Best way to partition a 1TB drive?

[poohbear]

Hey all im buying a 1tb WD black and was wondering what's the best way to pertition 1tb for optimal performance. I read this on a review site:

To really get the absolutle best from this drive we would partition off 100GB to 150GB or so for our OS drive and leave the rest as a ?D? drive (or use a really good defrag program often...and make sure our OS footprint was low via nLite/vLite). This would accentuate the already good performance of this drive and REALLY give higher end drives like the VelociRaptor a run for their money!

So 150gb for Vista64, and the rest (~850gb????) for programs and storage?? wouldnt 850gb take a ridiculously long time to defragment? i was thinking 150gb for vista64, 450gb for storage (movies, music, patches, large unzipped programs/games) and another 400gb for installed programs & games (i have about 3-4 10-15gb games i play regularly, but i'd install maybe 6-7).

i also have a slower 500gb seagate 7200.12 which is quiet as hell and great for storage (but its full... HD movies & my steam/D2D games that are'nt installed take up ALOT of room. )

What do u guys think is the best way to do it? thanks in advance.

 

[ChaiBabbaChai]

Actually, you'd get better performance with 2 seperate drives. Now, I need to make sure you understand something before the next part... That is you want your OS & Programs on the same partition. Often times, the files needed for the program to load into RAM are spread out over C:\ so putting them on seperate partitions might make the reader heads of the HDD go back and forth longer distances than if they were defragged right next to each other (which never happens). You don't need to defrag the larger storage partition. Defragging will only really aid in the booting of OS & Programs, slightly, possibly. What I thought this post was going to be about is how the outter portions of the HDD platters can perform a little faster. You could put the OS & Programs partition on that part of the disk, but that is kind of confusing and probably not worth the effort - I've never bothered. It is also not going to give a "VelociRaptor a run for their money". So, in the end you should have 2 or more drives to allow the computer to utilize the speed of each drive simultaneously. Some people have an OS & Programs drive, another for the pagefile.sys, and a >1TB RAID array for storage. The OS & Programs drive is usually the fastest, then the pagefile drive, then the RAID array is for redundancy (in case of drive failure).

The WD Blacks are great drives, and I have a couple, but really all this defragging and outter area of the platters is barely noticeable and very time consuming (read: not worth the trouble) Just make 2 partitons so that when you need to re-install the OS, you don't have to erase your stored files.

 

[Ben90]

^ +1

 

[poohbear]

thanks chaibabba. so, optimally it'll look like this:

WD Black 1TB:
C: OS & page file 150gb
D: installed programs 400gb
E: storage 450gb

then my 500gb Seagate 7200.12 (slower drive):
F: storage 500gb

so it'll be 3 partitions on the WD Black, and just 1 partition on the Seagate 7200.12. E: & F: partitions will never need defragmanting because they're only for storage, but C: & D: will benefit from defragmenting cause that's where the OS & programs are, do i have that correct?

 

[Nothinman]

What do u guys think is the best way to do it?

As few as possible, any performance gains from partitioning will be negligable and you'll likely create more latency when you end up seeking between partitions.

 

[jdjbuffalo]

Poohbear, ChaiBabbaChai was a little hard to follow but no that isn't what he is saying.

What you should do is make the Seagate 500GB your primary hard disk. Put your OS, pagefile and programs on it. Then use the WD Black 1TB for storage. Don't partition either. You could put your games on the WD Black. I know I like to do this and until I got my SSD, this got the best performance by separating the OS from the games. For other programs though you wouldn't likely notice the difference.

Also you are saying that the Seagate 500GB 7200.12 is slower but according to the performance numbers I've seen (below) this is actually a fairly fast drive.

Seagate 7200.12 500GB:
Burst Speed - 134.5MB/s
Average Read: 102.5MB/s
Random Access 14.2ms

Western Digital Black 1TB:
Transfer Rate Minimum : 54.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 108.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 86.6 MB/sec
Access Time : 12.3 ms

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: poohbear
Best way to partition a 1TB drive?

What do u guys think is the best way to do it? thanks in advance.

Here you go :thumbsup::laugh:

1TB doesn't format out to a full 1TB of usable capacity.

 

[poohbear]

jdjbuffalo, specs aside, from all the reviews i've read the WD Black is the fastest 7200rpm hdd on the market, the 7200.12 was a bit of disappointment in performance according to reviews but its one of the quietest hdd out there w/ the lowest wattage so that's its saving grace.

Ok, so, i'll put the OS, pagefile & programs on the faster drive (WD black), and only have 2 partitions, and on the 7200.12 i'll just have the 1 partition. i guess i'll make a folder for all the storage instead of another partition. However, if 800gb is for programs and storage, im worried that'll take ages to defragment.

Blain, im aware 1tb isnt actually 1tb, i was just rounding things out to discuss em easier. did you notice any sluggishness from having 7 partitions on 1 hdd?:0

 

[Nothinman]

Ok, so, i'll put the OS, pagefile & programs on the faster drive (WD black), and only have 2 partitions, and on the 7200.12 i'll just have the 1 partition. i guess i'll make a folder for all the storage instead of another partition. However, if 800gb is for programs and storage, im worried that'll take ages to defragmen

Who cares how long it takes to defrag? That's something that Windows does for you in the background these days and you shouldn't be concerned with it at all.

 

[ChaiBabbaChai]

Sorry for confusing you. jdjbuffalo is looking at sequential read numbers, which doesn't matter with OS & Programs partitions. Use the WD Black for your main C: (OS & Programs). You might want to put your games on the Seagate. It might not matter much, but I would. The reason is the system will use the C: for system files it needs while gaming, and also be able to use the Seagate for the game textures and files while gaming. It's like using two hands to shovel dirt in a bucket vs. one hand. The bucket is limited in size, but your hands are smaller.

So it will look like this:
C: (WD Black 80-150GB)
D: (WD Black remaining GB)
E: (Segate entire disk as 1 partition)
leave the leave the pagefile where windows puts it.

 

[poohbear]

ok perfect, so 2 partitions on WD black, and just 1 on the segate. but wouldnt the games load faster off the WD Black even if they're on another partition (since its a faster drive) than if they're on another, slower, hdd? The speed of the WD black would offset any benefit of them being on another, slower, hdd, right? from the charts i've seen the WD black is significantly faster than the seagate 7200.12, infact most reviews just recommend the seagate for storage.

sorry for all the follow up questions, and thanks for answering as its much appreciated.

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Ok, so, i'll put the OS, pagefile & programs on the faster drive (WD black), and only have 2 partitions, and on the 7200.12 i'll just have the 1 partition. i guess i'll make a folder for all the storage instead of another partition. However, if 800gb is for programs and storage, im worried that'll take ages to defragmen

Who cares how long it takes to defrag? That's something that Windows does for you in the background these days and you shouldn't be concerned with it at all.

i turned the auto defrag off, defraging in the background (in vista 64) would slow everything down significantly, no?

 

[Nothinman]

i turned the auto defrag off, defraging in the background (in vista 64) would slow everything down significantly, no?

No. It uses low priority I/O and only runs when the computer is idle.