Does partition placement affect performance?

[iluvdeal]

I have a 120GB hard drive I will be dual booting with XP and 98 (keeping 98 for some games). I was wondering whether performance will be affected by wear I place certain partitions? Right now I am planning the following:

3GB W98 OS (fat32)
4GB WXP OS (ntfs)
25GB APPS (ntfs)
25GB GAMES (fat32)
20GB NET (ntfs)
43GB DATA (ntfs)

Does it matter where I place the games partition? Will it affect performance? Also, my net partition will be the dir I where all my downloads go, where I extract files, etc. so it'll get fragmented alot. Does it matter where I place that? Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[grumm3t]

Well, I can't say for Windows based program but for linux partition placement does directly affect performance... if I'm not mistaken (meaning I read OLLLD linux guides), hard-drives read from the outside of a plate to the inside meaning you would place a swap partition near the outer side of the plate so the reader doesn't have to jump from the outside to the inside trying to read the data like mad.... now how I can explain this when you only see the partition in one horizontal line, I don't know, but by default linux puts the swap partition at the end... well, atleast I answered your question, although I didn't solve your problem

 

[SUOrangeman]

If you'll only be using Win98 for old games, why don't you put its partition near the games partition? This will keep the heads from "travelling" so far across the platters.

In order to successfully do that, make a small (1GB or less) C: drive and just put temp files there (and your virtual memory, if you want). I would also put any DOS utilties there (Ghost, BIOS flash stuff, etc.). Finally, I also put my IE Favorites there so I can access them from both OSes withou any problems.

-SUO

 

[cleverhandle]

Well, if your only using W98 for *old* games, it's unlikely they'll be affected too much by a millisecond difference in access time in the first place. Eh.. this all just seems way too complicated for me. Can anybody who has actually switched from a simple to a complex partition scheme on the same system vouch for increased performance because of it? I mean, it sounds kinda cool on paper, but is it really worth it?

 

[khayyam]

yes, partition placement does affect performance. a drive will be faster when reading and writing to/from the inside portion of the platter. Whatever you've got on the innermost portion of the platter will be read/written the fastest. But it's a fairly minor point.

 

[iluvdeal]

<< yes, partition placement does affect performance. a drive will be faster when reading and writing to/from the inside portion of the platter. Whatever you've got on the innermost portion of the platter will be read/written the fastest. But it's a fairly minor point. >>



Opposite of a cdrom? Why is that?

 

[CocaCola5]

<< I have a 120GB hard drive I will be dual booting with XP and 98 (keeping 98 for some games). I was wondering whether performance will be affected by wear I place certain partitions? Right now I am planning the following:

3GB W98 OS (fat32)
4GB WXP OS (ntfs)
25GB APPS (ntfs)
25GB GAMES (fat32)
20GB NET (ntfs)
43GB DATA (ntfs)

Does it matter where I place the games partition? Will it affect performance? Also, my net partition will be the dir I where all my downloads go, where I extract files, etc. so it'll get fragmented alot. Does it matter where I place that? Thanks for any suggestions. >>




I would add a swap partition. Mine looks similar to this,
c: swap 1GB FAT(depending on your ram, 700MB for XP, 300MB for 98, your boot files would be here also)
d: winXP 5GB NTFS
e: 98 5GB FAT32
APPS 15GB NTFS, why would you need 25GB, every time you reformat your XP OS this will need reformat too, better to have it small.
GAMES 25GB FAT32
Have 3 data partitions of 10 GB fat32, 10 GB ntfs, and 20GB ntfs (smaller=less fragmentation and easier to reformat than one large 40GB)
TEMP/unzip 5GB FAT32
NET 3GB FAT32
Backup(drivers, etc) 1GB FAT

If you know the number and size of each plater in your drive you can sequence your partition by having your "performance" stuff on the outer edge of each plater for slightly better tranfer rate, whether its worth the trouble hard to say but this is why c: is always designated for the swap partition.

 

[iluvdeal]

I'll have 768MB of RAM so what should I set the swap partition size to in 98 and XP? In 98, would you just set the min and max virtual memory to this number? When you are not in one OS, is the swap file of the other OS still taking up space? For example for a 1GB c:, you set it to 700 for xp and 300 for 98, do you have to divide it evenly like that? Or could you just set both of them to use the full 1GB?

As for the dual boot, I was planning to install 98 initially to the C drive and then install XP from within 98 to the D drive. Will i Just be able to choose the e: in your example to install it to when I run the 98 installer? Or will I need something like Boot magic. Thanks.

 

[CocaCola5]

<< I'll have 768MB of RAM so what should I set the swap partition size to in 98 and XP? In 98, would you just set the min and max virtual memory to this number? When you are not in one OS, is the swap file of the other OS still taking up space? For example for a 1GB c:, you set it to 700 for xp and 300 for 98, do you have to divide it evenly like that? Or could you just set both of them to use the full 1GB?

As for the dual boot, I was planning to install 98 initially to the C drive and then install XP from within 98 to the D drive. Will i Just be able to choose the e: in your example to install it to when I run the 98 installer? Or will I need something like Boot magic. Thanks. >>




I don't dual boot but I think each OS allocates whatever free space thats available, you probably should divide it evenly even if you could get away without doing it, trial and error perhaps. The max should be the number you want to use and the min should usually be atleast 5MB less than the max. On dual booting, create your partitions and format the FAT, FAT32 partitions with a win98 boot-up disk, then proceed to install XP and create the NTFS partitions there. From my experience with 98 I am pretty sure you can install it to any partitions you like so at the setup menu where they list C:\Windows, browse or change the directory to E:\Windows.

 

[SUOrangeman]

You can use the EXACT SAME file for swap space in all Windows OSes. Since you won't be running more than one instance of Windows at a time, it won't cause any problems.

WinNT/2K/XP use the pagefile.sys filename by default. You can tweak your Win9x/ME system.ini file (in the [386Enh] section) to specify that same filename. If you will have a "swap" partition, just set every OS to the same size settings for swap (say, 100MB minumum, up to xyz maximum).

-SUO