Installing OS on fastest sectors of hard drive?

rotini

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Dec 4, 2010
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Hi everyone,

A few weeks ago I read something on this forum about a program that could identify the fastest sectors on a drive, which one would then install the operating system on. Been trying to find that post ever since, but I can't seem to locate it or find any other information on it. Does anyone here know what I'm talking about? There were graphs which demonstrated the performance increase after the procedure.

To me, it would make sense to install the OS on the outer edges of the drive to minimize the rotations.

Thanks!
 
I don't know what you're looking for, but I'm guessing any optimization like that would have an extremely marginal return. If you want a fast OS drive, buy an SSD.
 
When you're installing on a hard drive you can format, partition the drive during the initial installation process. The first partition is on the outside and the fastest, the next is slower, etc, so just install the OS on the first partition. Make sure the size is enough for your OS, 10GB for XP, 30GB for Vista/7 etc...
 
When you're installing on a hard drive you can format, partition the drive during the initial installation process. The first partition is on the outside and the fastest, the next is slower, etc, so just install the OS on the first partition. Make sure the size is enough for your OS, 10GB for XP, 30GB for Vista/7 etc...

Agreed. And this can make a 2TB black drive as nearly fast as a Velociraptor and certainly faster than an older raptor. I mean as long as you do not actively use the other partitions the heads will stay over the first partition and have less distance to travel. With less distance to travel seek times will be faster.
 
When you're installing on a hard drive you can format, partition the drive during the initial installation process. The first partition is on the outside and the fastest, the next is slower, etc, so just install the OS on the first partition. Make sure the size is enough for your OS, 10GB for XP, 30GB for Vista/7 etc...

Thanks everyone. I'm putting together a new system and for the moment using a Samsung F3 1TB. When SSD prices come down a bit (hopefully around Q1 2011) I'll jump on a SSD. For current usage though, would you suggest making a partition of 30GB on a 1TB drive for Windows 7? For that matter, would you recommend creating 3 partitions total (OS ~ 30GB, commonly-used programs ~ 80 GB, and the rest for mass storage)?


Though I'll be retiring the drive to storage eventually, it would be nice to know. Are there any drawbacks to creating to creating too many partitions?

Thanks!
 
I think the first 25~30% of the drive is the fastest, do some math and create a partition for the OS, leave the rest for storage?
 
Thanks everyone. I'm putting together a new system and for the moment using a Samsung F3 1TB. When SSD prices come down a bit (hopefully around Q1 2011) I'll jump on a SSD. For current usage though, would you suggest making a partition of 30GB on a 1TB drive for Windows 7? For that matter, would you recommend creating 3 partitions total (OS ~ 30GB, commonly-used programs ~ 80 GB, and the rest for mass storage)?


Though I'll be retiring the drive to storage eventually, it would be nice to know. Are there any drawbacks to creating to creating too many partitions?

Thanks!

30 and 80 looks good to me, having more partitions than necessary is just poor management.

I justed looked at my OS drive, it's 21 gigs with windows 7 and some programs. You can put 40 to be safe, especially if you use a page file and hibernation.
 
It's called short-stroking. It gives benefits in two ways. First, you're limited your data to the outside edge of the drive, which is fastest. Sounds like you already understand that part. Second, you're limiting your data to a smaller physical area of the disk, so the heads will only ever need to travel over that smaller area. Think of it as looking for a lost earring in only one parking space, versus having to search the entire parking lot.

There are downsides to partitioning. Anything you put in the second partition will be physically separated from your "fast" partition on the disk. The heads will need to leave the area containing data in the first partition and move to the area containing the second partition. If you're accessing both an application in the first partition and data in the second partition, the heads will need to keep moving back and forth. This can actually slow down disk accesses.
 
There are downsides to partitioning. Anything you put in the second partition will be physically separated from your "fast" partition on the disk. The heads will need to leave the area containing data in the first partition and move to the area containing the second partition. If you're accessing both an application in the first partition and data in the second partition, the heads will need to keep moving back and forth. This can actually slow down disk accesses.

Interesting. If that is the case, then it seems like a 30GB/80GB might not be the best idea, particularly if I'm using programs from both partitions. I'm curious as to what types of partitions you and others create when short-stroking... For an OS and other programs, I should probably dedicate one partition rather than split it between two, it seems.

EDIT: I found a pretty good thread on overclock.net in case anyone is interested. http://www.overclock.net/hard-drives-storage/609576-short-stroke-why-how-7.html
Seems there was a debate concerning the actual, real-world benefits, but at the end of the day, partitioning space for an OS would make re-installs much easier.
 
