WD 300GB 10k VR partition question

[chiew]

Hi all,
Just got my velociraptor today to use as a boot drive.
I was wondering how I should partition the drive.

My friend suggested 200gigs for OS and programs and then 80gigs for Photoshop scratch and also thumbnail cache, etc. I do a lot of photo editing and plan to do some video editing.

Is there any advantage to having separate partitions one for OS and one for programs? Or is it just as good to lump OS and programs together?

Thanks

Any other advice is welcome

 

[Rubycon]

NEVER put a scratch volume or paging file on a partition of the same physical drive sharing the OS. The result will be markedly LOWER performance. With a single drive just create a single partition for everything.

 

[elconejito]

i think i'm probably in the minority, but i don't see any reason to partition a drive. The only time it makes a little bit of sense (IMO) is if you separate the data from the OS you can do a reformat/reinstall and not have to worry about the data. Thats about it. It will be slower (the only point to argue is "how much" slower), and if the drive dies you lose the whole thing anyway regardless of how it is partitioned.

If you want to partition it anyway, put the OS/apps on one and the data on another. If you have to reinstall the OS you're going to have to reinstall all the apps anyway, so putting them on a separate partition doesn't make any difference.

I'd also leave the photoshop scratch on the main partition. The purpose of having it on a separate drive is so that you don't have concurrent reads/writes on the same drive. No matter which partition you assign it... it's still the same drive. And especially if you give PS the last 80GB of the drive, you've essentially confined it to the slowest part of the drive, and then it will still have to travel back somewhere into the 1st 200GB to read or write to the file you're using. If you have enough RAM to keep it all in memory, then the scratch file really wont be used and then it wont impact performance.

Just my $0.02...

 

[chiew]

thanks for the advice guys!

 

[chiew]

p.s. my current set up involves several physically separate drives
1) 80 gb OS/apps drive
2) 1 tb picture drive (main copy of all pics)
3) 500 gb music library/back up of pics
4) 500 gb back up of pics (continued)

the #1 drive will be replaced with the 300gb 10k VR

looks like i won't partition the raptor

thanks again, just wanted to make clear that my data drives are physically separate from my OS/apps drive.

 

[taltamir]

i think i'm probably in the minority, but i don't see any reason to partition a drive. The only time it makes a little bit of sense (IMO) is if you separate the data from the OS you can do a reformat/reinstall and not have to worry about the data.

Which is why every person in the world should partition...

Partition A: Your OS and some apps
Partition B: every possible shred of data (so you don't have to back it up before reformat... since you will just reformat partition A)

I think TODAY partition A should be 80GB

 

[elconejito]

^^^Actually, I think that's why every person in the world should have at least two drives... YMMV

Drive A: Your OS and some apps
Drive B: every possible shred of data (so you don't have to back it up before reformat... since you will just reformat Drive A)

Separating OS from data is a very good idea, I personally just prefer doing it on different drives rather than different partitions. And as far as I know, it's the only situation where it makes sense to partition. Are there others? It is certainly not performance, unless the "short stroking" idea has merit (which i just dismissed out of the box). Organization is another reason I've heard, but again just use multiple drives, or heck just using folders seems easier (to me).

But on almost every thread where I've seen someone wanting to partition... separating OS from data is *not* the reason. It's anything but that reason, it seems like. There should probably be a sticky detailing when it's good and when it's evil.

Again, I realize I'm probably in the minority as it seems everybody else I run into likes to partition.
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@ chiew - what are you going to do with the 80GB drive? Because if you have enough SATA ports (or IDE) that would be a prime location for your PS scratch...