HD Performance & Partition questions

S

SpongeBob

The Contraceptive Under the Sea
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Jan 15, 2011
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So I've been running the same HD and Vista install since 2007 or so and it's been pretty great but I have a few questions.

I notice things slow down significantly when starting windows if I have a lot of stuff filling up my desktop. Why is this?

Also I have 55GB free out of 283 on this partician and I feel like things have slowed down somewhat, I defrag and such but despite being pretty full why else would my system be not as fast.

Essentially what causes a slow down between a fresh install and a more full install. I ask because if people are buying 1TB - 2TB drives wouldn't they be really slow?

I am sure this is less noticeable with drives with 32mb of cache.

Do you have seperate partitions for OS and Games or all on 1? I did this once before having 2 but it was really just a pain considering a lot of programs just want to be on C.

Any tips for fresh installs? I'm going to be buying a new drive and I have win7 ultimate for my next rig.

Thanks
 
One of the main causes of these slowdowns on Windows machines is the steady growth of your user profile. Your profile has to be loaded at login. The bigger it is, the slower your login and the more disk thrashing for the first little while that you're in.

Most people are unaware that files on your desktop are part of your profile and increase its size, so keeping a clear desktop can help somewhat. You don't have to move them to a different disk, just off your desktop. Separate OS and data drives have additional, distinct advantages.

Rather than formatting and reinstalling (which is what I do) you can delete your profile and then recreate it. That'll remove a fair bit of the cruft without blowing away your entire install. Google it to make sure you understand what gets wiped out and what you need to backup.


Lastly, hitting up msconfig and disabling the 80-90% of startup items that are unnecessary can do wonders too, especially on laptops with slower HDDs. Most of these things don't need to be started at boot and will load automatically when you need them. Otherwise you can fire them up manually when you actually need them.


Partition size doesn't really have much to with the slowdown with age you're describing. Defragging hasn't provided a perceivable difference in performance for me sim e the old FAT days. Fragmentation isn't the issue with NTFS that it was with FAT, particularly in it's modern incarnations. I have noticed defragging has become more fashionable lately though. I guess it's a simple thing
 
+1 to everything Gilbo says in post above (especially msconfig - i keep a shortcut in my start menu) except fragmentation with ntfs.

yes fragmentation isn't a big an issue compared to fat/fat32 but it's still a problem. in the good old days ms believed defragging was a thing of the past, even to the extent of excluding a defrag app from their os. course this wasn't the case. it's not the first time ms has gotten wrong (bill gates famous quote regarding ram..)

if you have a second hard disk i'd suggest you create a small partition roughly x2 the amount of ram and move your page file on to it. if you have the cash, consider getting a ssd though you may want to wait till all the 3rd gen controller drives are out.

also look at this thread;
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1588799
in regards to breaking up the files of your os, data, games etc.
 
Can you link me to something on the page file info?
Also if I delete my current profile will it delete my WinSXS folder? It's a whopping 20GB of stuff I'm guessing is just useless.

Also what are the things I need to do after a fresh install to save on space? There's a backup thing I need to limit its space right? I forget what its called but I remember seeing huge chunks of space on my hd start to dissapear until I fixed it last time.

Thx
 
instructions on moving page file (windows 7)
  • right click on 'computer' (wether on desktop or start menu), left click 'properties'
  • left click 'advanced system settings'
  • on the 'advanced tab', click 'settings' button in the 'performance' section
  • in 'performance options' window, click the 'advanced' tab
  • in the 'virtual memory' section, click the 'change' button.
  • highlight 'C:' then select the 'no paging file' radio button
  • click the 'set' button
  • to place page file on another drive, select the drive you want from list.
  • click the 'custom size' radio button
  • for the amount of hard disk space to allot, the general rule of thumb is 1.5x or 2x the amount of RAM you have. example you have 4096MB ram x 1.5 = 6144MB.
  • type in the amount you want, in the example above you'd type in 6144 in both 'inital size (MB)' box and the same again in 'maximum size (MB)' box
  • click the 'set' button
  • click 'ok'
  • reboot machine

Note: this technique works best if the page file is moved to another physical drive. moving to a different partition on the same drive will give no benefit other than preventing defragmentation of the pagefile.sys

note sure how cleaning your profile will affect your WinSXS directory.

suggest downloading and installing 'windirstat'
http://windirstat.info/
windirstat-medium.jpg

very handy tool for working out where all your HD space has gone

some quick google results regarding the 're-allocatation of the page file'
you can probably dig up some more yourself;

http://techblissonline.com/configur...ys-in-windows-vistaxp-to-improve-performance/
http://superuser.com/questions/2499...ing-pagefile-sys-affect-performance-windows-7
 
So how fast does the other drive need to be with the page file? Like is just random stuff getting stored there? Also the space you allocate can it get filled or does old stuff automatically get deleted by the OS?
Still not entirely sure how this benefits you. Also say you had this on a 2nd drive and lets say that drive dies. What happens then? Is your entire system then f'ed?
 
the secondary drive can be a standard 7200/5400 rpm drive. doesn't need to be super fast. if the drive was manufactured within the last 5-6yrs (rough conservative estimate), should be fine.

if you are curious about how a page file works, there is plenty of info on the net.

the page file was introduced to combat the problem of the os running out of RAM
essentially it acts like a slow form of cache. the fastest being L1 cache on the cpu through to L2, L3, RAM and finally the hard disk. basically as information is processed it's stored into memory, the most accessed information is stored in the fastest memory (size permitting) and the least accessed pushed out to the slower storage.

the benefit of altering the location of the page file on a separate disk is that the os doesn't have to hit the two different locations on the same drive which introduces latancy. for example you load a program from your programs directory but at the same time information is pushed out of RAM to the page file. the os has to wait for the disk controller to retrieve the data for the first request before it can begin the second. so there are a lot of wasted CPU cycles between the instructions.

with the page file on a separate disk, the os can complete both tasks simultaneously thus less wasted CPU cycles.

if you have the page file stored on a secondary disk and the disk is pulled or dies, windows detects this and recreates the page file in its old location. your system is in no danger if it cannot find the relocated page file. i've always moved my page file since win2k.

with an SSD, there is less of reason to move the page file for performance (unless its to a secondary SSD). there is another reason to move a page file off a SSD to a magnetic drive, that is to reduce wear on the NAND cells.
 
defragmentation of the pagefile.sys


lets not get into this debate again, last time it started a war about the pagefile and fragmentation and how it doesnt matter, doesnt get defraged and clears it's self on reboot anyways
 
I'm still curious about the WinSXS directory. I mean this thing is huge and useless. Is there a way to limit this or do somehting?

Also I plan on building another comp soon but I have win7, is win7 borked in terms of having a gigantic winsxs file too? Just curious so I know how large to make the partition.
 
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