Recommended method to partition a 500Gb Hard Disk Hello, I have this Hard Drive on my acer 5738G notebook ManufacturerHitachi Hard Disk FamilyTravelstar 5K500.B Form Factor2.5" Formatted Capacity500 GB Disks2 Recording Surfaces4 Physical Dimensions100 x 70 x 9.5 mm Max. Weight102 g Average Rotational Latency5.5 ms Rotational Speed5400 RPM Max. Internal Data Rate875 Mbit/s Average Seek12 ms Track-To-Track Seek1 ms Full Seek20 ms InterfaceSATA-II Buffer-to-Host Data Rate300 MB/s Buffer Size8 MB I want to make 4 partitions; system/downloads/games/multimedia Because this Hard Drive has 2 disks and 4 recording surfaces i have the next question: If i want to download a game, and install it to games, where is best to make the games partition? on the first disk, with the system partition, or on the other disk? for example: system/games ---first disk downloads/multimedia ---second disk or system/downloads ---first disk games/multimedia ---second disk wich method do you think is better for the transfer reading/writting speeds
You can't choose between two disks, because its only technical information abaut your disk hardware (thats mean you have two disk plates in your HDD). You have ONE 500GB disk. PS For system partition i recomend 20 - 30GB.
The drive you are describing has two PLATTERS, not two discrete "disks". Each platter has, theoretically, a capacity of 250GB, giving the 500GB total. When partitioning, you don't exactly have a choice of which PLATTER you are assigning the partition to. I suppose you could make the first two partitions a total of 250GB and MAYBE the next two would be on the second platter, but this cannot be guaranteed. So basically, don't worry about it--make your partitions however you want them setup according to how you want your stuff organized. Performance differences will be imperceptible. Worry more about keeping your partitions defragmented--this will have far more bearing on "speed" than where the partition is physically located.
Yes, probably it doesnt matter, but at one point it does: its not recommended to download and install in the same partition, because the writting head will be stressed and the installing time will be longer. Based on this, thats why im asking your opinion about the platters performance/distribution.
ok, thanks for the good info's. But how do i know exactly where is the outer traks or the outer partition? how can i know...
The first partition you make will be the outermost tracks, the second partition the next most inner tracks....partitions begin at the outermost edge of the platter always. Make your primary partition big enough for OS needs, but small enough to keep the head travel limited to the highest density area on the outermost tracks.
so, on this 4 partitions configuration who has the best performance from the hard drive? the work partition will be used more than multimedia. maybe its better to change them system / multimedia / work / backup files
Yes. OS on outermost tracks (first partition). Often called short stroking make the OS partition just big enough for your needs and to use the fastest tracks, there will be a shorter area for the head to seek too speeding up access times. Example, just build another RAID 10 array with 4x500gb seagate 7200.12's , the first 150 GB of outermost tracks have a constant 250MB/sec transfer rate (across the entire partition) and that's my OS partition....get down to the innermost tracks my RAID array is down to 100MB/sec.
So doesn't it make sense to make 1 partition, 400 GB, and a second partitoin 100 GB. Then put all the data on partition 1 and nothing on partition 2, so that the head only travels on the outermost tracks and never reaches the inner center?
Whatever your needs make sense. Ideally short stroking or partitioning a drive to keep the heads in the highest density (and highest transfer rate) and shortest travel distance (fastest access time). In my case (4x500GB 7200.12's RAID10 array), the first 150GB of outer tracks all read @ 250+MB/sec and write closer to 200+MB/sec....thats anywhere on the entire 150GB primary partition the read/write speeds are 250/200 and access time 14ms. So no matter where you install the application on the primary partition it's read speed is 250GB/sec. I use the remaining 850GB partition for automated Acronis incrimental image backups and general data storage. Your needs may vary....if you need a 400GB primary partition, maybe you want to use a larger 1-1.5 TB drives where the first 200GB are very fast. Shortstroking is the poormans method of fast hard drive transfer rates, till solid state drives mature a bit more, as well as controllers for them and their prices drop. My 2 cents worth for today.
i dont understand why my read speed is only 80 bytes/sec. And this is maximum on the outher part. tought it was aster that this. At the inner tracks the speed its about 45-50...
80MB/sec pretty good for a 5400rpm notebook drive, and yes that is the outermost area of the platter. Fastest 7200 RPM SATA 3.5 mechanical drives stream about 125MB/sec so 80 MB/sec from a notebook 5400 rpm is good. notebook platters are smaller and therefore less data passed under the head with each roation, amount of data passing under the head per rotation X RPM equals transfer rate.
80 MB/sec is amazing. I think i'll end up buying the same drive as yours. Is the drive noisy or quiet?
no, its not noisy at all. But on the other hand wich hard disk its noisy after 1 month from buying.. (i gwess). As 2centsworth told me earlier in the posts ''Does well in workstation I/O meter. Beats some 7200 rpm drives.'' so i think its a good deal p.s. what do you guys think about putting the page files and other temporary files on a small fat32 partition, close but separate from the system partition? some people say's better and some disagree about not letting the swapping on the system partition, an others think its worthless unless you have a RAID array with multiple hard disks. and because i installed windows 7 i have the system reserved partition on 100mb. Its using only 25mb. You think is wise to half shrink it to 50?