Do partitions on single drive make it faster/slower?

[lnin0]

I'm setting up an 80gb single platter drive. Is there any speed advantage or disadvantage of splitting the drive in two partitions?

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Definitely advantageous to use multiple partitions. Fragmentation cripples a hard drives response times, and having more than one partition reduces fragmentation immensely.

Having multiple partitions could extend the life of your hard drive, reduce the time it takes to de-fragment, and improve access times.

 

[wfn]

check these out:

http://forums.storagereview.ne...ex.php?showtopic=16628

-and-

http://forums.storagereview.ne...ex.php?showtopic=17699

the first thread should answer pretty much all your questions.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

For a more thorough and *possibly* easier read (sorry wfn, even I had trouble following those threads):

Radified: Hard Drive Partitioning Strategies. The advantages are listed on Page 2.

 

[wfn]

that may be so, so i'll make it easy for you:

you're interested in Gilbo's sumup on the bottom of page 2 (the largest post) and Virtual Larry's response to Gilbo on page 3.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Some good points are made there, wfn, and while they make a strong argument that multiple partitions don't necessarily improve performance (fragmentation is my main argument that it does), I use multiple partitions for organization and data security. While I admit that my own partitioning strategy is overkill for most people (and can be difficult to manage at times), I personally have almost as many partitions on several of my hard drives as I do rooms in my house...