Need help with HDD partitioning / OS installation

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kamranki

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Hello all!

This is my first visit here. I need some suggestions with regards to hard drive installation / partitioning.

My system:

Intel Core 2 Duo - 3.0 GHz
Intel P45 Chipset based (ICH10) motherboard (MSI)
Corsair 6GB DDR3 Memory
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260
HDD1 - 250 GB SATA (old)
HDD2 - 1000 GB SATAII (installed recently)
HDD3 - 1000 GB SATAII (installed recently)
Creative X-Fi Sound Card
24" ACER HD LCD Display
HP DVD-Writer
Windows 7 64-bit


I have configured disk partitions as follows:

HDD1 > 2 partitions
C: = 100 GB - Windows 7 installation
H: = 150 GB - Data


HDD2 > 2 partitions
D: = 500 GB - Data
E: = 500 GB - Data


HDD3 > 2 partitions
F: = 500 GB - Data
G: = 500 GB - Data


All HDDs are Simple Volumes (no RAID). As mentioned above, I recently added 2 new HDDs i.e. HDD2
and HDD3 since they were more than 3 years old.

I am planning to replace HDD1 now as it has gotten REALLY slow. Data reads / writes are at crawling speeds.
Maybe the HDD has developed faults and it might die any moment. I would like to know whether should I go
for 500 GB or 1000 GB HDD, cost not being a factor. Also, are there any disadvantages, with regards to
performance, in partitioning HDD to C: and H: partitions (let's say 50% space allocated to each)? Or
allocating 100% to C: would make disk activity faster?

Lastly, for improving OS performance (HDD1), what kind of RAID hardware / software configuration would you
guys recommend? I really dont need fast disk access for HDD2 and HDD3.

Thank you for your time.

Regards,

Kamran
 
if ~120 GB will be enough for your OS installation and a few programs, you could consider picking up a solid state drive. It really makes everything snappy.

if you were getting another hard drive, I'd probably go with the 1TB (1,000 GB). with everything else being equal, (both are 7200 RPM drives, and same generation) the 1TB should be a little faster than a 500 GB drive, because it has higher platter density.

in regards to C: and H: partitions,
hard drives are faster on the outer rim of the platter. see how the speed drops gradually?
127106d1256450144-please-post-your-hdtune-2-55-wd640.png


by limiting use to just x% of the capacity. you will be using only the fastest part of the hard drive
this example below shows the same hard drive, when short stroked to just 10%
128976d1257974018-please-post-your-hdtune-2-55-hdtune_benchmark_raid_0_maxtor320gb.png


there is no definite rule how many percent of the hard drive you want to short stroke. i believe 20-25% are fairly common.


if you want pure performance, raid 0 is the best.
 
if ~120 GB will be enough for your OS installation and a few programs, you could consider picking up a solid state drive. It really makes everything snappy.

if you were getting another hard drive, I'd probably go with the 1TB (1,000 GB). with everything else being equal, (both are 7200 RPM drives, and same generation) the 1TB should be a little faster than a 500 GB drive, because it has higher platter density.

in regards to C: and H: partitions,
hard drives are faster on the outer rim of the platter. see how the speed drops gradually?
127106d1256450144-please-post-your-hdtune-2-55-wd640.png


by limiting use to just x% of the capacity. you will be using only the fastest part of the hard drive
this example below shows the same hard drive, when short stroked to just 10%
128976d1257974018-please-post-your-hdtune-2-55-hdtune_benchmark_raid_0_maxtor320gb.png


there is no definite rule how many percent of the hard drive you want to short stroke. i believe 20-25% are fairly common.


if you want pure performance, raid 0 is the best.


Is that example you gave a raid example or just a HDD that was partioned? Because I would like to do whatever was done there lol.
 
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