WD 640GB Question

[ReptileMatt]

Hey guys,

I've been creeping the forums for a while, but figure I'd make my first post.

I recently purchased a WD6400AKKS and want to use it as my primary OS hard drive. I've read a few comments and reviews of people partioning the drive (20%, 80%) so that the OS installs on the outer 'ring' of the drive, making speeds faster.

Is doing something like this possible? I'm new to hard drive performance, but wonder if it's somewhat true.

I don't want to RAID 1 or 0 just yet. Rather just run a single hard drive, save electricity and limit the amount of crap I have on the machine. I have several external drives for media etc.

 

[Shambler]

I would say: Regardless of how you partition that drive, it will be fast. And if you had the option to place this or that, on the outside or inside, I don't think you would feel the difference.

Just enjoy having a nicely sized, priced, fast drive I'm on a 30gig Maxtor from 6 years ago.

 

[engiNURD]

Your HD Tune benchmark should look something like this:

See the 40GB mark, where performance starts to dip below 100MB/s? Thats where I'd make the cuttoff between boot partition and whatever other partitions you want. You can decide for yourself where you want that cutoff to be, but yes, it does make a difference. Is that difference noticeable? to most, not really.

 

[ReptileMatt]

Your HD Tune benchmark should look something like this:

See the 40GB mark, where performance starts to dip below 100MB/s? Thats where I'd make the cuttoff between boot partition and whatever other partitions you want. You can decide for yourself where you want that cutoff to be, but yes, it does make a difference. Is that difference noticeable? to most, not really.

Very interesting. Thanks enginurd. Would you know how I would go abouts partitioning the drive to follow this graph? PartitionMagic can do this?

 

[engiNURD]

sure

 

[ReptileMatt]

Ok and this is telling us that the highest performance is in the 40% inner or outer platter? I'm guessing outer?