Can partitioning effect speed?

[Research]

I was just wondering if partitioning makes the drive slower? I mean if we have a 250 gid hard drive (say Maxtor ultra) versus the same drive partitioned at 50 gig + 200 gig .... which one if faster?

My experience with RAID leads me to believe that bigger hard-drives are faster. Since partitioning divides the hard-drive into smaller sections, won't the speed be compromised. Please enlighten me if if you think otherwise....

 

[So]

there should be no noticable difference. Your 'experience with raid' is due to the fact that two drives raided together have twice the cache and take turns writing, larger drives are faster because they are more dense. The partitioning will not change that, if anything it will help performance (albeit slightly). The only thing you might see is slightly better performance on partitions on the inner (or was it outer, I can never remember), tracks of the drive.

 

[NightCrawler]

I know searching partitions is a lot faster since there is less space and less files. Also easier to use True Image 8 to back up smaller partitions then to have one large drive with all the files.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

The outer rim of a spinning circle travels faster since it's covering a larger distance in the same amount of time. This is what will make a larger drive faster partitioning shouldn't change this.

 

[Zucarita9000]

Originally posted by: AyashiKaibutsu
The outer rim of a spinning circle travels faster since it's covering a larger distance in the same amount of time. This is what will make a larger drive faster partitioning shouldn't change this.

That's also how CD-ROM manufacturers market their drives. You can only obtain, say, 40x speeds near the end of the disc. I guess it would be the same with HDD.

Another thing you may want to look out for is fragmentation. A bigger disk will take a lot more time to defrag itself than a smaller partition.

 

[mrEvil]

I hate to disagree with the theory about defraging a drive, but....... I'd rather have a 250GB drive that is 30% full to defrag than a 80GB drive that is 90+% full. The 80GB drive will take way longer, assuming the data is laid out the same on both drives, due to all of the file shuffling to find free space.

 

[Research]

Thank for your coments ... they were really insightful. A few confirmations:

1. A larger HD is faster than smaller since it is more dense (storage space for the same area). Hence the HD does not have to spin a lot to retrieve the data from a large drive compared to a smaller drive where data is 'lightly' scattered. Right?

2. Partitioning slightly increases the speed of the drive since the HD "knows" at least whcich partition to look for the data rather than trying to find all over the place. Right?


Going by the above theory, do you think I should change my boot drive from an old Maxtor 80 gig to new maxtor 250 gig (I have the new one already purchased)?

Also, what partition size do you guys allocate/recoimmend for Windows XP professional?

 

[LocutusX]

The areal density of a drive is usually determined by the model and series. For example, all of the Seagate 7200.7 drives have about the same areal density, which is 80GB per platter, except for the flagship model (200GB) which *should* be 100GB per platter.

The 80GB Seagate 7200.7 only uses one platter. The 160GB version uses two. I am not aware of any inherent speed advantage the 160 has over the 80, other than having a more recent (and perhaps more optimized) firmware.

Can't just assume your new Maxtor 250gb is faster than your old Maxtor 80gb because it's bigger. Look at some reviews first. If your new Maxtor is 3600rpm with a 512k cache, I doubt it'd be faster than an old Maxtor 7200rpm with 8mb cache. That might be a silly example, but the point is not to blindly believe "bigger HD = faster HD".