Hard drive partition question

[Sniper82]

I was thinking about partitioning a 400gb into 3 partition. One for OS,one for games and the other for storage. Does installing games on a separate partition effect load times or anything?

Would I be better off with a big OS partition and the rest for storage and just install the games on the OS partition ?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: Sniper82
I was thinking about partitioning a 400gb into 3 partition. One for OS,one for games and the other for storage. Does installing games on a separate partition effect load times or anything?

Would I be better off with a big OS partition and the rest for storage and just install the games on the OS partition ?

There is no performance gain from partitioning. It is only a matter of organization. I prefer to keep data seperate from the OS, so that if I need to reformat the computer, the data isn't affected.

 

[Nothinman]

Does installing games on a separate partition effect load times or anything?

Possibly, but not likely anything noticable. If the OS needs to load things from the OS partition while the game is loading then it'll have to seek farther than if they were on the same filesystem causing some increased latency in loading the game.

Would I be better off with a big OS partition and the rest for storage and just install the games on the OS partition ?

You'd be better off with 2 physical drives, partitions aren't usually worth the problems they created any more.

 

[Griswold]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
You'd be better off with 2 physical drives, partitions aren't usually worth the problems they created any more.

I agree with the first part. Though, I cant think of any good reasons to not have partitions on a disk that is mainly used for OS/Apps/Data/whatever. Makes backing up and restoring files/images much more organized than just a huge backup of a cluttered 250-500GB disk.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: Sniper82
I was thinking about partitioning a 400gb into 3 partition. One for OS,one for games and the other for storage. Does installing games on a separate partition effect load times or anything?

Would I be better off with a big OS partition and the rest for storage and just install the games on the OS partition ?

IMO, It's always a good idea to keep the OS on a separate partition. That way whenever anything screws up, it's a lot easier to image that partition and restore it while leaving everything else untouched.

*Most* games write to the registry and won't work unless they've been installed through the installer, so you'll have to reinstall them anyway.

You might gain an imperceptible amount of performance due to lessened defragmentation.

My setup:

Drive 1 (74gb Raptor) - Games and OS on the raptor for speed, separated for the reason above.
C: 20GB OS
D: 64Gb Games

Drive 2 (160gb) - Swap on separate drive as OS, at the very front, the rest is storage.
S: 2gb Swap
E: 138gb Storage
F: 20gb Downloads/Temp files/Internet Cache

I could fold E and F together, but otherwise I'll never be motivated to clean up the old downloads. I also only run real time virus scanning on the F drive - anything that comes off the net lands onto that drive first, so I don't see the point in redundantly scanning the rest for no good reason - if it's getting infected, it's going through F.

 

[corkyg]

I have always used a small partition for the page file on my OS drive. It has never caused a problem, and actually serves to reduce fragmentation in the OS area. I keep data on separate drives.

And, partitions do reduce the amount of time needed to perform drive maintenance tasks.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: corkyg
I have always used a small partition for the page file on my OS drive. It has never caused a problem, and actually serves to reduce fragmentation in the OS area. I keep data on separate drives.

And, partitions do reduce the amount of time needed to perform drive maintenance tasks.

Thats generally a bad idea, ESPECIALLY if you're using the last few Gb of your OS drive, which are the slowest and furthest away. You're forcing the drive to swing its head back and forth from the page file to the incoming files when it could otherwise be faster if it could write to a closer area on the OS partition. Seek times are everything when it comes to HD performance, and separating them on the same drive absolutely destroys that.

Keep the swap file on a separate drive, or in your OS partition if you only have one.

 

[Nothinman]

Though, I cant think of any good reasons to not have partitions on a disk that is mainly used for OS/Apps/Data/whatever. Makes backing up and restoring files/images much more organized than just a huge backup of a cluttered 250-500GB disk.

Because using partitions for organization is stupid, eventually one partition will fill up and you'll either have to mess with resizing it or putting "wrong" data on another one to make up for the lack of space. Directories serve the same purpose and are infinitely more flexible. And on the Windows-specific side having mulitple drive letters for things is really annoying. If you want to keep your OS image small then use a smaller disk for it or just don't put much on that disk, you could have a 2TB filesystem but if there's only 10G on it that's all that'll get imaged.

I have always used a small partition for the page file on my OS drive. It has never caused a problem, and actually serves to reduce fragmentation in the OS area. I keep data on separate drives.

If you just set the minimum size of the pagefile to something reasonable it won't get enlarged and it won't affect fragmentation either.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Though, I cant think of any good reasons to not have partitions on a disk that is mainly used for OS/Apps/Data/whatever. Makes backing up and restoring files/images much more organized than just a huge backup of a cluttered 250-500GB disk.

