# Speed and performance is reduced if the disk is partitioned into sections?



## Befikit75 (Oct 2, 2010)

Speed and performance is reduced if the HDD is partitioned into sections?


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## DRDNA (Oct 2, 2010)

Probably not by much, but why would you want to partition?

OH OH >>  Welcome to TPU!


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## scaminatrix (Oct 2, 2010)

Befikit75 said:


> Speed and performance is reduced if the HDD is partitioned into sections?



Apparently so.
I use a video editing rig, so I go by instructions here:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/427772



> Rule 1: NEVER partition a disk. You may ask why? First of all, it does not increase disk space, it just allocates the space differently. However, the major drawback is that for a partitioned disk the OS must first access a partition table at the beginning of the disk for all accesses to the disk, thus requiring the heads to move to the beginning of the disk, then when it has gotten the partition info move to the designated area on the disk and perform the requested action. This means much more wear-and-tear on the mechanics of the disk, slower speeds and more overhead for the OS, all reducing efficiency.


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## TIGR (Oct 2, 2010)

You've already gotten a good answer here, so I'll just say welcome to TPU!


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## W1zzard (Oct 2, 2010)

scaminatrix said:


> , the major drawback is that for a partitioned disk the OS must first access a partition table at the beginning of the disk for all accesses to the disk



not true. the os will read the partition table once at system startup and work with a copy in memory. the os will reread the partition table when requested (after format, partition management)

on a mechanical (non-ssd) hdd the disk throughput (mb/s) will increase the further to the end you are reading. it's a disk that rotates at fixed speed, so the sectors near the outside of the disk will pass faster under the head, so it will read more sectors in the same time.

the sectors near the inside have lower access time (ms) because the disk head will have to wait for a shorter time for the head to be above the requested sector (visualize the disk again)


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## TIGR (Oct 2, 2010)

W1zzard, good info. Just one thing: wouldn't access time also be lowest at the outside of the disk? I've always just assumed from HDTune, etc. tests that access times are lower toward the outside of the disks for the same reason that throughput is higher there. Maybe I've just been reading those results wrong.

Also, I'm half conscious right now so may be missing something.


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## DRDNA (Oct 2, 2010)

Unless your a system builder and creating a restore partition then I really don't see the use or benefit.


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## douglatins (Oct 2, 2010)

DRDNA said:


> Unless your a system builder and creating a restore partition then I really don't see the use or benefit.



I have 2 drives and 3 parts, the SSD have a folder mounted partition for games from a HDD and the second partition i use for User folder and most accessed data


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## DRDNA (Oct 2, 2010)

douglatins said:


> I have 2 drives and 3 parts, the SSD have a folder mounted partition for games from a HDD and the second partition i use for User folder and most accessed data



And by having the partitions there how does it add a benefit to your system configuration?


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## de.das.dude (Oct 2, 2010)

i think it might be slower considering the same disk to be divided into diff "drives". this means since the number of readers are limited, there should be a decrease in speed.
but i may be wrong.


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## Kursah (Oct 2, 2010)

I really can't say I've noticed a performance difference between a partitioned drive and a non-partitioned drive with more modern hardware, sata interfaces and actual hard drives themselves. Benches may show a difference, though on my WD6400AAKS drives it was too small of a difference to prove anything.

I usually run a 50-60GB OS partition and the rest as a data/game/program partition, keeps things nice and easy for format and re-install of OSes w/o losing all your other stuff...granted backing up the users folder, etc is a must first. Though with the trend of larger and larger drives, partitioning less and more people using SSD's for OS drives...does partitioning really matter anymore? Not as much I would imagine...I still use it because I still don't feel SSD's are worth the price, and I have yet to find a need to replace anything in my system. Sure it could be A LOT faster, and it could've cost A LOT more. Really as a gaming/multimedia rig, I can say I feel there is little to no difference that you'll truly "feel" with your rig...at least with my setup and many others I've set up the same way over the years are fine in comparison to a non-partitioned setup. The loss is pretty minor if noticeable without a timer, benchmark or similar. That is just what I've noticed from my experience...ymmv.


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## Massive (Oct 2, 2010)

Befikit75 said:


> Speed and performance is reduced if the HDD is partitioned into sections?



I don't think so, in fact I think it should be faster when partitioned since the partition make the boundaries to the OS where to find a file so it don't have to search to the whole drive


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## W1zzard (Oct 2, 2010)

TIGR said:


> wouldn't access time also be lowest at the outside of the disk? I've always just assumed from HDTune, etc. tests that access times are lower toward the outside of the disks for the same reason that throughput is higher there



where do you see lower access time near the outside ?