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i always reinstall to new drives and keep the old ones for backup. get an ssd if you need the speed, I doubt the scheme will compensate you for wasted time.
 
I doubt the scheme will compensate you for wasted time.

That's about it. If you're in a single drive system, then partitioning off the OS can be handy if the thing goes corrupt on you. Otherwise it's pretty much a waste of time, as it's not going to net you any kind of tangible speed gains.
 
I think installing the OS on the fastest part of the HDD is fine, but the biggest benefit is putting storage separate from your OS.

Example:
SteamApps folder. If installed on a storage partition, re-installing your OS will have NO effect on your SteamApps folder. You'll need to re-initiate Steam (takes about 5 seconds) and can start playing immediately.

I have a friend that has a WD 640GB Black. I had him setup a 150GB Primary Partition for OS & Apps. A second partition (the remainder) for his SteamApps & Games drive.

In my Sig Rig, I am running 2x WD 640GB Blacks in RAID 0. The first primary partition is 400GB (which works out to be the first 200GB of each HDD in the RAID). I've got OS & SteamApps folder. The second partition (remainder) is for storage & backups. I backup my SteamApps folder to this partition once a week. This is plenty fast for me and took almost no effort on my part to configure. The entire RAID is backed up to a 1.5TB internal HDD on a weekly basis.
 
Don't partition ever a hard disk, it is just too much of a pain to manage.
Besides, if you're considering a SSD in the near future (as I am,) you'll soon have a separate OS SSD and data HDD. Even that is not really true, since a lot of user information is saved in the system drive.

In any case, don't create an OS partition of only 30 GB. Mine is already bigger than that and I don't even have any game or MS Office or Visual Studio installed. System data and apps reached 100 GB at some stage. All the Windows Service Packs and hotfixes take a great amount of space that increases every Patch Tuesday, applications like Microsoft and Google Earth take 1 GB of cached maps, any recent game comes on one or several DVDs, so it's better to have a single partition if you have a single disk, and to add separate disks if you need additional storage. Besides, I think Microsoft Backup requires a separate disk, not partition, if I remember some error messages I got once long ago, but maybe I'm wrong.
 
Interesting. If that is the case, then it seems like a 30GB/80GB might not be the best idea, particularly if I'm using programs from both partitions. I'm curious as to what types of partitions you and others create when short-stroking... For an OS and other programs, I should probably dedicate one partition rather than split it between two, it seems.

EDIT: I found a pretty good thread on overclock.net in case anyone is interested. http://www.overclock.net/hard-drives-storage/609576-short-stroke-why-how-7.html
Seems there was a debate concerning the actual, real-world benefits, but at the end of the day, partitioning space for an OS would make re-installs much easier.

To get the most out of short-stroking, you need to not use the rest of the drive. Instead of a $100 2TB drive of standard speed, think of it as a $100 200GB drive that's faster. You're throwing away the second part of the drive to make the first part faster.

You could use the second part as general file storage (MP3s, videos, etc.), but even then you're still forcing the system to stop accessing the first partition in order to get to the other data. Putting all your apps on a second partition is more likely to have a negative effect than a positive one. Any free space on the first partition will push the application files on the second partition further away (whereas with one big partition, the files would be placed in the first available space, right next to the other files).

Putting your apps on a second partition can make file management easier. I could have my previous system formatted and reinstalled with all of my apps working in about two hours due to having my user data and installed apps on separate partitions. For performance though, you don't want anything that's accessed regularly (if anything at all) on the second partition. You should put your apps on the short-stroked partition along with the OS.

Keep in mind that the larger your partition is, the less effect short-stroking will have - you're adding slower parts of the drive which lowers the average speed, plus you're increasing the physical area covered (like having to search for that lost earring in a full row of parking spaces rather than a single space), which increases the random seek times. By the time you make your short-stroke large enough to hold all the necessary stuff, it may not be helping all that much relative to the amount of time you've spent messing with it, as others have said.

Here are a couple related threads that I was able to find quickly.
Short Stroking Question
Formatting For Maximum Performance (Games)

And here's a tip I posted before, which can give you some of the benefits of short-stroking without all the work.
Another option is to do a sorted defrag with JkDefrag/MyDefrag. This will allow you to put all the files in a directory physically next to each other. That means that when you're accessing WoW's files, the head will stay in one particular area. It doesn't help if you're trying to access files in both C:\Aardvark\ and C:\Zebra\, but it should keep all the files in any given dir physically close to each other to help reduce the amount of time the read/write head spends moving around.
 
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