Because using partitions for organization is stupid, eventually one partition will fill up and you'll either have to mess with resizing it or putting "wrong" data on another one to make up for the lack of space. Directories serve the same purpose and are infinitely more flexible. And on the Windows-specific side having mulitple drive letters for things is really annoying. If you want to keep your OS image small then use a smaller disk for it or just don't put much on that disk, you could have a 2TB filesystem but if there's only 10G on it that's all that'll get imaged.

I'll agree with you in part there - I've ran into many a situation where I needed free space but I couldnt really use it because I overpartitioned.

But I'd love to have a separate raptor for my OS and Games, but I can't afford that. Unless you want to donate a 36gb to the cause.

I have always used a small partition for the page file on my OS drive. It has never caused a problem, and actually serves to reduce fragmentation in the OS area. I keep data on separate drives.

If you just set the minimum size of the pagefile to something reasonable it won't get enlarged and it won't affect fragmentation either.[/quote]

Yep. Fragmentation is overratted anyway.

And a fragmented page file isn't such a bad thing - it could theoretically shorten the seek distance depending on where those fragments are in relation to what's causing the swapping.

 

[Nothinman]

But I'd love to have a separate raptor for my OS and Games, but I can't afford that. Unless you want to donate a 36gb to the cause.

Seeing as how I only have one myself, I doubt it. =)

And a fragmented page file isn't such a bad thing - it could theoretically shorten the seek distance depending on where those fragments are in relation to what's causing the swapping.

He's talking about the expansion of the pagefile causing other files to become fragmented as they expand which is possible, but IMO is also a red herring.

 

[fraquar]

I take the multiple drive approach:

1 30GB Raptor to install all my OS' on (multi-boot or wipe and start clean again).
1 medium sized drive to install applications and store data (partitioned).
**1 big @55 drive (or several if necessary) to store archivable data (MP3's, video's, and Games - again partitioned).

** When solid state drives become affordable to me this is where all game installations will go for obvious reasons.

Others would use a different multiple HDD solution based on their needs (i.e video editing, programming, RAID configurations, database development, etc).

Doing this requires meticulous monitoring of every application installation. Once done however, the only time you should need to install an application is if a new version comes out (you still have the old one on the drive in case the new one ends up being garbage however) or you want to try an alternative to what you currently use. The rest of the time you just re-install the OS (pull out that Ghost Image of the OS only) and apply a couple of script files and you are back in business.

There is a vast collection of good no-install applications (i.e uTorrent, Foxit PDF Reader) and applications that have portability capability (portable versions of Firefox and OpenOffice to name two) that even makes the need to monitor installations obsolete in many cases.

One thing to remember is that the Hard Drive that holds your OS installation shouldn't have to be a big drive - if it does then you aren't installing an OS - you are installing bloatware.

 

[koomey]

The only difference I could see is if the OS and Application partitions are kept relatively clean and not too fragmented, while the third is used often to download and delete files.

 

[Cheex]

I a 36GB Raptor big enough to install the OS and all your programs and games?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Though, I cant think of any good reasons to not have partitions on a disk that is mainly used for OS/Apps/Data/whatever. Makes backing up and restoring files/images much more organized than just a huge backup of a cluttered 250-500GB disk.

Because using partitions for organization is stupid, eventually one partition will fill up and you'll either have to mess with resizing it or putting "wrong" data on another one to make up for the lack of space. Directories serve the same purpose and are infinitely more flexible. And on the Windows-specific side having mulitple drive letters for things is really annoying. If you want to keep your OS image small then use a smaller disk for it or just don't put much on that disk, you could have a 2TB filesystem but if there's only 10G on it that's all that'll get imaged.

I completely disagree. The fact that one fills up is only testamony to lack of planning. Also, you can easily add a hard drive, and reconfigure the partition configuration with diskpart.exe. It can be used on any drive that isn't a system disk.

Disk 0: 1 74gb Raptor (OS, programs)
Disk 1: 2 x 150gb Raptor (RAID 0 -- games, temp, scratch, and pagefile)
Disk 2: 4 x 400gb WD RE2 (RAID 5 -- storage)

Disk 0 is not partitioned.
Disk 1 is partitioned twice: 150gb for games, ~150gb for scratch
Disk 2 is partitioned twice: media & data

 

[Nothinman]

The fact that one fills up is only testamony to lack of planning.

Planning that isn't necessary otherwise, it's a waste of time since there's a simpler, more flexible option available.

Also, you can easily add a hard drive, and reconfigure the partition configuration with diskpart.exe. It can be used on any drive that isn't a system disk.

So? That's an argument for RAID sets, not partitions. And it's still orders of magnitude more work than simply creating a new filesystem and adding a directory for organization to it.

Disk 1 is partitioned twice: 150gb for games, ~150gb for scratch
Disk 2 is partitioned twice: media & data

Ignoring the fact that partitioning a RAID device makes even less sense than a single disk, what benefit do you think you get for partitioning those two? And why is "media" logically seperate from "data"?