Partitioning a drive for better performance?

[vj8usa]

I've heard of people making a small partition on their main drive to put their OS and major apps on so that they're on the inner portion of the drive. Does this have a noticeable impact on speed, or is this realistically pointless? Also, how would you even know which partition is at the center of the platter (other than running a speed test on both partitions)?

 

[Nothinman]

It's not and you don't. Those people are delusional.

 

[Blain]

Splitting up the OS and apps on different partitions is counter productive, if performance is the bottom line.
OS and apps on the smaller partition and bulk storage on the inner is fine.

 

[sxr7171]

I used to do it all the time. In hindsight, it's just some kind of a placebo effect or some kind of OCD-like need to have your data organized on the surface of the drive.

It really doesn't make a difference in the best case and is actually counterproductive if you think about how much extra drive head travel you are causing by moving data further in than it really needs to be.

Just defrag and be happy.

The best is a nice small fast disk for OS + Apps. (I've become as SSD fan for this but I use only SLC)

Second large, cheap drive for bulk data.

 

[Soundmanred]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
It's not and you don't. Those people are delusional.

:thumbsup:

 

[Yellowbeard]

This was a common speed tweak back when ...... XP first came out. I saw it in a lot of performance guides. It may have been popular before then but I never paid attention. The theory makes sense in a way but the effectiveness has likely declined with current drives, IF it was ever effective to begin with.

 

[taltamir]

there is a huge advantage to splitting the drive, but it is NOT a matter of SPEED...
its because you can reformat and reinstall windows without losing any data if your data is all on a second partition.

If anything, splitting the drive can cause situation where windows is copying from one "partition" to another unnecessarily and gives significant slowdowns since its the same physical drive.

 

[Elixer]

Originally posted by: taltamir
there is a huge advantage to splitting the drive, but it is NOT a matter of SPEED...
its because you can reformat and reinstall windows without losing any data if your data is all on a second partition.

:thumbsup:

'nuff said.

 

[vj8usa]

Thanks for the advice. I'll stick to one partition.