Windows 7: Will it make difference to make partition at beginning or end of HDD?

Hi.
I have two hdds (500gb 7200rpm) in my laptop and have 260gb of data on the second one. I wanted to create a partition for games at the beggining of the 2nd drive (the left side) as i heard it increased performance to put games in anoher drive and at the beggining of the drive.

My question is:
Will it make difference to make a partition at the beginning or at the end of this drive when it comes to gaming performance?
Will option three help me with this?



My cousin showed me one game in the same drive installed in the 1st of four partitions of a 500gb 7200rpm (the same i have) performing with 3-5 fps more than that game installed in the 4th partition of that same drive....

Any thoughts?

I dont know... any thoughts?, or maybe just a bug in the version installed in the 4th partition?

The only appreciable speed difference with OS drives is to upgrade to an SSD large enough to install OS and programs on, link to data on secondary HD via libraries.

Well it is true that data reads/writes are faster at the "begining" of the drive (which are the outter rings of the platter) rather than the "end" (The inner rings). Drive test programs prove that out all the time.

However, that really wouldn't have any effect on the normal running FPS of a normal game. It would make loading textures (which can cause jittering or pausing of a game during the load) slightly less and it can make cut scene and level loads a little faster. But other than that the normal frame rate would remain unchanged. Some games /may/ be continuously loading resources from the disk as you play I suppose, it could have a small effect in that case. But I've not seen a game that has the HD reading THAT much

I put Skyrim on my SSD and the constant level loading is reduced dramatically, but once loaded the FPS is the same as it was on an HD and the SSD is several times faster than the difference between the slow and fast end of a HD.

but is there any difference between installing the game in the first or in the last partition of the disk (load time and overall fps)?

This because those 3-5 fps can be the difference between fullHD or lower resolution!

Do you think that it really improves performance or that in my cousin's was just some glitch in the moment?

EDit: sorry didnt saw fseal's post.
thanks to both of you
i will just install them in the partition i will make at the end of the drive!

Hi again! Another question:

If i choose ntfs with 64kb of allocation unit, will it improve read times (as i want it for games) or should i choose based on some other parameter?

If so, then i could use 512bytes for the data storage partition and 64kb for the games partition? Or not?

Having a higher per unit allocation size will improve sequential read times, but on the other hand will inflate the size requirements of your applications. (especially those with lots of small sized files)

It's a give and take proposition; you do want increased performance, or more disk space to install more games?

well ill make a partition for games with about 40gb as i usually dont have more than 2-3 games installed. what i mainly want is performance.

for the other drive i want space for all my data and stuff that i dont access a lot. (movies, photos, videos, mainly big data files from 150mb-8gb and then like 2000 files with a few kbs to 50mb)

So should I put put 64kb and 512b respectively?

Edit: Also, won't the 64kb make files more prone to fragmentation or is it the otherwise?

Making the cluster size 64kb will make files less prone to fragmentation actually, as larger clusters are created which require a lower overall amount per file, ergo reduced chances of fragmentation.

If you only plan to have 2 or 3 games at a time, then go for that 64kb cluster size for your games partition.. and put the rest of the varied files in the 512b cluster partition.

Ok!

Thanks so much to all of you for the help given!

OK now im with a bit of a problem here. Im a little stubborn and decided to move my data to that partition with 512b at the end of the drive. However, when i try to format that partition (280gb) to ntfs with cluster size smaller than 4kb (512b/1kb/2kb), it gives me an error and says the format was not completed successfully..

Then when it says i need to format the drive so i can use it but when i try to format it through "my computer"- right click-format, the smaller size is 4kb. Any problems with my pc, drive or software?...