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## AsRock (Oct 2, 2010)

DRDNA said:


> Unless your a system builder and creating a restore partition then I really don't see the use or benefit.



There is a few reasons to partition a hdd easier to defrag \ format when needed \ faster chkdisk if ever needed.

Main reason i always used them is save time when os needs to be reinstalled and less crap needs backing up.


Never noticed making partitions slowing any thing down unless you format it differently like using different allocation unit size which in fact can speed and actually slow things down depending on what you have on that partition.  Benifit can be added if you experiment with it.


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## douglatins (Oct 2, 2010)

DRDNA said:


> And by having the partitions there how does it add a benefit to your system configuration?



The mounted partition is for compatibility and space, since there are progs that like C only.


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## TIGR (Oct 2, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> where do you see lower access time near the outside ?



Perhaps I'm mistaken and you can clarify this for myself and others—I've always thought that the "beginning" of HDDs is on the outer edge of the platters, working inward to the "end." That would explain the screenshot above by placing the outside (beginning) on the left side of that benchmark. It would also explain why the lowest access times are always parallel to the highest throughputs (and vice versa) in screenshots like the following random one:






I've always just assumed HDTune showed both access time and throughput left to right, outside to inside. Would appreciate being set straight on this though.


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## scaminatrix (Oct 2, 2010)

TIGR said:


> I've always thought that the "beginning" of HDDs is on the outer edge of the platters, working inward to the "end."



Same here, I've been given that impression; I think; from 1 or more defragging program/s.


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## Anusha (Oct 3, 2010)

As far as I know, (I've seen graphical explanations as well) the beginning of a disk is outer edge of the disk. Disk access is fastest. Disk throughput is fastest. 

That's where u usually install OS and apps in a drive. In short stroking, that's what u do anyway. Make a  small partiton and put everything there. You don't partition the drive and put everything in the last partition. That's the inner edge of the drive where things are slowest. 

This is exactly the opposite of optical media where is starts slow and gets faster. Laser head moves from in to out.


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## Befikit75 (Oct 3, 2010)

How to install Windows 7 in the beginning of the disk, ie, in the fastest section?


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## TIGR (Oct 3, 2010)

Befikit75 said:


> How to install Windows 7 in the beginning of the disk, ie, in the fastest section?



If you just let Windows 7 install its default way on a new drive, it will automatically be installed to the fastest part of the drive.


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## Befikit75 (Oct 3, 2010)

TIGR said:


> If you just let Windows 7 install its default way on a new drive, it will automatically be installed to the fastest part of the drive.



But First I want to install windows xp and second windows 7


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## Anusha (Oct 3, 2010)

It doesn't matter much as long as they are both towards the fast area of the drive. For example., if u have a 1tb drive, for the first 200gb or so, the drive will be very fast. I hope your are not thinking about bigger partitions for the OS and apps.


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## Tatty_One (Oct 7, 2010)

If your working with a large single hard drive, I think partitioning improves performance and is a good idea, I mention this in relation to the functions of the partition.  What I mean by this is, if you have 3 partitions on a drive, lets take a 500Gig drive as an example, set Disk C at 20GB, disk D at 5GB and then Disk E at 475GB (ok roughly, the maths aint that straight), then you place your OS on C, your pagefile on D and your data ONLY on E then that should speed up your sytem generally, hence what I mean by "How you use those partitions).  At least thats what I have found in the past, I did run a couple of tests back then on a single 320gig HDD in much the same way as I described and I found that the partition solution was a little faster just using a couple of HDD benches but I cannot remember by how much....... not a huge amount though.

I like the idea of the tidyness of it all as much as anything else!  I now actually have pagefile located in a partition on a seperate physical drive to my OS, I cannot say with any conviction if this is a better solution as I don't have any facts from previous setups to compare data with but it sure feels slick in memory intensive fast moving apps.


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## qubit (Oct 7, 2010)

1 Performance is not reduced with partitions. W1zzard's answer earlier explained this in detail

2 There's lots of reasons to partition discs, such as separating the data and the OS and installing multiple OSs on one drive to name a few


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## a_ump (Oct 7, 2010)

haha guess we all think differently. I'd always been under the impression that the closer to the center of the drive the faster a partition is. Since the sectors are smaller and more dense i'd assume it'd take slightly less time to read data on the inner part of platter than the outside. 

