why is one partition slower than the other ?

[ManOnFire]

So, basically I divided my new SATA2 hard disk into 2 partitions

System Partition : I use this for Windows, and all installations (games,apps, wotever)

Backup Partition : I use this partition for backing up documents, patches, game saves etc... No installations at all.

Now the thing is this I noticed the backup partition is slower so to test it I defragmented both partitions. Then I extracted the same 4.5gb image first on the system and then on the backup partition. The following are the results

System partition :

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/5199/systempartition1ja6.jpg

Backup partition :

http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/5669/backupartition1qx8.jpg

Does anyone have any explanation why the backup partition is 35% slower than the system partition ? To be honest I expect the backup paritition to be faster since it does not have any installations.

Both partitions have over 50% free space so I guess that's ok also.

 

[corkyg]

What are the relative sizes of the two partitions, i.e., how many gigs each?

 

[ManOnFire]

System Partition 166.02gb
Backup Partition 132.07gb

 

[corkyg]

Logiocally the smaller partition should be "faster." Are you by chance running any AV software that might be screening or "processing" the files on the backup partition?

 

[ManOnFire]

Originally posted by: corkyg
Logiocally the smaller partition should be "faster." Are you by chance running any AV software that might be screening or "processing" the files on the backup partition?

nope, everything should be same

 

[madworm]

NTFS formatted vs. Quick NTFS formatted?

 

[corkyg]

It's semantics. Optimizing a 160 GB drive will be slower than a 120 GB drive - seek times, etc. being equal. Anyway - the important question was, are you running anti virus/anti anything software that screens data files but not your OS files?

 

[ManOnFire]

Nope I do not use any AV software, and as far as Im concerned there is nothing not the same for the backup partition.

 

[ManOnFire]

Originally posted by: madworm
NTFS formatted vs. Quick NTFS formatted?

what do you mean ? I think the backup partition is quick formatted, why ?

 

[corkyg]

I suppose it implies thast ou could possibly have some bad sectors in the partition area that could slow things down. This is based on a Microsoft KB article on the subject:

"Format versus Quick Format When doing a clean install of Windows XP, after you?ve selected the partition where XP will be installed, you are presented with the option to format the drive or partition. The format options are:

"Format the partition using the NTFS file system (Quick)
"Format the partition using the FAT file system (Quick)
"Format the partition using the NTFS file system
"Leave the current file system intact (no changes)

"The difference between the regular format versus the quick format is whether or not the volume is scanned for bad sectors using the chkdsk command. Both methods remove the files from the volume."

 

[dball3]

Well i've read recently, i think somewhere on the forums, the greatest speeds will be on the inner parts of the platters, and it gradually slows down as u move out. The other thing i was thinking is there is probably more than one platter in your drive and it might make a difference on how u split them up. I never broke up my hard drives into seperate partitions , I allways picked up a separate drive for storing backups. And do u have a pagefile running on your backup?