OS and applications on separate drive?

[mancunian]

Not to flame you Hasu, but I kinda think you worry a little bit too much about fragmentation.

However, your system is your system and you can run it as you like.

 

[Nothinman]

1. This guy moves non-os partitions for a different reason.

He also prefixes the article with "A single volume is the most efficient allocation of disk, " and he only advises following his instructions when you're about to run out of space not as a preemptive measure or to increase performance.

2. Another discussion on defrag

3. http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic49884.html

Those two are nothing but "I think it should be this way." without any proof.

4. http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=187

And this one just says that putting Documents and Settings on another volume makes it easier to reload your OS, again it has nothing to do with performance.

1. The Implications of Fragmentation

You're going to believe a whitepaper on fragmentation written by a company who's entire product line is defragmentation? Of course they're going to tell you that you're in dire need of their products.

2. Another study by IDC

That's at least 7yrs old (I couldn't find an exact date in it, but they mention 1999 as recent) and the fast machine in their tests was 400Mhz with 128M of memory. Hardly relevant to any machine that a person would care about performance on today.

You can find many more in google.

Just because it's on the Internet doesn't mean it's true, do some tests yourself and see just how irrelevant fragmentation really is today.

 

[hasu]

Originally posted by: mancunian
Not to flame you Hasu, but I kinda think you worry a little bit too much about fragmentation.

However, your system is your system and you can run it as you like.

My configuration may be a little complex and odd. The original question was should you store windows and programs in a separate partition or not, to improve performance. Fragmentation issues of Windows' file systems are very well known. Nobody questions that including Microsoft. And they bundle Windows with a defrag tool for that. How many times have you heard people complaining "My machine is getting slower day by day"? Have you ever felt that once you re-install windows after a reformat the machine response better even after installing all the programs you had before? That's the only fact I am trying to pass across.

 

[mancunian]

Originally posted by: hasu
How many times have you heard people complaining "My machine is getting slower day by day"? Have you ever felt that once you re-install windows after a reformat the machine response better even after installing all the programs you had before? That's the only fact I am trying to pass across.

I see your point and you are correct in noticing that people often say this. However, the question as to whether this is due to file fragmentation is (I think) what the other guys are questioning.

My feeling is that file fragmentation plays a part, but a far less significant part than say spyware or the windows registry. A reformat will also fix these issues.

One thing I will say, I had a game, can't remember what it was, but it ran significantly better after a defrag. It was running unusally slow though and I had never defragged that install, so I it *can* have an effect.

Not sure that effect is such that more than two partitions are required though. Or that defragging should be done on that regular a basis.

Just my opinion though. As I previously said, what works for you is what works for you.

 

[IEC]

I go with three partitions... OS + Apps, Documents + Backup, and Games.

Even three is a bit much. Once I get my 2nd HDD in I'll probably do Drive #1 as OS + Games and Drive #2 as backup/scratch space