Hard Drive Partitioning Performance Issues

zoink · 19 May 2010

The current hardware is available:

1 x 120GB
1 x 250GB
1 x 1TB
1 x 1TB

I intend to store my data on all of the HDDs but as the 1TBs are newer than the other smaller ones, their performance is also much better. So if I partition lets say one of the 1 TB HDDs like:

Partition 1 60GB - OS
Partition 2 860GB - DATA (ISOs, Pics, etc)

Will there be a significant performance decrease having an operating system and random data on the same HDD but on different partitions?

Thanks in advance guys.

whs · 19 May 2010

That will depend to a large degree what you are doing with the data and how it is being accessed. OS and Data on the same physical drive is the usual setup. However, if you have the possibility to seperate it on 2 different physical drives, you may get a small performance gain. But in any case it is not going to be dramatic one way or the other.

surfasb · 19 May 2010

whs said:

That will depend to a large degree what you are doing with the data and how it is being accessed. OS and Data on the same physical drive is the usual setup. However, if you have the possibility to seperate it on 2 different physical drives, you may get a small performance gain. But in any case it is not going to be dramatic one way or the other.

I second this opinion. In general, user data isn't requested very often , so it isn't going to affect performance until it is explicitly accessed. Program data/OS data on the other hand is frequently requested but that is unavoidable. But that is what Superfetch is for.

TVeblen · 19 May 2010

I'm a fan of partitioning for the OS because having a small(er) OS/Prog partition makes chores like disk imaging, defragging, and cleanup faster, particularly on huge disks.

I also do not want to restore old user files if I need/want to restore an OS image. I make other partitions for user files by category. Some files change often and others are archives that don't change. This makes backing up a simpler chore and faster. There is no need to backup archive files constantly.

The first partition on a spinning HDD is the fastest, so limiting the OS and progs to just the fastest portion of the platter is more efficient and has been considered good for performance for many years. I'm sure the performance increase is hardly noticeable by normal humans though.

My two drachmas.

HMonk · 19 May 2010

If you wish to nit-pick performance, place your OS on a small partition on one HDD, your page file on another. Why? Reduces seek time because heads can act independently on separate HDDs. Once accomplished defrag the HDDs placing quickly need stuff at the beginning of the drive (Windows, by default, places itself at the beginning of the drive).

Monk

thefabe · 20 May 2010

This is probaboy a mute suggestion, but I presume all the drives sre 7200 rpm drives if not that is the drive you want to partion as explained above. Fabe

zoink · 23 May 2010

Hey guys. Thanks for your help! I ran HD Tune and performed some benchmarks to see which hard drive had the best performance and installed Windows on that.

Thanks again. :)