I also use 2 partitions, 1 for my OS(40gb) and drivers, while the rest of my drive is in another partition with everything else. That way if i choose to format to windows 7 down the road all i have to do is format the OS part and keep the rest of my shit.....i think XD


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## Mussels (Oct 7, 2010)

hard drives are faster on the OUTER edges, not the inner edges.


partitions do not speed up or slow down a drive at all. its POSSIBLE to make scenarios where it can work, for example:


HDD's can only do one thing at a time, so reading/writing to two or more partitions on the one physical drive, shit will slow down. thats the same as doing multiple read/writes on a single partition anyway, so it hardly matters.

partitioning is a good way to prevent fragmentation - if you arent writing files and deleting files off a partition, it never fragments - and since windows is ALWAYS doing both of those, its best to seperate it from them so it can only fragment itself.

pagefile on a seperate partition is utterly pointless, just set it to a static size on your C: partition and you dont get fragmentation problems, or performance problems.


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## Tatty_One (Oct 7, 2010)

Mussels said:


> pagefile on a seperate partition is utterly pointless, just set it to a static size on your C: partition and you dont get fragmentation problems, or performance problems.



But a pagefile located on a seperate PHYSICAL drive can show some benefits arguably, I say arguably because there is some differing opinions as both the OS on the one and pagefile on the other can be accessed at the same time unlike your same drive one at a time scenario...... does that sound about right?


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## Mussels (Oct 7, 2010)

Tatty_One said:


> But a pagefile located on a seperate PHYSICAL drive can show some benefits arguably, I say arguably because there is some differing opinions as both the OS on the one and pagefile on the other can be accessed at the same time unlike your same drive one at a time scenario...... does that sound about right?



seperate physical drive is certainly a good idea, but a partition is utterly pointless.


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## Anusha (Oct 7, 2010)

Mussels said:


> seperate physical drive is certainly a good idea, but a partition is utterly pointless.


Yes, pagefile should be in the same partition as Windows and Programs.


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## Tatty_One (Oct 7, 2010)

Anusha said:


> Yes, pagefile should be in the same partition as Windows and Programs.



If you have only one Physical drive yes, but not necessary to have it the same place as programmes, just windows on a single drive if you get my meaning.


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## DRDNA (Oct 7, 2010)

So indeed there are still a couple of reasons to partition... Me I use external drives for keeping personal data files of any kind.... I have  thought about making a partition on my array for the OS in the past just to keep the speed way up but, shit with 4X320GB Raid0 I figured no real need cuz the array is very very fast already.
When ever I install an OS on my rigs I reformatt the drives.


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## yogurt_21 (Oct 7, 2010)

DRDNA said:


> So indeed there are still a couple of reasons to partition... Me I use external drives for keeping personal data files of any kind.... I have  thought about making a partition on my array for the OS in the past just to keep the speed way up but, shit with 4X320GB Raid0 I figured no real need cuz the array is very very fast already.
> When ever I install an OS on my rigs I reformatt the drives.



is your tower out of space? if not, why not just put the stuff on additional internal drives?

the only time I partition is when a dual boot on a single drive system. being that I usually dual boot linux and windows I like to keep them seperate.


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## qubit (Oct 7, 2010)

a_ump said:


> haha guess we all think differently. I'd always been under the impression that the closer to the center of the drive the faster a partition is. *Since the sectors are smaller and more dense* i'd assume it'd take slightly less time to read data on the inner part of platter than the outside.



If they were more dense, you'd be right. However, the density is the same all over the surface, so you actually get less sectors the further in you go and the read speed is slower, because the linear speed is slower.



Mussels said:


> hard drives are faster on the OUTER edges, not the inner edges.
> 
> 
> partitions do not speed up or slow down a drive at all. its POSSIBLE to make scenarios where it can work, for example:
> ...



+1 on everything, Mussels. I just wanna add that I have the pagefile on a separate drive and leave Windows to manage it automatically, rather than a fixed size.

I don't fix the size, because I've never noticed a tangeable difference between that and auto and one can't run into potential low virtual memory warnings, like one used to get with Windows 2000. Yes, I know that modern PCs have so much RAM & page file that this is unlikely with a fixed PF, but it could technically happen. Certainly happens a lot on work's old Windows 2000 boxes with 256MB RAM and a tiny fixed PF.


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## persona (Oct 7, 2010)

Very interesting topic. It interests me because I would like to partition my 500GB hard drive to make a dual boot windows 7/ubuntu 10.10


W1zzard said:


> the sectors near the inside have lower access time (ms) because the disk head will have to wait for a shorter time for the head to be above the requested sector (visualize the disk again)


Since I've already installed windows 7 (with 200 GB of used space because of programs, games etc.), is it better to install ubuntu in "the sectors near the inside"? And how can I install it there without formatting? I was planning to create the partition for ubuntu with windows disk management. Have you got better options? Oh and another question: so the answer to the question:"Speed and performance is reduced if the disk is partitioned into sections?", is no?
Thank you very much.


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