives turn off saves a tiny bit of power and can quiet things down. It's unlikely that either of these things will affect your system. If you've got a dozen Raptors humming away, you might see some gain, but otherwise don't worry about it.

It can be helpful if you have one drive (or several drives) that just has media files (or other infrequently-accessed data), and another drive that has your OS, installed applications, etc. on it. In this case, you can set the 'media' drive to spin down, which will lower the noise level of your PC when you are not accessing that drive. It also cuts power usage/noise when the system is just sitting idle (or you're browsing the web, or doing other tasks that don't use the drive much).

The downside is that, once the drive has shut down, it takes 5-10 seconds for the drive to spin back up when you go to access it. This can be annoying.

I would also recommend against enabling full-drive compression, and you should not do a 'quick' format the first time (in order to find any bad sectors on the disk). If you are reformatting a partition that you know is good, you can use a quick format to save time.

 

[maxxpowerr]

Thanks. When I skimmed the option to turn off the hdd's I did not see an option for individual drives. I'll take a closer look.

The initial format for the OS was on a brand new drive. I made four partitions and am only now getting to the other 3. Actually I did one already but I don't remember why I did not ask these questions then. I did notice that when I select "my computer", the second partition font is in blue while the OS and every other partition(from that particular HDD and the other HDD and the unformatted ones) are in black font. I don't know if this means anything.

 

[JimPhelpsMI]

Hi, A quick format can not be done on a partition that has never been formated. A drive run 24/7 can wear out the bearings but keep on going. You find out it's bad next time the power fails and it wont spin up again. Just some reminders, Jim