Educate me on HDD's

[giantpinkbunnyhead]

Hey guys,

I'm putting together a new computer this week and I realized I know very little about HDD's and how to set them up. I have seen that some people make multiple partitions. Some folks use more than 1 HDD. I just don't know why people do these things, and am wondering if I should be.

New rig will be mostly for gaming, and will have the following:

Core i7 920
ASUS P6T SE mobo
6GB DDR3 1600
(2) HD 4890 GPU's
1000W Tuniq PSU (probably overkill but got a great deal on it, what can I say?)
CD/ DVD drive
Blu-Ray Drive
Antec 900 case

and I just have one HDD, a 1TB drive.

Obviously, this is a LOT of space. What would be advantages of setting up multiple partitions? If I set up, say 3 partitions, do they all show up on the "My Computer" screen as if they were 3 separate HDD's with different drive letters? Is it easy to move files from one partition to another, much like moving files onto a flash drive for example?

If multiple physical HDD's has advantages, I can maybe install my existing 250GB HDD also. If I do that, does that create any conflicts? I hear talk of master and slave drives... does that apply? Can files be transferred from one HDD to the other if they are both installed?

Sorry for the questions... but I figured I'd address all my lack of knowledge in one big post. Please chime in with any input on any part of this problem. Thanks!

 

[Zensal]

Partitioning is not necessary. But there are reasons to do it.

"Short stroking" supposedly makes you drive faster. You partition about 1/3 or 1/4 of you drive as your OS/Programs so that the HD arm has a shorter distance to travel. Also, the outside of the drive is spinning faster then the inside. Storage of music, pictures, video go in the other 3/4 or so because you don't need as fast of access to these things.

Also, if you image your drive, it is much faster to image the smaller OS/programs on a smaller partition rather then the whole drive every time.

That said, I only have 2 160 GB drives, so I have not partitioned in a while.

 

[UnbiosedOpinion]

Partitioning can be useful. The partitions do end up getting their own letters, pretty much like a flash drive. Very easy to move data between them.

Master/slave only applies to PATA (as opposed to SATA) drives. But other than cabling and jumper settings on PATA drives, they look the same in My Computer. No conflicts.

A benefit of partitioning is that defragmenting takes longer as partitions grow larger. Since the main Windows partition usually gets the most fragmented, I try to keep it as compact as possible, but allowing room for growth (maybe 50%).

Also, if you have important data files like photos, music, or personal documents, putting them on a separate partition makes it less of a hassle to reinstall Windows, since re-formatting the C drive won't wipe out those personal files.

If the 250GB drive is fairly new/reliable, you may want to think about getting a hard drive enclosure for it to use as an external backup drive, if you don't have one already. Plug it in, do your periodic backups of those personal files, then shut it down. This scheme offers some protection against power surges, viruses, etc. compared to having it spinning all the time as an internal drive.

Finally, this isn't directly related to partitioning, but I've heard it's a good idea to fully format that brand new drive with the long, as opposed to quick, format. Do this before installing Windows, so that the drive can properly initialize and remap any bad sectors it might have. Or it might fail completely. It will take hours to format, but it's smarter to detect and return a bad drive before you load a lot of stuff on it.

 

[Blain]

* Yes, multiple partitions will show up in My Computer as different drives.
* Moving data back and for will be slower than if they were actually different physical drives.
* Multiple physical drives do have an advantage in data redundancy, assuming files are copied on both drives.
* Master / Slave issues aren't an issue with SATA drives. Older PATA drives perform better when on different physical IDE channels.

 

[giantpinkbunnyhead]

Thanks for the great replies, all.

I ended up installing Win 7 64-bit RC on this HDD, and I was expecting to get the option to create partitions and/or format the drive like I do when I install XP, but I never did. The install just started right off and went to completion. So, with that being said... I have no partitions and did not format anything. Not sure how to, once the OS is installed. But it's running like a champ. Is there a utility that provides for partitioning? How can I make my drive format itself? It's not too late to wipe and re-install the OS to get the drive formatted, if it's really that necessary.

 

[cparker]

Well, I think you could just use the disk administrator tools to shrink your existing partition and then create a new partition in the resulting unused portion of the disk. Just go to help and search for "shrink partition" or "shrink volume" and you should be on your way.

 

[Paperdoc]

When you install Windows, about the first thing it does is Partition and Format (2 separate operations done in sequence) for you. Every hard disk MUST have these done to make them usable.

The Partition operation comes first. Every disk needs one Primary Partition. This means information is written to a specific location on the hard drive that specifies where the first Partition starts and low long it is - this is the Partition Table. If that Partition does not use up all of the disk's space, you have Unallocated Space that can be used to create one or more additional Partitions (Extended Partitions). The location and size of each of these is added to the Partition Table. With that data at a fixed position at the start of the disk, any OS can find and understand the layout. If you plan to boot from this Partition, then a bootstrap loader is written to the start of the disk, too. At start-up, the BIOS will go to the boot disk specified in its own CMOS RAM, and to the standard location at the disk start, and load and execute the small bit of code there. That code looks in the Primary Partition Table location to find the disk layout and where the bootable Partition is. It goes there and looks in a specific location within that Partition for the files necessary to load the OS from that Partition. But so far, with only the Primary Partition (and maybe others) created and the bootstrap loader written, there are no files.

The second operation, Formatting, is applied to each Partition separately. Don't forget that the actual definition of sectors, in terms of writing blank magnetic tracks and then magnetic signals to define start and end of sectors (the Low Level Format) already has been done by the hard disk maker. Furthermore, a whole bunch of low-level disk management information is stored in the hard drive's control board, and some I suspect is written to reserved areas of the disk platters. So a Format operation just uses these exiting structures to write to the disk all the details to create the File System. The File System will depend on the Operating System you are planning to install. The details include the Root Directory and tables to track the allocation of disk Allocation Units (that is, groups of contiguous Sectors) to files. A Quick Format does this job, and then the disk is ready for the OS to use. A Full format does that job and then proceeds to test EVERY sector of the disk by writing and reading it. That's why a Full Format takes many hours, whereas the Quick Format is maybe 5-10 minutes.

Because all this MUST be done before any OS can use the disk, a Windows Install Disk will do these operations first. The Installs I have done paused to offer the opportunity for some customization. It asked whether I wanted it to use the entire hard drive as one Partition (Volume), which is the default, or to use only part of the space and leave some Unallocated for later use. And regarding the Format, it asked which File System to create - NTFS is best for modern large disks and OS's. But some installers give you no choice; they just go ahead with one set of procedures. And, since it is installing the OS, it will automatically install on the Boot Partition it creates the key driver and parameter files that must be located at the start of that Partition that initialize the OS loading for all subsequent boot operations. Then it copies all the necessary OS files, etc., etc.

So IF the Win7 Install you ran used ALL of the disk as the bootable Primary Partition, you may have trouble changing that. In recent past versions of Windows, although Disk Management includes tools to change the size of Partitions, Windows would NOT perform those operations on the Boot Partition to protect it from corruption. Such operations can be done safely by third party software like Partition Magic, but I doubt Win7 will do it. For starters, check the size of your C: drive according to Windows 7. If it seems significantly smaller than the capacity of your hard drive, look in Disk Manager to see if it shows you any Unallocated Space that you could use to make another Partition and Format it. Don't forget that a hard drive specified as "1 TB" by the manufacturer will be labeled by Windows as about 909 GB, not 1000. No, M$ did not steal or waste space - they just use a different method of counting.