Hard drive partitioning

[Burky]

Would it slow down access times if I ran my operating system off one partition, and a game, say counterstrike off a different partition?

Thanks

[Joust Williams]

No, and in fact it's really better if you do.

[Burky]

Great, thanks.

I was just wondering, as a few things were pissing me off, like I have to manually boot steam when I use the operating system on a different partition to it.

[Joust Williams]

Hmm

When I had Steam installed, it didn't do that for me...weird. Of course, I hate everything that starts up by itself so I quickly disabled that.

[Tracer]

I actually use Disk Druid to partition windows drives =/ I never liked using fdisk.

[Mykozo]

No, and in fact it's really better if you do.

Actually the way to do it is keep all your apps/games on your system drive, and then keep any media that you have on a sep drive, not partition. Partitioning a drive will not make it's access time to the stuff on it any faster. The good thing about partitioning drives is that your apps/games don't get fragmented from all the downloads, media, etc...

Partitioning a drive is good for two things:
Pagefiles - Keep your pagefile on a seperate partition and it won't get fragmented. A fragmented pagefile is a real performance killer, so allocate a partition twice the size of your comps physical memory, and put your pagefile in it.

Fighting System File/App fragmentation - All those downloads and apps being loaded on and off of your computer fragments the hell out those apps, putting pieces of them all over the drive. You can combat this by getting a good defrag tool, like O&O defrag. Windows defragger just smashes all the data blocks towards the beginning of the drive. Good defrag tools will allow you to do file reorganization like alphabetical, last accessed, most frequently accessed, etc... A reorgization by name will take all the files for an app and put them physically grouped together on the drive.

But in conjunction with a good defrag tool, you should partition off a section of your drive that you put all your media on. That way, the apps, including windows, never get touched/reorganized, because the data is getting written to blocks that are on a seperate partition. Windows also boots it's system files in an alphabetical manner, so doing an alphabetical reorganization of your system drive reduces boot up time by a shitload, I speak from experience.

Oh, Partition Magic rocks.

[Cowutopia]

And how does one do all that shit you just said above?

[Joust Williams]

"The good thing about partitioning drives is that your apps/games don't get fragmented from all the downloads, media, etc..."

Yeah, that's the point ;p I have 4 partitions: Windows, Apps and Games, Swapfile, Junk partition (for stuff I just want to try out, mp3 files, etc). Windows and Junk will fragment much more than the other two as they are relatively static.

"Good defrag tools will allow you to do file reorganization like alphabetical, last accessed, most frequently accessed, etc..."

Actually, Windows NT+ defrag does try to put program files with each other. Any other method of organization doesn't make a tremendous amount of sense for normal users (such as those that do alpha organization). That's how you get those blue bands that are all over the place.

"so allocate a partition twice the size of your comps physical memory, and put your pagefile in it"

This I have to disagree with. Unless you are always changing users on the OS, the "twice your RAM" "2.5 times your RAM" doesn't make sense. Just pick a number so that the total RAM+swapfile is greater than you're ever going to need. I don't fill this HD up, so I set a static swapfile of 1.5 gigs and throw it on a 2 GB partition. I know I'm not going to need more than 78 GB on this drive. If you're really pressing for space, you could download one of those apps that logs the total amount of virtual memory (RAM+swap) over a full day/week/whatever, and set your static swap to at least that amount.

[stormy]

Fighting System File/App fragmentation - All those downloads and apps being loaded on and off of your computer fragments the hell out those apps, putting pieces of them all over the drive. You can combat this by getting a good defrag tool, like O&O defrag. Windows defragger just smashes all the data blocks towards the beginning of the drive. Good defrag tools will allow you to do file reorganization like alphabetical, last accessed, most frequently accessed, etc... A reorgization by name will take all the files for an app and put them physically grouped together on the drive.

O&O defrag costs $45. Is there any freeware out there that does the same thing?

[Mykozo]

O&O defrag costs $45. Is there any freeware out there that does the same thing?

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