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Formatting For Maximum Performance (Games)
- Thread starter Garretta
- Start date
I would put them into RAID 0 with a 80gb partition for OS/all programs that require space on C for temporary files etc, and 900gb for the secondary partition (or split if you really want to). Remember, with RAID 0 you only get 1tb because each disc is duplicated to increase speeds greatly.
In my experience the partitioning shouldn't affect performance much at all (in before test showing otherwise), but it will be much more convenient when you need to reinstall your O/S (which you should do on some sort of schedule if its Windows to keep everything going smooth)
In my experience the partitioning shouldn't affect performance much at all (in before test showing otherwise), but it will be much more convenient when you need to reinstall your O/S (which you should do on some sort of schedule if its Windows to keep everything going smooth)
I got mixed up with RAID 1 there..
haven't actually had any RAID disks for a while since SSD's became feasible.
That said, I still stand by my recommendation of a smaller partition for the O/S and main apps, with the rest of space free for whatever in RAID 0.
InvisiBill
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The post you quoted does make sense. If you create two 1TB partitions on your RAID0 array, then just like the first partition is forced to the beginning of the disk (short-stroked), the second partition is forced to the end of the disk. If you have 100GB of stuff in the first partition and all your games installed in the second, then the drive has to skip over that 900GB of free space to get back and forth between the OS and the games. As stated, this pretty much counteracts the benefit of short-stroking.
However, if you have a 30GB OS partition with 28GB of stuff installed, and your games in a second partition, then the games start at almost the same location on disk where they would if it were all one big partition. It does have to skip over that free 2GB, but that's not a huge deal.
Put the two drives in RAID0 and make one partition big enough for whatever you want to do with it. Either ignore the rest of the space or create another partition for plain old file storage. If you want to use multiple partitions (for whatever reason) and want maximum performance, keep them as small as possible to minimize the wasted space that the heads will have to skip back and forth over.
If you want to make the whole thing one huge partition, you can still use things like JkDefrag to move files to designated areas of the disk. You can move everything to the end of the drive, then move your OS files to the beginning, then your games after that, then your media files.
However, if you have a 30GB OS partition with 28GB of stuff installed, and your games in a second partition, then the games start at almost the same location on disk where they would if it were all one big partition. It does have to skip over that free 2GB, but that's not a huge deal.
Put the two drives in RAID0 and make one partition big enough for whatever you want to do with it. Either ignore the rest of the space or create another partition for plain old file storage. If you want to use multiple partitions (for whatever reason) and want maximum performance, keep them as small as possible to minimize the wasted space that the heads will have to skip back and forth over.
If you want to make the whole thing one huge partition, you can still use things like JkDefrag to move files to designated areas of the disk. You can move everything to the end of the drive, then move your OS files to the beginning, then your games after that, then your media files.