Application partitioning question

[idiotekniQues]

i see some people say they install their OS on one partition and their games/apps on another.

but if you have to reinstall windows again you will still have to reinstall your games/apps again so they get tot he registry? or am i wrong?

so is there another benefit to separating the two besides some minor defragmentation issues if u r constantly installing and uninstalling proggies?

 

[Cogman]

I need this confirmed, but I have been told that there are some speed benefits to having more then one partition. However I don't know how true this is.

 

[Nothinman]

but if you have to reinstall windows again you will still have to reinstall your games/apps again so they get tot he registry? or am i wrong?

Depends on the app, some run just fine without any installation routine and some fall flat on their face. For instance, Mozilla will run just fine without being installed, the only thing you might miss out on is the file and protocol associations and that will probably be taken care of when it asks you if you want to make it your default browser again.

I need this confirmed, but I have been told that there are some speed benefits to having more then one partition. However I don't know how true this is.

More than likely it'll be detrimental to the overall speed of your system, causing the hard disk to seek back and forth between filesystems will just increase latency. Throughput of large reads won't be affected, but small ones will and they're much more common during normal usage.

 

[idiotekniQues]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

but if you have to reinstall windows again you will still have to reinstall your games/apps again so they get tot he registry? or am i wrong?

Depends on the app, some run just fine without any installation routine and some fall flat on their face. For instance, Mozilla will run just fine without being installed, the only thing you might miss out on is the file and protocol associations and that will probably be taken care of when it asks you if you want to make it your default browser again.

I need this confirmed, but I have been told that there are some speed benefits to having more then one partition. However I don't know how true this is.

More than likely it'll be detrimental to the overall speed of your system, causing the hard disk to seek back and forth between filesystems will just increase latency. Throughput of large reads won't be affected, but small ones will and they're much more common during normal usage.

so in other words, the constant accessing of small programs would be negatively affected by having to seek a different partition constantly?

 

[Nothinman]

so in other words, the constant accessing of small programs would be negatively affected by having to seek a different partition constantly?

Not small programs, any programs. With the way demand paging works you'd almost certainly be seeking back and forth between filesystems whenever you started an app. It really depends on your usage patterns, but the chances of splitting the OS and apps between filesystems on the same physical hard disk being advantageous is pretty slim.

 

[idiotekniQues]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

so in other words, the constant accessing of small programs would be negatively affected by having to seek a different partition constantly?

Not small programs, any programs. With the way demand paging works you'd almost certainly be seeking back and forth between filesystems whenever you started an app. It really depends on your usage patterns, but the chances of splitting the OS and apps between filesystems on the same physical hard disk being advantageous is pretty slim.

that is what i thought. im going to continue my usual habit of installing the OS/apps/games on one partition and data on others.

in fact on the hard drive that i keep windows/apps on i do have data, but i only keep backup data there of my documents and music. i keep my documents and music on another physical drive so that any stuff i utilize is not keeping the same hard drive busy that i am running windows off of.

one day ill get a high capacity raptor (100gb) to run windows/apps of of though, with nothing else on it 🙂

 

[idiotekniQues]

i wish some people who do separate their apps and their OS on different partitions would answer as to why they do.

 

[Nothinman]

i wish some people who do separate their apps and their OS on different partitions would answer as to why they do.

I would guess that it's just mosty old habits, back in the Win95 and FAT16-only days the largest partition you could have was 2G so you had no choice and some people just got used to organizing things that way. Now every filesystem worth using can cover terabytes of storage so there's no reason to partition like that, directories do the same job and are much more flexible.